Old House 
Just started and rinsed the world’s fastest pick-up truck and confirmed that I am not back to full mobility. Chores are getting in the way of the leisurely morning.
Went to a great winery yesterday just down the road and the post-attack larder is two cases of wine richer for the trip.
So many chores to so, so many deferred. Next weekend is for the newlyweds back up north, so I won’t be back for a couple weeks, which makes me a bit sad. The summer is over today, last regular season swim Up North.
The whole thing is amazing.
I was going to write a story about the Russians and their crazy dream farm next door, and the labor of love that is boutique agriculture and the wine tasting culture and blueberries, of all things, but that was another of those fevered interludes of reading during the convalescence. The Blueberry Years by Jim Minick was touted as “a mouth-watering and delightful memoir based the trials and tribulations of an organic blueberry farmer.”
When I finished the inspirational book I was convinced that I would never undertake anything like that, and also noted that Mr. Minick got out of the business as well before it killed him.
Old House wines is another of those insanely labor-intensive efforts, just seven miles down the Germana Highway, the very route that General Grant and his 100,000 troops passed on the way to the Wilderness. The story of the winery is the ultimate in the President’s folly of “you did not built it.”
Of course people build things on their own without the assistance of the Federal bureaucracy. The Old House was exactly that on a rainy Mother’s day in 1998 when the current owners discovered the 75 acres and abandoned farm house at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. By sheer will, they planted and grew and wrested the fruit of the vines from the soil and make some delightful local vintages.
Today, the formerly overgrown alfalfa fields are lush vineyards producing grapes for their award-winning Chardonnay and saucy reds.
Their literature says they ” couldn’t have imagined years ago the amount of labor or fun that would be involved in bringing this venture to life.”
It is back-breaking work, the sort of thing I learned to eschew while working on a cattle ranch in my student days.

(The Old House restored. Photo Old House Winery.)
Here are some interesting facts about the vineyards at Old House:
Vineyards cost about $15,000/acre to plant and establish before harvesting any fruit.
An average of 12 pounds are harvested per vine each fall.
That 12 pounds will make about 1 gallon of wine or 5 bottles.
It costs about $3000 per acre each year to grow the vines including, labor, materials and overhead.
The type of grape is usually used for the name of the wine, ie. Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, etc.
There are a variety of trellising systems used in the vineyards of Virginia.
We use Vertical Shoot Positioning (VSP), Smart Dyson, and Geneva Double Curtain (GDC). These are used to balance the vine and its energy and expose each part of the vine to sunlight and air.
The electrified fence is used to keep out deer and other large pests.
The electronic bird noises are used to scare away the birds during the ripening period in the vineyard. The birds will eat the grapes before they are ripe enough for wine and leave nothing to harvest.
Grapes like dry summers. The roots are deep and find their own water.
Irrigation is recommended for establishing vines in Virginia and if it is installed, it can be used in dry summers to keep the vines in balance.
Terroir is the French word for soil but in the wine world it refers to the vineyards expression in the wine. That which makes the wine from that vineyard unique. This is expressed over years of working with the grapes and noticing the similarities.
Drainage of the soils in a vineyard is a critical issue. The vine roots need oxygen and cannot survive if constantly under water.
Hard summer storms can damage a vineyard and its crop. The rain runoff can erode topsoil. The winds can damage leaves and fruit clusters. Hail can bruise and destroy a crop. Whole rows have been blown over from the winds at Old House and the vines acting like a sail on a ship.
Frost can destroy the crop for the year and can cause damage to the wood of the vine resulting in a stunting or death. Planking in a higher spot than the surrounding land can give the vine a better change for survival.
Grafting is done on a vine before purchasing. The varietal or scion wood is grafted on to a vine that is good for its roots called rootstock. This is done to ensure healthy vines and vines that are compatible with our soils and pests.
There are many diseases that can develop in the growing season in Virginia. By managing the growth of a vine, using good timing with fungicide sprays and with good weather, the vintner can avoid these diseases and grow healthy grapes.
The varieties at Old House Vineyards are Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, Chambourcin, Chardonnay and Vidal.
I have the excellent Bacchanalia red and the white Chardonnay to stave off the Zombie hordes or whatever is going happen after the election and the Iranian nuclear strike on Washington.
Life is good down here on the farm.
Summer is over. Let the games of Fall begin.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Not Thinking
(Next ink? We shall see. I am not thinking about it. Photo of graffiti found in Iraq with ambiguous message. Derived photo Socotra).
Not thinking. That is the goal. I am going to concentrate on the matter this long weekend. No thinking. No Iranian nuclear thoughts, no conventions. No thinking.
It is time. If I was French, I would be starting to pack to go back north from the Cote D’Azure and the lost long month. Being a Yank, we compress a European experience into a few days, and when we start thinking again, it will be the 4th of September, and the pool will be closed on weekdays, the Polish lifeguards will be gone on their way.
Konrad is going to be in San Francisco, since he is afraid of the hurricanes hitting Cancun, his original destination of choice. Lukas will be back in middle Europe along with Johanna, the schools will have been open long enough that it is no longer a novelty, and the idiots who govern us will be back on Capital Hill. That is so unpleasant a thought that I will put that in the non-thinking basket I have near the door to take down to the Panzerwagen to deliver to the farm.
I have a list- I know you do, too- and it increasingly seems to be something I will have to deal with in the Fall, which intellectually I know is looming three days from now, but which still seems on an emotional level to be impossible.
I glanced at the napkin in front of me on the Willow bar and the little notes: get a haircut from Ben-the-Tunisian with whom I converse in pigeon French, the Class Six store to shore up the emergency vodka supply in the event of early snow, the unsettling stop at the AAFES gas station where the storms and refinery fires have driven up the prices for hi-test, visit the little family jewelers to fix my old-fashioned watch on Zuni silver band, getting a quote to fix the rear bumper of the Bluesmoble by the Vietnamese body shop, collect the business wardrobe at the dry cleaners, visit the Commissary, etc etc.
I ran out of napkin and decided not to think further of the list.
As of midnight, it is going to be September already, I sighed, the season having fled while I concentrated on getting upright and mobile again, a process that robbed me of participation in the months of March through August.
Tracy O’Grady does a Buffalo, NY, comfort food special on the last Friday of the month, and I that is why I was there. I decided not to cook in honor of the long weekend. Old Jim is continuing his boycott on principled grounds, and the gang at the Amen Corner was limited to me.
(Willow Newbies Alex and Raquel. Photo Socotra)
I thought I should have brought the iPad to help kill time with Jim elsewhere, but wound up in an animated discussion with a nice young couple from the condo across the street. They had just moved here, it developed, and Raquel is an attorney at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Alex is a graduate student at George Washington University doing something wonky. As it turns out, we had a lot to talk about. I flagged down Liz-with-an-S to make the introduction, since Raquel has cracked the code on how to get into the government, and any useful connection is a good thing. They exchanged contact information while Tinkerbelle kept my glass of white wine filled.
(Tink’s ink. She is ready for her next one, once Nola moves out. Photo Socotra).
She is hugely and delightfully pregnant and finally into the glow phase of gestation with the morning (and afternoon) sickness behind her. We were talking about the next tattoos we were going to get, and the hurricane that pasted her home of New Orleans. She is still devoted to the place, and I have toyed with the idea of wintering in Metarie, just across the bridge from the city proper. She supports the idea- and her commitment to home is conveyed by her unborn daughter’s name: Nola.
She totally approved, and is looking forward to the day Nola is outside her, and she can get more ink. We decided we like the Kool Aid man with Kalashnikov I found in a compilation of graffiti from the Iraq, and then we dug into some Buffalo Pommes Frites, Willow-style.
(Willow’s Buffalo Pommes Frites. OMG. Photo Socotra).
Metarie, LA, I thought. For January through March. Hold the storm season.
Liz-S stopped briefly in the midst of serving the thirsty threshold of early revelers: the Bills were just down the bar, proud law enforcement members of the DHS faily of dysfunctional government. She presented me, officially, with the last pebble of summer from her trip to Up North Michigan. The little eyeball looked up at me from the bar.
(Liz-S’s pebble of summer. It is staring at me now. Pebble courtesy of the last glacier. Photo Socotra).
Jim’s wife Mary appeared along with Jon-no-H. They got along just fine with alex and Raquel, and the food was good and the wine was crisp and cool.
(The lovely Mary. File photo courtesy Socotra House LLC.)
This was much more fun than thinking, I thought. Maybe I will circle back to that this coming Tuesday. Not now.
(I am not thinking about how dumb Vic looks this evening. Photo Socotra).
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com