A fantastic 2012 and looking forward to Spring 2013
2012 was an exciting and challenging year for us, and we’re looking forward to a Winter of rest from our many vineyard tasks. The vineyard basically “rests” now, as the vine trunks harden for cold tolerance, concentrating solutes, thus lowering each living cell’s freezing point to -35F, in order to survive our Midwest winter. We [...]
The fall 2012 harvest was a success!
With the help of 28 volunteers and Board Members, we harvested 4,177 pounds of beautiful and delicious Marquette (even after what we all ate!) last Saturday, September 8. The weather was outstanding. We started pulling netting off at 9am, and picking by noon. We finished at 3:45, had a group picture (everybody had to endure [...]
Picking grapes on September 8th!
Our grapes are doing fantastically, and rapidly approaching full ripening. Our sugar content on Aug 17 was 19%, and we anticipate a harvest date of Saturday, September 8 ! We will plan to start at noon, rain or shine, and be done by 4pm. We will then all get together for a dinner and various [...]
Lost Creek Hippies Vineyard 8/18/12
Netting the vines this past weekend!
An Update From The Vineyard
We have had one exciting Spring and Summer! After a very warm Spring, with early budding followed by the April freeze and loss of many of our plants and vines, we have good news: Almost all of our 750 2007 – 2009 vines survived, and our crop is outstanding. Our clusters are ripening early, have [...]
Habitat Minnesota Homeowner Impact Pilot Study
At our planting on 6/2/2012, I had passed out a 1 page summary of the Homeowner Impact Pilot Study, since I found it so impressive, showing that stablization of peoples’ environments have dramatic benefits to their lives and indeed to their larger communities… this video, however, makes it so much more obvious: it is really [...]
June 2012 Update
Lots of news… First of all, we did suffer a tremendous amount of Spring frost damage, due to a too warm Feb and March, followed by 3 mornings of 22F in mid April. We lost: 4% of the 2007 planting, 20% of the 2008 planting, 40 % of the 2009 planting, and 98% of our [...]
Update and Planting June 2nd 2012
This has been a very interesting and challenging Spring for us. Due to unusual warmth in Feb and March, the vines “woke up” way too soon, followed by 3 nights of 22-25 degrees F in late April. This was not good, as we may have lost all of our 450 of our 2011 plantings, and [...]
Our first harvest was a success!
Our first harvest was a great success, thanks to all 46 of us! We removed bird netting from 750 vines, then picked a total of 2,296 pounds of Marquette grapes. We started about 10:00 am, stopped for a snack and coffee at 12:30 and completed work by 1:30. We had a delicious lunch of chile, [...]
Harvest October 1st!
Updated on October 4, 2011 Our First Harvest was a great success, thanks to 46 of us! We removed bird netting from 750 vines, then picked a total of 2,296 pounds of Marquette grapes. We started about 10:00 am, stopped for a snack and coffee at 12:30, and completed by 1:30. We had a delicious [...]