Long Time, No C

Tempus fugit.  I began writing this post in 2013 thinking I'd get the old blog started up again since my last post in 2011.  Ain't good intentions wonderous?  I made another feeble attempt to blog in 2015 with the same vacuous result.  It's now a good way into 2017 and I'm trying again.

Many things have changed since I last put figurative pen to digital paper here.  My writing tool of choice for the moment is my trusty iPad with its touch screen, a vast improvement over the old, huge Microsoft PC that took forever to boot up and required a full time staff person to install security patches.  Added benefit: I can iPad anywhere I please.  My phone habits morphed from landline to flip phone to smart phone.  I can be in touch with the world instantly, constantly.  My personal experience suggests that's not necessarily a good thing, especially these days when the world is coming at you instantly, constantly, and most of that is unjuried drivel.  YMMV.

I retired from the library world to the vineyard in 2015.  What's that old saw-- my husband's got twice the wife and half the income?  That was a momentous change.  I no longer had to be at a specific place at a specific time doing a specific job anymore.  My days are almost completely ruled now by the vagaries of nature and the weather, and neither of those cares much about schedules.  My work is a good deal more solitary as well, just me and the vines, or mower, or bottles, or paperwork.  I do miss my library family, but I did develop a family of sorts made up of bluebirds, mockingbirds, cardinals, barn swallows, hawks, rabbits, coyotes, badgers, and other varmints du jour.  I experience gorgeous and unusual things here that no one sitting behind a desk ever will.

The other change that has sorta oozed into my life is the expected but unwelcome number of physical complaints that happen as a person advances in life experience.  The eyes aren't as good as they used to be, one knuckle forecasts rain, the back complains when it's worked too hard.  I still work hard, just not as hard and as long as I used to.  I still carry 40 pound cases of wine up 13 steps from the cellar to stock the tasting room, but my knees complain now.  There's a positive to this: I'm always thinking of ways to improve the workflow and reduce the effort involved.  I've actually implemented some of those ideas, but there's always more to be done.

Time for me to get going.  The grass has dried and mowing awaits.  It's that schedule thing.  I may be back here soon, or it may be another 6 years before I post again.  Who knows?

cg

Dude, where's my blog post?

Facebook informed me today that my Fermented Librarian blog posts will no longer be automatically imported to my Facebook notes. Sure, I can post a link to my blog on my FB wall, but having my blatherings automatically imported to FB was far easier and user friendly. Je ne comprends pas!

In honor of the fact that it's cool and very windy today, I'm (re)watching A Year in Provence on DVD (book by Peter Mayle). John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan star as the Mayles, retired from Brit employment and living an idyllic existence in a 200 year old farmhouse in the Provence region of France. Or so they thought. In the first episode, le Mistral, a frigid cold blast from Siberia, blows in and freezes the plumbing solid (plomberie de Parisienne-- this is an insult). I have learned a fair amount of French from watching over the years, but mostly I just really enjoy the culture whiplash. No, I have never tried the recipe for Fox casserole, nor am I ever likely to try it.

We named one of our wines after a recurring character-- Charlemagne, the noisy rooster. Back in our chicken days, we had one just like him. Except our Charlemagne went beyond just being noisy; he was older and had long spurs, and he started wearing out our hens, then moved on to attacking the farm cats. The day he attacked me was the day he was "invited" to Sunday dinner. He was dispatched with a .22 (we couldn't catch him), plucked, cleaned and frozen. Even so, Charlemagne had the final revenge. Greg accidentally used the rooster to make fried chicken for me one night. It looked and smelled wonderful, but old roosters are (quelle surprise) very, very tough and only suitable for long-simmered chicken and noodles. The meat would not separate from the bones at all! We ate the mashed potatoes and gravy and gave the chicken to the farm cats, who happily chewed on it for days.

Other things I've learned from A Year in Provence: how to hunt truffles with a pig; how to play petanque; how to avoid hail during grape harvest; and how to excuse missing a deadline by using "normalement": I expect to post a new blog post each week, normalement.  :)

Paved with good intentions

It's been almost a year to the day since my last post. My intention was to post more frequently about winery happenings, as there are many of them, but time has a habit of passing by while we're not paying attention, and so here it is one year later and I'm beginning again.

Probably the Thing of Greatest Import for the winery this year was our showing in the 2011 Indy International Wine Competition in August. We entered only one wine, our 2005 Norton. It is 100% Norton, from our own vineyard, and it slept in an American Oak barrel for 42 months prior to bottling in February 2011. We thought it was good, but it was nice to learn others thought so-- It garnered a Gold medal and Best of Class in the Norton category. We do have this wonderful wine for sale at Davenport Winery; sorry, no tastes or discounts on this one.

The 7th Annual Kaw Valley Farm Tour brought lots of new visitors to our winery for wagon rides through the vineyard, tours of the processing area and wine tasting. This year there were wine bus tours both days, and a chef from the Merc who prepared a wonderful warm roasted sweet potato/apple salad with maple syrup/balsamic vinaigrette, free samples for all! Farm Tour participants were able to choose from among 24 different farms this year, from the small boutique to the very large row crop operation. What a great opportunity!

Currently we're in between seasons. Harvest is over. This year's fermentations are almost done. We're mounding up dirt over the grafts on the vinifera vines to protect them from winter kill. Sometime in December, the pruning party will begin. Working the wine, bottling, and welcoming people to the tasting room goes on all year. Never a dull moment in the Davenport vineyard-- put on your hip waders and keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter or right here on FL.

...and now for something completely different!

Fermented Librarian was created to post comments about my experiences with 23 Things Kansas-- a statewide effort to introduce library types to new technology. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of new things, but it's time to repurpose FL to blog about something else near and dear to my heart: Davenport Vineyard and Winery, created, owned and operated since 1997 by me and my vintage spouse. I'll still use Twitter for quickie winery updates, and Facebook for similar and/or more lengthy comments, and FL will allow me to get wordier (is that even a word?).

So. Grape harvest (vendange if you're in France) finished up about 2 weeks ago. Time to sit back and relax, oui? Mais non! Take a breath, and begin again. Do a final mowing for the season. Hill up dirt around the trunks of the grafted French grape varieties so the winter won't kill them. Sharpen up pruning equipment and wait for the first hard freeze. When we're certain the vines are asleep for the winter, pruning begins and carries on through April/May. Cellar work is ongoing. Most fermentations are complete; the juvenile wines will be left to settle in stainless steel tanks. They'll be racked (pumped) off the lees (dead yeast) and transfered to other tanks, or to oak barrels if they are destined to become oak aged dry reds. The wines are worked year round, clarified and bottled as they reach their individual maturation points. Some of this is scientific and controlled, but a lot of it is up to Mother Nature. We try not to tick her off.

23 Things, Week 16 Wrap-Up (sniff)

...and 23 Things Kansas rides off into the sunset. Not hardly. I participated in the April 28 wrap up webinar and now am writing this last post to describe my experience. I've invested a lot of time and effort in this project, and it's been fun and intellectually profitable. I'll make a stab at 23 things I've learned (in no particular order): 1. Be patient when learning about new technology. 2. Be fearless when learning about new technology. 3. Be forgiving when learning about new technology. 4. Don't let your laptop battery run out of juice when you're almost finished with a project. 5. There are lots of colleagues who are willing to help. 6. Don't be afraid to ask for help. 7. I love Animoto. 8. I like Facebook a lot more than I thought I would. 8. Screencasting will be a great teaching tool for us. 9. IM can be useful, but I'm not quite ready to use it yet. 10. Twitter is great for quick and dirty marketing. 11. Sony digital cameras have proprietary video file formats (and re-read #4). 12. I already do a lot of computing in the clouds and it doesn't scare me. 13. I'm going to be spending a lot of time on Shelfari cataloging my personal wine library. 14. I can't keep up with my Google Reader RSS feeds. 15. I just love "attending" webinars. 16. It's not who you know, but how you contact them. 17. Bob Dylan is right (the times, they are a changin'). 18. Hang on tight. 19. A broken wiki can be fixed. 20. But a broken flash drive generally can't be. 21. We have started using Google docs at work for interdepartmental communication. 22. I'm sorry it's the end of 23 Things. 23. The 23 Things mentors were AWESOME! Thanks, guys.

23 Things, Week 15

I have a small amount of experience using wikis. My department uses a PBWorks wiki to document departmental procedures and record useful links to work related sources, but it's absolutely bare bones. For the first part of this assignment, I ventured into Wikipedia, created an account, and edited the Eudora, Kansas page by adding a link to the Eudora Public Library under the "External Links" section. I chose Wikipedia because the 23 Things blurb said you didn't need an account to edit pages, but I was not able to add that link until I had created one.

I just completed part two by creating and linking my page on the 23 Things Kansas wiki. I also took a few moments to read other participants' pages to see what others had enjoyed most about 23 Things. What a fun bunch of folks we are!

23 Things, Week 14

Coming down the home stretch. Shelfari is my choice for sharing my bibliophile self. It seemed really easy to use, plays well with Blogger, and with Amazon's backing, will have tons of cover art to pretty up my shelf. I've found a glitch or two that I need to solve-- "From Vines to Wines" actually shows that I have 2 editions. I only have one, but wanted to use the cover art from another ed. and now Shelfari thinks I have 2. For my copy of "The Grape in Kansas" (1901), I made my own record for it because I couldn't find that edition on Shelfari. I hope to go back and fill in a little more information about it later on and add scanned cover art, but it's fine for now. I have TONS more books to add and am looking forward to doing so. I've added a Shelfari profile photo and put a widget on my blog. Here's my official Shelfari page: http://www.shelfari.com/charleeg