Spring cleaning and extreme growing seasons

Life at the winery has been a bit quiet really. I’m still full of this hay fever, which makes life a little slow. It’s been very routine: paperwork; delivery of orders; spring clean in the winery. I’ve also been working with Arthur on his Agora vermouth, which we will hopefully bottle soon.

One great result is that we are visiting a new retailer in south Suffolk who viewed our Instagram postings and is interested in stocking some of our products. It’s a very small new deli, so they won’t be able to take much, but some of our best customers are the small ones. Other good news: Wild Goose Fine Foods in Ipswich is now open again, which is very good small deli.

At Burnt Foot Vineyard there’s no bud burst yet - last year, they popped out this week! So far there’s been no frost damage, mostly because they haven’t burst yet, like the south coast and large areas of France and Italy. One area we are investigating for next year in the vineyard is establishing cover crops within the rows of vines to help with the management and the micro diversity within the soil, with the aim of reducing chemical inputs. It also helps with the general habitat within the farm.

I just can’t believe the growing seasons we now have. It’s gone from totally saturated soils and high ground water last month when we were pruning to soil that was hard and cracking on Sunday – we’ve had less than 12% of our normal rain fall this month so far. I’ve never seen such extremes within short periods as this in all my fifty years working in agriculture.

The flowering cherries have come out over the weekend, which looked really nice yesterday in the sun. I noticed when driving out, so I stopped and took a quick photo.