2011 March » Welcome to the VineyardWife

I finally set aside a bit of time to get my business cards done. Since so much of what I do is online, I’m always surprised when I meet someone in person and they ask for my card—doh! It needed to get done and it finally did!

I wanted to make sure my philosophy of wine = community stood out—so that everyone got my purpose right off the bat. After staring at filled wine glasses for quite a while, I thought nothing said sharing like the suggestion of a wine glass tipping towards you, so I worked on the design/illustration a bit and thought the suggestion worked well and the rim was a nice dividing line (I especially like the highlight over Vin in VineyardWife!).

I decided to create an illustrated leaf for the other side of the card and modified my philosophy: vine = community. Maybe its because of Rootstock11 coming up…but really, you can’t have the wine without the vine, so viola! A double-sided business card.

Thanks for sharing the vine2wine lifestyle with me!

Here is my vineman, fixing the field marker experiment before they set out to mark the vineyard field. He’s working on the front boom, which was to act as a method for the tractor driver to keep the course straight as he drove across the field. In the back of the tractor, the boys had rigged a marking boom made of rebar. The thought was the rebar would drag the ground and mark lines in the soil, which would be used as guides to plant the vines in straight rows.

They were able to mark the entire field and called it a successful Saturday.

This line is the center line of the field and their guide from which they carefully marked the field, both horizontally and vertically. Ultimately, the vines will be planted 5′ apart with 8′ rows by a planter. The last Rootstock was done by auger and hand planting, so we are pretty excited to have the opportunity to work with a mechanized planter.

There is also 600 or so vines in lot 12 that will need to be replanted this year, as well. The heavy snows did some of the poor vines in, snapping them at the graft.

Rootstock 11 is on its way! Special shout out to Kathleen, who was been planning this event for us, allowing us to work on the winery’s marketing needs! Thanks, Kathleen!

This creature feature is a log from a downed tree at the top of lot 11&12′s hill, where the tall trees groan and argue amongst themselves as the wind whips over the hill and sets them afrenzy.

Can you make out the Calvin face from Calvin and Hobbes?

Winedustry.com’s Brad Johnson works tirelessly to promote local wine—especially Midwestern wine and specifically Iowa wine—where he is located. I met Brad on Twitter and was happy to meet his brother, Terry, who is based geographically a bit closer to Southern Maryland. Matter of fact, you can read Terry’s review of Port of Leonardtown Winery visits at their blog: Two Wine Brothers. You can read Terry’s review of the winery’s Vidal and Captain’s Table.

Recently, Brad was admiring the “Ask for Maryland Wine” logo, which Kevin Atticks created for the Maryland Wineries Association. We agreed it would be cool if there was a local wine badge that anyone could download and post on their website and other social media outlets. Brad gave me a square shape to work with and away I went. I set to working on several different types of styles—using different phrases:

Choose Local Wine
I Ask for Local Wine
I Drink Local Wine

I ran through several options but kept coming back to the notion that its all about what’s in the glass—and realized that the shape of wine in a glass is much like a shield-shape. Perfect for a pride badge! I tried several shapes of red wine glasses, but found this shape to fit best in a square field.

I love, love typography and I wanted the type to be very clean and minimal so that the badge could be enlarged or reduced small and still be legible. I was also looking towards a type arrangement that could be adjustable, so that instead of stacked lines of words, the letters could be arranged in a single line and still preserve the look and feel of the original design. I tried many, many fonts but kept coming back to Futura, as I think that perfectly round “O” letterform is evocative of a wineglass mouth, a wine swirl or a wine stem base. I made the “O” in “LOCAL” a gestural swirl to add interest and emphasize the word local, but kept the swirl design & weight clean to match the Futura lines and weight.

Once I had the wine shape and the typography together, I realized it didn’t quite look like a badge or button -like enough. The design needed a square around it to give a sense of completeness, so I set the design within a rounded edge square. I recently read an interesting article about color preferences, and in thinking blue-greys suggest glass well, I decided to suggest a wine glass shape without distinctly drawing a glass shape. Since the wine glass shape seemed to float a little in the box, I added a transparent shadow at the bottom of the square. Now I had a clean design that works like on dark and light backgrounds. The blues, reds and plums would def appeal to both men and women. The logo badge was ready to go and I sent the design to Brad.

We’re pretty excited about the initial response to Brad’s Facebook post. I’ve added the badge to the VineyardWife’s Almanac homepage, complete with code so that if you would like to post the badge, just copy the code and paste into your own html box. I would love to see the badge show up everywhere—just like the Handmade Pledge badge. We also had a winery request swag to sell in their tasting room, so we are looking to expand into physical products. More to come, so stay tuned.

Let me know what you think about the logo and post your url in the comment so that others can see!

Above is the field where we will hold Rootstock11. On April 9th, we’ll gather with friends and family to plant two acres, one of Albarino and the other, Merlot. This particular acre holds great sentimental interest to me. The field was rented to the Raleys for rotational grain crop planting: corn (read my reflection on the plant, here), wheat, and barley. My favorite memory is the tender moment when my vineman and I stumbled across the fresh harvested barley field and it inspired my husband to sing “Among the Fields of Gold” —and we stopped a moment and captured a picture of how happy we were. This is the field my kids sledded down in winter and that I scolded them from running through once the field was sown. Then after the field was harvested, I can’t tell you how many times I carried boy2 up that hill—either on my shoulders or in my arms, because the poor little guy legs were just too worn. For these and many other reasons, planting these acres represents a major milestone. Our little Proof of Concept experiment is really gaining legs and traction. Every year, its another push of the flywheel towards our hedgehog concept of bringing you the perfect wine grape in a wine that keeps calling you back to the glass.

The reason why I believe Wine = Community is based upon times like these. I love the Rootstock planting event—there is nothing like seeing family and friends working together, laughing and talking and sharing the day. Rootstock09 had wonderful weather and was a glorious day—here is hoping that no matter rain or shine, we’ll have another event that people will feel happy they spent their day sharing in our adventure.

This weekend, while the Vineman & crew worked on various vineyard projects, I went through Lot 12 and tied red markers for each vine that needed to be replaced. This photo is from the Viognier—which there were not many Viognier needing to be replaced. Neither were there many Barbera needing to be replaced, either. Sadly, that’s not the case for our Petit Verdot. About 25% of the Petit Verdot vines did not make it through the heavy winter snow. We think that may be the culprit, but there were other variables that could have been in play as well.

As I checked to make sure the vines were sure to be dead, I thought I could tell the difference between alive vines and dead ones. It seemed to me that the ones that were alive felt cooler to the touch than the outside air—and that the dead ones felt the same temperature as the outside air. A quick snip with the pruning shears to the tips of the vines let me know if I was right. Most often I guessed correctly—then Ger reminded me I had a 50% chance of being right. So much for theories!

It was great finally getting out into the field—especially with the long absence due to illness and frequent travels. Although the day was rather grey, Spring is def in the air. The birds were singing in the Tall Trees, all sorts of weed sprigs were sprouting and fat Robins were chasing worms and grubs in the open fields.

I can’t wait for Rootstock11!

One of the best things about a husband’s family farm and vineyard are the little things that you just might pass by—if you aren’t looking. That’s why I prefer to tromp over the acres as much as possible—there are so many beautiful tiny things just waiting to be discovered! Today’s creature feature is a wee home (or maybe a restaurant—look at all those acorns!) someone is using at the base of a tree. This particular tree sits by the farm road as the road curves from the tool shed and the proofing acre towards the little farmhaus. As you can see, the tree sits right in front of one of our last Christmas Tree lots. Its a perfect spot for a little critter to relax and enjoy a bite or two as Spring rains fall.

After trying a few edge lace patterns tonight, I decided I disliked the frilly, wavy messes I was making. Was it possible to crochet an edging that would lay flat? I decided to make my own pattern and find out and above is the result.

What if I just started my lace curtains in the same fashion? Just start and see what happens?

Today’s 365 Crochet is a little sun, courtesy of Deb’s Crochet blog. The pattern is easy to follow and is just all around fun. I think I will def add this to my list of repeatable motifs.

Thank-you, Deb, for your generosity in sharing your motif!

I’ve faithfully kept up with 365 Crochet, although I had limited access to the internet and no ability to update my progress daily. I’ll catch up with days 8-12 in tomorrow’s post, but today’s post is all about discovering a cache of crochet doilies and pillowcases from my grandmother at my mom and dad’s house. I remember seeing these gems growing up and several of them sat under my nightstand lamp in my childhood bedroom. Today, I studied the quality of my grandmother’s workmanship and craft, reveling in the pleasure of seeing these treasures again. I love experimenting with my lace motifs, but I’m starting to wish for progress so that I could start planning a complete project!

I think what I admire most was my grandmother’s ability to read the directions and complete these works. I find following the pattern instructions the most difficult part. As a child, I could rely on my grandmother or Aunt Milly to help correct my learning mistakes. Now, I rely on youtube and helpful photos that are sometimes included to illustrate what the directions mean.

Here are a few more of today’s discovery: