The 2024 calendar year is coming to an end. There is no end to the vineyard calendar; it’s a cycle within a cycle, a wheel within a wheel. I don’t know how to determine any endpoint or beginning point.

Leaf fall? Often, it is a month-long process, or we get a real cold snap, and it’s overnight.

Bud break? Which bud on which vine of which cultivar? Again, a month. The vineyard is a constantly changing non-moment.

We are back in delivery mode. Barbara broke her arm last month (yes, in addition to her wrist last May), dampening our Thanksgiving to Christmas travel time. We are going over the mountains on Christmas Day to spend time with family. There is plenty of room for wine! Barbara will spend a week going to her medical visits and visiting her mum, family, and friends.

That gives Barbara lots of time for her to deliver wine to the Greater Seattle Metropolitan Area for the other days of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, and other celebrations.

Paul will be back on the farm with the critters and pruning, pruning, pruning . . . . Along with irrigation, pruning is the most critical project. Dormant pruning sets up the vines’ structure and some of their limits. The several passes of “green pruning,” which we call shoot thinning and leaf pulling, will complete the task by July. Basically, we prune for eight months! He aims for a row a day, weather permitting.