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New Round Tower Block Chardonnay cuttings

5/21/11:

Today we potted about 150 chardonnay cuttings taken from the Upper West Side block on Jack Rabbit Hill, a good day to propagate vines as the Moon is in Archer, which means it’s a good day to be working on fruit-bearing plants like grape vines.

Eventually these cuttings will end up in the Round Tower block on Jack Rabbit Hill, a special site planted only in JRH’s own native cuttings (rather than plants from another nursery or farm).

As biodynamic farmers, we’re always looking for ways to use the farm’s own resources instead of bringing in materials from off the farm (for example our own manure and cover crops for fertility rather than imported manure or store bought fertilizers).

So growing our vineyards with our own plant stock instead of buying from a nursery or another vineyard is a slam-dunk!

ill Dill Farm Riesling

Course 2:
Grilled pear salad with arugula, local chevre, and sherry vinaigrette served with Wisdom Farm chicken rillettes on toast point paired with the Jack Rabbit Hill Mesa Winds Farm Pinot Gris

Course 3:
Grilled whole Colorado trout wrapped in Long Farm bacon and stuffed with pine nuts and chard, served with roasted fingerling potatoes and tomato shallot marmalade paired with the Jack Rabbit Hill Chardonnay

Course 4:
Wisdom Farm chicken stuffed with dried cherries, MouCo camembert, and spinach and served over saute of house-made tasso and sweet potatoes with red wine cherry sauce paired with the Jack Rabbit Hill Pinot Noir/Pinot Meunier Blend

Course 5:
Cinnamon apple pound cake served with apple butter and buttermilk gelato

Tickets for this event are $75 excluding tax and gratuity. Farm tours are available prior to dinner. For more details on the menu and/or accomodations, please call Melissa at 303.651.0630 or Anna at 970.835.3677 This event takes place Sunday, July 4th. Visit Terroir online for more info. Enjoy!

We now have over 10,000 baby hop plants acclimating to their new home on the north slope of Jack Rabbit Hill. Varieties: Cascade, Chinook, Crystal, Nugget and Northern Brewer.

With the moon in descent beginning in mid-May, we uncovered our 2010 horn manure on the 18th and stirred and sprayed it on the future hopyard over the next few days. Tom Smith of Summit Labs in Ft Collins delivered our very happy baby hop plants on Friday, May 21st. We planted the next week until the last plantlet and it’s tiny rootball was in the ground yesterday afternoon.

orn-manure-unearthed-at-JRH-May-2010-lores1-768×1024.jpg” alt=”" width=”258″ height=”344″ />Horn manure, aka BD 500, is made by filling empty cow horns with fresh manure from Jack Rabbit Hill’s own lactating cows, and burying the filled horns in the ground from Sept thru May every year. Stored in horns and buried for the winter, the raw green manure becomes a woodsy-smelling, dark, spongy humus. The humus is then stirred in water for an hour and quickly sprayed in the vineyard, hopyard and pasture.

The horn manure spray stimulates life (fungus, animals and plants!) in the ground, which in turn keep our vines, hops, pasture, and livestock happy! Our 5 horns above can make a year’s worth of “compost tea” for our entire farm!