48 Inches of Rain

The weather this year has been so strange.  It’s been wet, very wet and cool.  Usually we get 30 – 35 inches of rain annually.  Since October 1st, our weather stations are showing we’ve already received almost 49 inches.  Typically by now we would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 212 heat units or Growing Degree Days.  Even in our most recent cool year, 2010, we had 151 GDD.  This year we have 139.  So while bud break was about average, coming in mid-April, the shoot growth in the vineyard (or lack thereof) looks like it came in mid-May.  To add insult to injury, the wet weather has kept me from starting our Biodynamic sprays.  Usually, we like to make the first sprays, Cowhorn manure (BD 500) and Silica (BD 501) in early Spring.  No such luck this year.  It’s been just too wet.  So we’ve been keeping ourselves nervously entertained waiting for lambs to be born, also to no avail as yet.  So, please send us all your collective best wishes for warm sunny weather and the birth of some lambs.  More later…