Concord grapes Archives - A Country Girl's Heart -Beats that Matter

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Winter Solstice

The shortest day of the year has come and gone, Winter Solstice being yesterday. I do not mind the short amount of sunlight as much as I do the days of temperatures below 20 degrees (and lower) that often follows in January and February. Being honest I hope for one of those winters when the temps hit a high above 32 degrees at least once or twice a week. Life caring for animals becomes much easier when above freezing.

Christmas, only days away now, seems to fade quickly by mid-January. As I look ahead to the coming months of colder weather and snow, I think about what goals and plans provide growth on the homestead. I think of ideas that I can share here on the blog where we can grow our homesteads together.

If you have followed me here at CG Heartbeats Farm you know that 3 rare chicken breeds make up a part of the current focus. The prolific Swedish Flower Hens, unique Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners and beautiful Silver Gray Dorkings keep me hopping. In the last year I struggled to produce Silver Gray Dorkings (hatching 3) and Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners (hatching 0).

As I look to the coming months, improvements will be on my mind. I know this year I need to take a look at the 15 breeding pens of Swedish Flower Hens and make cuts. I am going into this winter with around 30 pens. That means 30 frozen water containers. Honestly the word that comes to mind with that fact is, YUK! I committed to telling myself that ‘there is no such thing as too cold, just not enough or warm enough clothes, for this winter’.

What to look for on the blog in the first 3 months of 2020:

1) Chick Hatching Practices, a course sharing the basics of how to hatch chicks, including preparing to hatch and brooder ideas and immediate care for the first week.
2) Info on the specific breeds I raise
3) General chicken info
4) Seeds selection and garden planning
5) Homestead planning in terms of layout and how I intend to put to use what I have. Perhaps even a quest post or two on how others use their land to the best of its ability. Do you want to share a post here telling how you have put your homestead to use? Shoot me an email at maria@dontclipmywings.com or use the form provided below.

Farmer’s Markets in the first quarter of 2020?

In the coming months I debate attending local farmers markets. I believe in their importance. I enjoy connecting with other vendors and customers. I met amazing folks when attending farmers markets. For now, I am taking a break to focus my attention on the homestead itself and this website. I look forward to attending at least 1 market on a regular basis in 2020. I may wait until summer to begin attending.

Winter Homestead Goals

I want to pick up where I left off, walking the property and giving thought to the best uses of the land. I came up with a few neat ideas last year, but as the markets went into full swing, I became distracted with the every day work. Those daily walks shorted into simple checks of all the current vegetables and chickens.

I hope to move cement blocks to provide a wall where I have already increased the level of the container garden I am building. 2019 marks the 3^rd year that I emptied buckets of sweet potatoes to create this raised bed.

Cleaning chicken pens (it is an ongoing thing around here)

Hatch Chicken Eggs

CG Heartbeats Farm now has three Janoel 12 incubators and an Incuview to hatch eggs. No bragging here, but it is a fun to have options to provide chicks for others who do not want to hatch their own. I would like to add the Nurture Right 360 in the coming months. This is how I provide chicks and fill orders for those shopping.

Read in this blog post about my go to incubator in 2019. I include tips I use with this incubator.

The Janoel 12 incubator with chicks I hatched from Pen # 7.

Click on either picture. Purchase your own.

I am excited for the Lemon Cuckoo Niederrheiners hens to start laying again. I picked up Cisco and Clinch last summer (2019). They were not mature enough to cover hens until November and by then the hens were in a molt. I am looking forward to hatching eggs with Cisco and Clinch covering the hens.

Clinch on the left and Cisco on the right.

For the first time CG Heartbeats Farm will offer crested Swedish Flower Hens from Apache and his hens. This pen currently consists of 2 hens from Pen 7 and a crested rooster (Apache) out of eggs I hatched from My Flower Farm (Lisa). The way the crested gene works eggs from this pen has a 50% chance of producing a crested chick. I plan to add additional hens to this pen in 2020 as I raise hens from Pen # 7. I would have more already, but I sold a few I raised.

Selling Eggs

Did you notice you can order and pay for eggs through the website now? I intend to set it up so that you are able to order eggs from each pen. At the moment it is only Swedish Flower Hen hatching eggs in general, but I want to make each pen available in quantities of 6, 12, 18, or 24. In this way a person can customize their order. Look for this feature coming soon. Until the other breeds are producing better, they will continue to be an unpaid wait list.

Starting Grape Plants

I have one grape plant needing to be pruned, with those cuttings I intend to start additional plants in the coming months. I want to produce Concord grapes for the simple fact, I like to eat them!! No marketing strategy in mind, just my taste buds driving my desire. I have fond memories of drinking homemade (and home canned) grape juice while eating popcorn at my grandma’s house on Sunday evening. Fond memories may drive my interest in producing Concord grapes.

I will continue with raising heirloom tomatoes, even though I do not know what variety they are. I like them too much to change to a different variety this year. My thoughts go like this: I may save seeds from the current variety (unknown) and in 2021 try a new variety, saving the seeds from 2020 to use in 2022.

Homestead in General

I have a few carryover projects from fall that if the ground doesn’t freeze, I would be trilled to finish.

Constructing support for the one grape plant that has flourished. The other ones are coming along slowly.
Fence work for horse pastures and cattle that I plan to purchase.
Work on the container garden area.
Set up additional outdoor pens for spring and the occasional nice winter day.
Condense indoor pens to make room for the extreme cold weather days.

I have 10 different seed packets donated by Baker Creek seeds. Three that I am excited to try are Flax, Sorghum, Peanuts. The fun part of this for me is that each of these have the potential to set me up for my own seeds as these are all heirloom plants. I can save seed and increase my crop in the coming years much in the same way I did with the 5 garlic varieties. Look for a blog post(s) in the fall of 2020 on these 10 different seeds I will be trying here at CG Heartbeats Farm. I will be starting these plants indoors in the coming months to give them a head start on the growing season.

What homestead expectations, goals, or dreams do have for the coming months? Leave a comment at the bottom or use this form to send an email.

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I first learned how I enjoyed Concord grapes in 2015. While competing in the 2015 TCA Thoroughbred Makeover, I went grocery shopping at local Walmart near the Kentucky Horse Park. I devoured the grapes in a matter of days. They may have been the same variety my Grandma used to make grape juice with. The desire to grow my own was fueled when I could hardly find them anywhere.

I researched online and in person. Some plants were priced as high as $40 and others as low as $8. I learned Concords were not known to produce themselves correctly via planting seeds. The best way to get new plants was by using a vine of a healthy known producing plant. In my conversations I found that a new friend at the time was willing to share cuttings of her Concord Grapes with me. I was again like with the sweet potatoes, unsure if this would really work. From reading articles online, I learned that grape cuttings could be placed in water or in soil and then would produce roots. Seems amazing doesn’t it? It was suggested to cover the cut part of the vine that was being placed in soil or water with a root hormone to help it grow. I am all about doing things as natural as possible and choose to go the tougher route without any root hormone.

A few weeks after placing my first cuttings in water I began to see changes, the stems developed what is called callouses, then roots, and eventually some leaves. I like to try new things and I think I prefer starting the cuttings in water so I can see the changes. After all, if the vine is buried in soil, I just have to wait, wait and see only looking at the vine from the surface. It is like have a horse breed and not having her checked to see if she is pregnant. She will show no outward signs for at least 7 to 8 months. While the grapes may produce leaves sooner (2-4 months), I still prefer to see the roots developing in the water.

My first time starting new grape plants from vine cuttings was a crash course for me. I only ended up with a few that made into soil. I do not remember numbers, I think I may have had 6 – 8 and perhaps one or 2 made it into a pot. I did not watch the water levels in the jars and several died when they dried up due to lack of water. At the time those that survived were ready to plant the weather was too cold to plant them outside. I must have cut the vines in October or November, if I remember correctly. I tried cutting vines again and late winter/early spring. These too, I neglected along the way and only had a couple plants to show for it. I remember thinking the temperature may have dropped to abruptly where I had the cutting sitting and caused them to die. I had several irons in the fire and in the course of my days the animals came before my ‘experiments’ with plants. I often struggled with energy levels and while the process of caring for the grapes was not exceeding difficult some days once I had finished what had to be done…I was done for. This is by no means an excuse or a pity party, simply the reason I neglected to care for the grape starts to standard. I remember not being 100% sure as to why some of them did not make it some consideration was temperature and of course hydration. I was able to share one plant with a neighbor and she has happily planted on her property. One lived for a long time and I may have either over or under watered it at one point. It did not make it.

In the late winter or early Spring of 2018, I once again trimmed vines at my friends and put them in glass jars with water.

When the weather was warmer, I determined this year (2018) I was going to get some plants in the ground this year.

Potted in the house from my first cuttings.

I think it had been potted for a year and half at least. I found a spot on our 11.7 acers where I believed the grapes would flourish the best. I researched online for info on the best place and how to plant them.

Pictured below show how much the above pictured plant grew indoors for a year and a half.

Finally! I planted my first Concord grape plant.

About a month later my Dad planted the four that were doing well from the 2018 cuttings. These four went directly into the ground from the glass jars. This is now my preferred method as I have less of chance of forgetting to water them and it eliminates the step of potting them inside until the weather is nicer.

Here it is fall of 2018 and I wanted to help my friend prune her grapes. I hate to see anything go to waste so on the spur of the moment, I took a big bunch of the pruned vines home with me. After all she was going to burn them. Snipping and cutting the vines into smaller sections, I soon had around 40 starts in 8 glass jars with water.

These grapes belonging to a friend of mine, have not been pruned for quite some time. (The property is new to her) This was the first round of what will include more pruning sessions as we work back the vines.

My thoughts went something like this:
Oh, what was I thinking? Here I was going into winter with all these grape starts. I now needed to make sure the water levels stayed high enough or plant all that grew roots and keep those potted grapes watered properly until next spring.

My response to my thoughts and doubts went like this:
You are simply going to have to stay on top of caring for them. It is a simple matter of making it a part of your daily routine like caring for the animals. It will need to become a part of your chores. You have less places you have to be than in previous times and you’re are feeling better. This is what you do and you are going to do it!!! Have confidence that you will see this project through.

Now I do not expect every one of the 40 vine cuttings to become a plant. If I end up with 20 plants, I would be excited. It seems by my experience so far not every cutting grows roots. Perhaps I would increase my success if I used a root hormone. I recently learned from a follower on the farms FB page (A Country Girl’s Heart ~ Beats that Matter) that a willow branch is a natural growth hormone inducer and specifically with grape starts it will promote root growth. I am still researching, but I intend to try it at some point.

To date I have spent $0 on the grape project. I will be most rewarded the day I actually harvest my own grapes. I will savor that first bite!! I might make jelly or grape juice (frozen or canned). What is your favorite way to enjoy Concord grapes? Leave a comment.

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Tag: Concord grapes

Winter Season ~ Goals

Winter Homestead Goals

Concord Grapes