"…you're not old enough to be totally irrelevant but old enough that I can disclaim what you say based on the fact that you're too old to know much at all." -a student
Many years ago I had a dream to get goats. Why goats? I really can’t remember why or when. But…with many scoffs and laughs and a few encouragements, I plowed ahead. 2 summers ago I started building a fence. Last summer I started my herd, Dolly was purchased with Ben and Jerry, two white whethers to keep her company.
So on Saturday I made cottage cheese. I tried it the week before and it was edible, but not great. It was trial number two. I used a slightly different method. I think it turned out better. I?ll give you one picture for now.
My wife wants you to know that I did wash my dirty dishes afterwards. I have that picture proof too, but I?ll post it later when I do a more thorough write-up.
I did it yesterday, I pruned the grapes, and yes it was an attempt thrown at the grapes.
I chopped a lot off too. As I was cutting I felt a drop of water on my arm, I looked up, the sky was full of high level cumulus clouds, but I couldn’t image it was rain. A few more cuts and I remembered reading that the vine will ‘bleed’ as you prune.
The vine was bleeding, as I cut. After I cleaned up it noticed a few of the ‘wounds’ had large areas of wet ‘blood stains’.
This morning as I was getting ready I looked out the bathroom window, as I often do, and surveyed my surroundings. I notice a few large glistening drops on the grape vine. It was still bleeding.
A vine bears fruit, a pruned vine bears more, sweeter fruit. We are the vines and Christ is the husbandmen
Must I be cut and bleed?
I need to prune my grape vine badly. I’ve thrown attempts at it the last several years, but it ends up being the same type of attempt. I need to get it done, don’t spend enough time researching pruning because I wait until it is time to prune to think about researching it…then it needs to get done, so I hack away.
This year might be different. I am going to try to get a cutting to make a propagation, and cut the rest back to the trunk. I won’t get grapes this year, but maybe I can get it back in shape. It has been neglected for the past 15 of so years and has a lot of woody growth. It has produced the last couple of years, but I think it could produce sweeter fruit if I would get it pruned correctly.
The other factor has to do with a brick patio that has been on my todo list for to long. I need to move the grape arbor a little and an extreme pruning will help in the training for a new arbor.
Any advice is welcome.
Prune me
