Vinyard
In 2024 we moved from the Minneapolis suburbs to a 10-acre farm-ish property in North Dakota. And I decided to become a "gentleman vintner" by raising my own grapes, fermenting my own wine and eventually distilling my own brandy. No, I had never done any of this before. Yes, North Dakota is a tough environment for growing grapes (but some still do it). I thought that learning a bunch of new things would be good for me. This is a pictorial record of that journey.
Spring of 2024. Often in North Dakota there is still snow on the ground in April, so any type of planting occurs in May at the earliest. Initially I planned for 20 vines in 2 rows, but then decided I was thinking too small for this big open space. So I tilled the soil for 42 vines in rows. The young starter vines were protected in blue grow tubes. Growth was slow at the start but eventually I began to see small green vines and leaves.
Summer of 2024 was a good first growth season. By the end of summer I had 42 vines flourishing. The blue grow tubes were removed in the fall to give the vines time to acclimate to the coming cold weather. Winter in North Dakota can be brutal on young grapevines.
The 24/25 Winter was in fact pretty hard, but most of the vines survived, but I did have to plant 6 new ones. In fact by May 2025 there were fresh buds blooming on every vine. We have a fair number of deer in our area but I had been keeping them at bay with motion-detector lights and sonic alarms. We also have coyotes and I was hoping they would also act as a deterrent. Unfortunately I was wrong. I came out one morning to find that deer had eaten all of the buds from at least a half of the vines, killing about a third of them completely. I called it "Deer-Mageddon."
I have very few photos from the rest of that year because it was just too frustrating. But I did eventually install a 10-foot deer fence to protect the vines I had left.
Spring and Summer of 2026. I planted 17 new vines to replaces those killed off by the "Deer-Megaddon" and the harsh winter. So again this year I have a fair number of first-year vines (in the blue grow tubes), plus some second-year vines that were panted last year. The vines that have survived these past two years are doing GREAT. Year 4 is when the actual harvesting of grapes can happen. They say until then one should prune off any little grape bundles so that all of the growth energy can go into the leaves and roots. I've pruned all but one little grape bundle, just because I want to see to grow into a full bunch of grapes by this fall.
