The tragedy of the vines

It all started at a wine evening at Grootbos in 2007.  After far too many glasses of excellent Hermanus Pietersfontein wine, we together with our neighbors, the Burgers, decided that this wine making thing could not be too difficult.  So the next morning, Eddy sent his digger loader to prepare the ground and we ordered the vines after consultation with our friendly successful viticulturalist from Lomond.

clearing a disturbed area for the planting of the vines

We spent the next three years, carefully caring for our beloved vineyard.  What we realised during this time is that small scale vineyards surrounded by bountiful fynbos is not a good formula.  By the time we were getting ready for our first harvest in 2010, there had been a massive veld fire which had burnt from Pearly Beach to Cape Agulhas.  We are convinced that every single displaced fruit eating bird descended on our vines.   This together with regular raids by the local rogue baboon, Dirty Dave, interspersed by regular sorties from our neighbors peacocks resulted in a barren harvest – not a single grape could be found on the vines.

So in 2010, we carefully planned our defenses.  This included an electric fence around the vineyard to deter Dave and his friends, as well as the peacocks and CD’s, a scarecrow and special bird netting to keep hungry birds at bay.  Unfortunately one of Dave’s mates, a young male baboon whom we nicknamed Smiley took out about a third of our crop.  He worked out a highly effective technique of leopard crawling under the lowest electrical wire and using his thick fur as insulation.  His regular raids drove us to a point where Sean spent a rainy night camping in the vineyard.

The kids saw this on the road and they thought it would be a good deterrent for the baboons

After this, he decided to focus his raids on the vineyard at our neighboring, Bodhi Khaya.  As harvest date approached in March we excitedly watched our remaining grapes ripening, only to be hugely disappointed when they shrivelled up into raisins in the last two weeks.  Because of very windy conditions in December we had missed a few consecutive spraying sessions and as a result had been severely hit by downy mildew.  Once again, not a grape was left for harvesting 😦

Fortunately, Sean had been doing some work at Wildekrans Wine Estate near Botriver, where the friendly viticulturalist, Braam, took pity on us and supplied us a ton of top quality Merlot.

Update to follow on the wine making……..

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The Vegetable Garden

harvest time

Vegetable gardening has been rather challenging on Witkrans thanks to a rather large troop of baboons that are in our area. Thankfully they are not like the Cape Town or Hermanus kind that go in the houses. This troop is still very wild and very scared of humans and will never enter our house. However towards November/December they love to sneak up to our fig tree early in the morning to steal the figs. We have somehow in 3 years never managed to get there first. All my previous attempts at vegetable gardens have failed thanks to the baboons.

This year we have put shade netting around a sizeable area and run an electric fence at the top. So far so good, but I’m sure they will manage to still find a way in. Our neighbors, Flower Valley and Bodhi Khaya have resorted to making enclosed cage type areas with wire fencing all around as well as over the top. This has proven very succesful for them.

Vineyards with butternuts/marrow/cucumber/watermelons planted underneat

We have been enjoying fresh greens everyday for the last few weeks and even had some spare to share with some friends and family and of course with the guest staying in our cottage.  We have enjoyed strawberries, beans, herbs, broccoli, spinach and cauliflower. 

Problems include cutworms which I got up a few times at 5am to catch them in the ‘act’ and terminate them.  I had a major outbreak of caterpillars on my broccoli plants which the kids had great fun in picking off the plants and filling and whole ice-cream tub – we relocated them far away.  I have also had some problem with my beans – normally the easiest plant to grow and needs little attention, but 4 out of 5 have died and the one left is really struggling – not quite sure of the cause.

We looking forward to harvesting tomotoes soon (there are masses of plants popping up from the vermicompost) – I have chosen to leave them intergrowing with the other plants.

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