Unbelievably, we can thank the birds for eating all the grapes in our "red block" for the strange opportunity it has pushed us into.
When we first walked through the vines mid-summer and we saw all the grapes being eaten, there was a sinking feeling in our stomachs. We did all that we could without spending a fortune. We added the ribbons, the bird calls and kept our eyes open, but the netting we needed was way out of our reach, at least for this year, and so we just had to watch and pray as day after the day the birds swooped in, eating almost every single last grape.
I watched to see my husband's reaction. I was quite happy to see him just say, "It's ok. There's nothing we can do." I was kind of glad he didn't freak out. I was glad he didn't say, "We're sunk" or fall into some kind of grape depression. It was more of a "we'll figure this out and learn for next year" kind of reaction. I think this helped me to stay calm, too.
The problem was we had planned to sell both the reds and whites for profit, obviously. We had sunk a lot of money and labour into the grapes over the years including 3 years of spraying, 3 years of hoeing, 3 years of pruning, weeding, etc.....it did hurt a little to see it all go to waste.
Knowing there was only going to be a super small crop of reds, if any, and maybe not so great a crop of whites (disease had hit them, too, despite all the spraying and care), we looked at how much we were going to make and it was pretty dismal. This is where we can thank the birds. It really forced us to see what we could do better in order to make it more worthwhile.
We looked at the income from the sale of grapes. It was ok - IF you had a full crop. We looked at the income from the sale of juice from having the grapes crushed. Better? We looked at the income from the sale of fermented juice, i.e., wine - much better. It was a no-brainer for my husband. Just like that, he started the research for what he needed to do in order to become a winery or at least a winemaker/seller. In a matter of days and weeks, he had applied for all the licenses required to process, crush, ferment grapes (who knew there were so many licenses required?). \\
The next step was to find equipment - oh, that costs thousands of dollars. Problem. We didn't want to go into debt one bit and we wanted to do this entire venture with cash. I know! Buy old, broken equipment! Perfect! Ugh. But that's what we're good at. We make our money by using, and somehow making work, all the old stuff. So he found some HUGE grape presses and made a ridiculously low offer, because they were old and broken, and they accepted it. They should be arriving any day. They are very big and very heavy so that is a process in and of itself, getting them here. They'll sit in our shop where I'm sure my husband is going to have lots of fun fixing them over the winter.
Next, being a professor at the college, he had access to all the winemaking courses for free. Scrap that. No time to take the course. Instead, he bought all the books, read them all summer, self-educated himself and is now entering into the world of wine-making. He's made wine before, but not on this level. Next thing I know, he's bought every single type of yeast you can imagine and over the fall/winter will be experimenting with different kinds of fermentation. But this isn't the funniest part....
Back to the grapes....we listed our lame grapes for sale on the grape growers website. We got a call from Quebec and we were happy to hear they wanted what we were selling. We told them our crop was small and they seemed ok with that, but casually asked if we could find them some more grapes to make up for the small amount we had. This got my husband thinking....look for grapes and sell them for a profit? Sure! Next thing you know he's buying and selling grapes for this winery in Quebec. And, on top of all that, due to the low volume of reds, we decided to keep all of those for ourselves and once we found more grapes from a different vineyard, we decided to also keep our whites to practice the winemaking! And, it turns out he ended up shipping tons of grapes to Quebec, all from different vineyards that he sourced out. The crazier thing was he also sourced out all the bins required to hold all the grapes. I don't know how many trips he made out to Toronto to buy these bins. Each time he came back with more bins I thought my husband was losing his mind. I had no idea what he was up to. Half the time this summer he'd get up and say, "Gotta go...I'll be back in a few hours...." I would barely get two words out and then he'd be gone. Our property was covered in these gigantic white bins that could hold a half a ton of grapes in each one. But as of today, they are all gone....he bought, somewhat miraculously, just enough for all the grape buying and selling he did...and he made a profit on those bins, too, as he got them at such a low price. Crazy, how did he even know to do that?!
So, in a matter of weeks, if not days, our WHOLE LIFE has changed. We are on a completely different trajectory. I have to say, it has been a very wild ride, super fast, super hilarious and quite fun if not funny. My kids can't even keep track of it all. I can't even keep track of it all. My husband is who-knows-where half the time wheeling and dealing, the whole time somehow managing a full-time job and part-time teaching, too. But, he LOVES this. This is what he's created for. It's the entrepreneurial spirit coming out of him in full-force. We prayed and prayed over the whole corona lockdown for a way to bring him home. This could be it.
But before I get ahead of myself too much....we now have an interesting week ahead....we hand-picked the reds last weekend, it only took a few hours because there were none left. The wine-making has already started there. The whites we did this weekend. There were over two tons. That was a great crop for our first year. We brought in friends and family and had such a great turnout. It was so amazing. Felt like a barn-raising event. Those grapes have already been delivered to a local winery to press and crush for us as our presses aren't ready yet. We'll get the juice today and then....more wine-making. THEN, because we had such a lousy red crop, we ordered grapes (crushed and pressed) from that other winery. That juice also arrives this week, so we'll have two tons of that juice arriving...that's a LOT OF JUICE. Then, my husband, the new winemaker, will start his crazy new project. I don't know how he keeps all these balls up in the air, but in a way, I think it keeps him alive and full of excitement. And, like I said, it's funny to hear the kids, "What is Dad doing!?" "Where is Dad?" "What are we doing with all these grapes? He's something else.....
We've been reading in Genesis and yesterday's verse was, "Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard." That's it - my husband hasn't always been "a man of the soil" nor a vineyard planter, but he is now. Four years ago, when he sat me down and said "This is what I want to do", if I had said, "NO", we wouldn't be doing what we're doing now. It took 4 years from that first visioning lunch we had to today. Those four years would have passed either way. I'm glad we didn't listen to the voice in our head that said, "It'll take too long" "It's too much work" "You have no idea what you're doing". Noah must have known it would take time which is why it was one of the first things he did getting off the ark.
Now there's lots to do. We won't be bored this Fall or Winter.
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