Category Archives: Farm

Requiescat in pace Missy.

Posted on by

Missy

Visitors to our tasting room always took delight in taking photographs of our two dogs, Missy and Cooper, taking over the sofa opposite the bar.  Missy would usually be on the right, Cooper on the left, more often than not both contentedly snoozing.  Their photos grace many a Facebook page.  We’re very sad to report that our dog Missy died early last Sunday morning.

Cooper got most of the attention, but Missy was the quiet ruler of the household.  She always got her way.  If a human were sitting where she wanted to be, after a little protest (kind of a warning), she’d whack you with her paw since you didn’t get the message.  Sometimes if Cooper were sitting where she wanted to be, she would pick up a toy, toss it in the air as if she were ready to play; when Cooper got off the couch to join in, she would immediately take the spot she wanted and look away, ignoring him.  She was clever and stubborn, and always gentle.

She loved car rides, and always knew when it was time to head to the farm.  Often she would climb in the front seat with you and sit in the passenger seat with you.  On stops for gas, she would climb into the driver’s seat, as if she wanted a turn a driving.  She was 12 years old, which is a long life for a big dog.   It’s a cruel cold comfort that she died at home, rather than under a needle at the veterinarian, and having to cope with the guilt that accompanies that dreadful decision.  We’re grateful she was with us for so long.  Goodbye girl — we love you.

Twilight

Pruning.

Posted on by

Winter Work.

Ah, pruning!  After the restorative rest of winter, its time to get to work.  You would think pruning a grapevine is a simple thing, but like everything else in this business, nothing is ever easy or quick.  It takes a while to get the hang of it, but even when you think you’re doing great, along comes something to burst your bubble.

That something is our vineyard consultant, Paul Mierzejewski.  Paul has been with us since before we acquired the property.  In fact, he came to walk the land the day we did the structural inspection on the shell of a house we’ve restored.  He picked the first vineyard sites and gave his blessing, and the inspector pronounced the building sound, so here we are, seven years later.

We don’t like to begin until after the winter solstice, and better to do it as close to bud break as possible.  With an eye on the natural cycles so important to biodynamic agriculture, François Bouchet, writing in L’Agriculture Bio-Dynamique (1978), explained the timing and importance of pruning this way:

Following the Twelfth Night Feast, traditionally set on January 6th or twelve days after Christmas, softly comes the period of breathing which separates the centripetal phase of autumn and the centrifugal phase of spring.  The days already start to lengthen, while the inversion of the sap flow, or, according to our physiological model, the apnea phase, is also beginning.  It is possible to begin pruning, since risks of eutypoise contamination are on the decrease from now on.  The vine is ready to weep at the slightest warming brought about by a sunny day, thus preventing spores from being moved toward the inside…. From this point forth, we need to start thinking about the harvest.  Sometimes we don’t realize the important role that good quality of pruning plays in a successful crop.  When teams that lack training take up pruning, I start worrying for their harvest.  It’s always the dark spot in large vineyards.

The first few years we took his benevolent counsel and did the best we could.  Then Paul would arrive, not too pleased with what we had done — some canes too short, others too long.  Too many buds here, not enough there. Not tied down right — what were you thinking?  There was no pleasing him, so since then we bring in a crew of professionals and peace is restored in the kingdom once more.

IMG_1835 IMG_1836 Cabernet Franc Cordon.

Smokin’: Our Smokehouse is Finally Done.

Posted on by

SmokehouseA couple of weeks ago our builder finally finished restoring our smokehouse.  We’re delighted, because admittedly its been a bit of an eyesore.  It’s the first building you see as you make your way up the drive from Sunny Side Road, and for many months the south side was half-clad in weatherboards while the other half was covered in DuPont Tyvek — not very pretty.  But now its done (apart from painting the cornice, since it’s too cold for painting at the moment), and we’re thrilled.

This building has a strangely iconic, abstract quality, being just a cube 14 feet square with a single door on the east side.  We have a special regard for it because a painting of it by our friend Bernard Dellario graced our very first red wine, our 2008 Annefield Red.

Smokehouse c. 2007.

Smokehouse c. 2007.

When Bernie created that painting, the building was in a pretty sad state.  Saner folks would probably have bulldozed it, but we were determined to save it.  We saw it as essential for defining the space behind the house, since with the kitchen house it forms a well-defined courtyard that most likely in times past was a workspace, but we’ve made it an ornamental garden.  The owners of a Jacob W. Holt-designed farm called Eureka  in neighboring Mecklenburg County possess a drawing by Holt showing  the plans for the plantation complex, with placement of the outbuildings shown with lines radiating from the rear door to illustrate the relationship of the buildings’ function in their support of the main house.  This drawing can bee seen in Catherine W. Bishir’s seminal article on his work, Jacob W. Holt, An American Builder (published in Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 16, No. 1 (Spring, 1981) (reprinted in Southern Built: American Architecture, Regional Practice (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006).  Eureka is arguably Holt’s most exuberant Italianate design, and has many similarities to Annefield.Red 2008

This structure was built contemporaneously with the main house and the kitchen house, around 1858.  To learn more about the history of house and its architectural significance, have a look at this entry in Wikipedia for the short version, and our National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the long version.  Of course, all this (and more) appears on our website.

Smokehouses have a long history, used primarily for the preservation of pork.  The first mention of them in Virginia dates from 1716.  Michael Olmert, a professor at the University of Maryland and writing for Colonial Williamsburg had this to say:

Summertime, in the eighteenth century, was no time for eating fresh pork. The oppressive heat that made quick work of humans in the Middle Atlantic colonies also turned the choicest cuts of meat into Petrie dishes of corruption. The day a pig was slaughtered, it was cooked and eaten, often as part of a family celebration or for the arrival of important visitors. Leftover meat was quickly shared with neighbors or slaves.

A frosty month, especially December, was the proper time for pig butchering, salting, and smoking. It’s a tradition documented to medieval times. The illuminated manuscripts known as books of hours, prestige prayer books, often depict pig slaughtering on their calendar page for December, in the same way that they show planting in March and harvesting in August. Killing the winter pigs was just another part of the annual agricultural round.

If you expected to have pork all year long, you needed a smokehouse. From earliest times, a smokehouse was a small enclosed shelter, a place in which a fire could be kept smoldering for a few weeks, which would only slowly release its smoke, and in which the smoked meat could hang safe from vermin and thieves.

While we preserved the fire pit, we aren’t planning to butcher and smoke pigs anytime soon.  Ours will be used to store our grape harvest equipment which for the last year two years has littered the grounds behind it.

Smokehouse and Kitchen House.

Smokehouse Door.

Buy Local Produce: Reese’s Fine Foods

Posted on by

Don’t forget our Inaugural Harvest Party, Saturday, October 20, 2012, 1 pm to 7 pm. Join any of our Wine Clubs and receive complementary admission for two to four people, depending on the club selected.

Buy local! Eat and drink local?  Local food, that is (and wine, of course).  Why is local food superior to what you find in the supermarket? What’s the difference? Wouldn’t you prefer to have something grown in your own backyard or down the road rather than something that has been trucked countless miles? Don’t you wonder in the off-season where that tomato or asparagus came from?  According to organic farmer Brenton Johnson, owner of Johnson’s Backyard Garden, these are the benefits:

1. Locally grown food tastes better. Food grown in your own community is usually picked within the past day or two. It’s crisp, sweet, and loaded with flavor. Produce flown or trucked in is much older. Several studies have shown that the average distance food travels from farm to plate is 1,500 miles.

2. Local produce is better for you. Fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. Locally grown food, purchased soon after harvest, retains its nutrients.

3. Local food preserves genetic diversity. In the modern industrial agricultural system, varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen simultaneously and withstand harvesting equipment. Only a handful of varieties of fruits and vegetables meet those rigorous demands, so there is little genetic diversity in the plants grown. Local farms, in contrast, grow a huge number of varieties to provide a long season of harvest, an array of eye-catching colors, and the best flavors.

4. Local food is GMO-free. Although biotechnology companies have been trying to commercialize genetically modified fruits and vegetables, they are currently licensing them only to large factory-style farms. Local farmers don’t have access to genetically modified seed, and most of them wouldn’t use it even if they could.

5. Local food supports local farm families. With fewer than 1 million Americans now listing farming as their primary occupation, farmers are a vanishing breed. Local farmers who sell direct to consumers cut out the middle man and get full retail price for their crops.

6. Local food builds a stronger community. When you buy direct from the farmer, you are re-establishing a time-honored connection between the eater and the grower.

7. Local food preserves open space. As the value of direct-marketed fruits and vegetables increases, selling farmland for development becomes less likely. The rural landscape will survive only as long as farms are financially viable.

8. Local food helps to keep your taxes in check. Farms contribute more in taxes than they require in services, whereas suburban development costs more than it generates in taxes.

9. Local food supports a clean environment and benefits wildlife. A well-managed family farm is a place where the resources of fertile soil and clean water are valued. Good stewards of the land grow cover crops to prevent erosion and replace nutrients used by their crops. Cover crops also capture carbon emissions and help combat global warming.

10. Local food is about the future. By supporting local farmers today, you can help ensure that there will be farms in your community tomorrow, so that future generations will have access to nourishing, flavorful, and abundant food.

On your next visit to Annefield, we recommend a stop at Reese Farms near Scottsburg, Virginia, just 18 miles away, down Route 360 on the way to South Boston.  There you’ll find a fantastic assortment of produce grown by the Reese family, along with preserves, honey and these amazing giant brown double-yolk eggs. We’ve been meaning to ask what sort of chicken produced them, but we fear the answer.

Reese Farms, 8125 James D. Hagood Highway, Scottsburg, Virginia 24589