May 2001
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All power to your elbow

With all the pumps and electronic fencing as well as our planned cellar we were running out of juice.  We told Manie to pedal harder but he was running out of puff.  Once when the main dam pump and the pool pump were going Mrs G-W switched on her hair dryer and the eastern end of Tulbagh valley was plunged into darkness.  Manie was called out on that rainy windswept night and very bravely managed to scale the telegraph pole to reinstate the trip.  It was at that point he thought we better get a more permanent solution.

Johan Faraday from Escom duly pitched up and after running through the five different permutations came to the conclusion that Manie's original idea of a central power point was the best.  At the moment we have 3 power points on the farm each costing R170 per month before we even boil the kettle.  What we plan is a single 200kw point where the cellar will be.  From there Manie's house and the small dam pump will be supplied by laying one cable, and the farmhouse and the two big pumps will run off another.  This neatens the whole thing and we can pay half up front and half over 10 years.  It is still a sizeable capital investment, but at least we will be able to cook our supper while the irrigation is running.

Manie's ideas on the vineyard management for this year were starting to take shape.  We got the quote for the Pennac soil conditioner which is a lot cheaper than the compost and mulch we used last year.  The only problem may be the weeds, as no straw mulch will be going down.  The straw mulch in fact takes a long time to break down and a lot of time, cost, manpower and diesel to deliver and position.  It would have been a Herculean task to try it on 10 hectares.  With the transportation of such a bulky product being so costly in terms of fuel etc it is hardly environmentally friendly anyway.  I am sure out neighbouring farmers wouldn't relish the thought of 40 truck loads of straw rumbling past their homesteads if they knew about it.  We'll try to tackle the weeds by laying the row spaces to grass and then mowing the grass onto the vine rows.  This will work in the winter when the grass grows.  In the summer the irrigation causes the weeds to grow in the rows but no water reaches the cover crop.  We will just have to  tackle it in the old fashioned way - by hand.  If anybody fancies a summer job weeding vineyards for R30 a day then give us a call.  We thought about plastic mulch, and in itself it is not harmful (some types of plastic are not).  But it prevents the soil beneath getting air.  Having nearly 40km of plastic sheeting in our vineyard was hardly the organic ideal we were aspiring to.  It would certainly stick in the throat.  So a combination of Pennac, compost and hard labour will be the regime!

The next task that Manie had was effectively a huge jigsaw puzzle.  The total area is around one kilometer square but it is split into many small irregular pieces, and in 3 dimensions.  One of the great things about being in the mountain foothills is the myriad of different aspects and slopes.  Some micro areas are steeper than others and face slightly different ways.  Some areas are in shadow earlier in the evening and later in the morning.  Some get the full force of the sun late into the evening.  This is so different to the large blocks of vines that sit on the valley floor.  The difficulty is fitting the vines neatly into workable blocks.  We have a good selection of clones from each of the 3 cultivars that we have ordered, as well as the two different rootstocks R110 and R99.  So the combinations of clones, slopes, rootstocks and cultivars are endless.  In fact so tricky is this that we ended up in the nice position of having maybe 10% more space that we need for what we have ordered.  We told Manie that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides, but he wouldn't listen.  He thinks he's done a great job by creating 10% more space out of thin air.

Now we can really play around with what we have got and get the most suitable sites for our chosen clones and cultivars.  We can also afford to leave a small space unplanted and order something really interesting for next year, such as a heat loving white variety to experiment with.  Maybe Marsanne, Viognier or Tempranello.

Anyway, with this unexpected bonus we thought we better call in Andrew to give us his verdict.  More on that in next month's installment when he reports back.

While all this was going on the drainage and the strip road to the top of the vineyard were under construction.  The de-silting of the dam was done and the poles were marching up the hill.

John was also out and about visiting a few really fabulous vineyards that had "made it" (probably centuries earlier).  He went with Manie to visit one spectacular place and they were lucky enough to meet the proprietor.  The main reason for the visit was to talk weather stations and taste good wine.  We want to install a weather station at Tulbagh Mountain, right in the middle of the vineyard and got some very encouraging advice.  The best way of predicting fungal infection is to monitor the microclimate in the vineyard and when the conditions are right for it take preventative action.  There is very little that an organic operation can do by way of killing it when it is rampant as fungicides are out, so prevention is the only way.  You must target your preventative action so as not to waste resources and so the weather station looks a good tool.  They are certainly using it in Robertson to great effect.  If we can build up a database if information on microclimate and vineyard behavior it will be  most beneficial in the future.

Ostriches of course may come in handy as part of the diversification policy in organic viticulture.  Maybe that is why there are so many in Robertson.  It is, as they say all a matter of balance and these guys certainly have that.

For more photos from the David Bailey of the wine world, click on...

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