I've had enough keeping me up at night as it is--house plans and deciding on all finishes, finishing up various winery related forms, going over my to-do list for the next day, the winery building, baby names, loud storms, a wakeful toddler, an active baby in my belly, frequent bathroom trips. It's amazing I get any sleep. I don't need to bore you with the details on what exactly the last few weeks have been like, but I can summarize by saying they've been hectic, stressful, outrageously comical, exciting, and frustrating. We've been dealing with government agencies, contractors and insurance. I am by no means trying to complain. Exciting and good stuff is happening...it's just happening all at once! Now that we got our winery approval, we have been trying to tie everything up before harvest...which now begins THIS WEEKEND! Nothing has been easy. Absolutely nothing. But we are learning a lot along the way. The winery interior renovations should be complete in the next few weeks!
Can you believe it? Our Brianna variety will be ready for picking this weekend! We originally thought we'd be picking grapes into mid-September, but it is looking more and more like we will be finishing up with picking shortly after Labor Day.
If you are interested in picking grapes, we'll start this weekend and probably go for at least 4 weekends. Bring the kids, make a fun farm day of it! We'll do wine tastings for adults, and fresh squeezed grape juice for the kids! Can you beat that? Let us know what weekend you are interested in coming and we'll forward you details.
As if we didn't have enough to do this past weekend already, we woke up to this scene on Saturday morning.
Adirondack chairs flipped upside down. We found a few pieces of plastic lawn furniture on the property next door and a branch off our Chitalpa tree..
A tree down. Incidentally, one that holds up one end of our hammock.
Remember that building Aaron put up less than two months ago to store some equipment while the other building undergoes renovations? It almost looks comical. Fortunately, with the help of some neighbors, Aaron was able to get it back into a somewhat recognizable shape.
My row of sunflowers had just about reached 10 ft. and were just blooming when several toppled over in the storm. Bummer.
At least Mother Nature was considerate enough to do this on a Friday night so we had the weekend to clean up and she did it before grape picking started. And damage to the grapes was minimal. There's always a bright side, right?
And before we could even begin work on clean-up, someone...
ahem...
had to have a bath before 8am!
That's what we get for letting him wander around in his Pj's the morning after a big storm while we surveyed the damage.
So, a weekend full of repairing an uprooted tent building, chopping up wood from the downed trees and branches, cleaning up debris all over the yard and various other storm damage repairs, and we still had to get some equipment ready for grape picking this coming weekend.
All the grape lugs are power washed and have grapes calling their name!
Even Tux and Belle are excited! Can't you just see it on their faces?
Even the apple trees have apples ready for picking!
