5/22/15 3:30 pm

Good Afternoon:

A fairly quiet week except for the cold Monday night. The open buds on grapes are very susceptible to frost now, this can cut your crop by over half. It was close but it missed by two degrees. With the forecast for this coming week as warm weather, bring the heat on.

Also this week I was able to get all the oil changed on the tractors and gator.

On Monday we also picked up a one ton van for the winery. More of our wine is now going into the wholesale market.

This morning Anna and I worked on our numbers for insurance renewal and found that we are now selling at least 1/3rd of our wine into the wholesale market, that's a liquor store or bar near you. This vehicle will be a gas hog but it can haul a very good load. I'll tell you by the end of the year if it was a mistake.

Last Saturday Mary and I attended a wedding celebration in Pierz, MN. My childhood neighbor's son was married, we are also cousins by way of my Grandma Millner who was a Gruber. My dad told me the Gruber relatives first came over by sailboat in the middle to early 1800's.

The next day before leaving Pierz we stopped at the nursing home to visit my Aunt Marceline. At age 97 her mind is really sharp, it was fun for me to ask

questions about the stories my dad had told me as a kid. She matched up very closely on the moonshine story about how they blew out the windows on the house. You see they'd hold a tub of moonshine behind the wood-stove to keep it warm so it'd age faster, so they could sell it sooner. Aunt Rose was ironing cloths using flat iron on the stove. These are the old irons that have a detachable hand and are heated by setting on top of a hot stove. Because she was working hard she was firing hot, the alcohol vaporized, and exploded blowing the windows out on first floor. The kitchen curtains caught fire but the house was not lost. I don't think this happened a second time.