Farmers unwittingly adjust to climate changes

The Ohio wine industry has been getting more and more dependent on French grapes over the last 30 years. The vinifera, or French grape, the species of grape known to produce the world's best and snootiest wines, is very tender, which would make sense since it is adapted to a Mediterranean climate. But for the last few decades Ohio winemakers, and those in many other temperate regions, have been planting more and more vinifera to replace the good old American grape varieties they used to grow. American grapes, like Concord, the grape juice grape, and French-American hybrids are much hardier in the normal Midwestern winters—or what used to be known as normal winter. But American grapes are better known for producing juice or sweet wines, while hybrids have never been able to compete with the old French standbys in wine quality in the eyes of the Wine Spectator crowd.

 

An Ohio vineyard testing the limits

 

Regions like the West Coast have climates much like that of France, and it's in places like this where vinifera thrives. But before climate change began to bring milder winters (devasting floods and hurricanes) to the rest of the country, wineries were forced to look to American grapes, and to breeders to develop cold hardy French-American hydrids, in order to have productive vineyards to base a business on. Vinifera vines could not survive most Midwestern winters without a down coat, only questionably able to survive as low as -10 degrees F at their hardiest.

But as the climate has changed over the last few decades, the tender vinifera has crept into the locally-made wine market in the Midwest. It started out as a sort of testing of the waters, with a few renegades planting small vineyards and finding the grapes could survive most winters in the new era of 400 ppm. After a few were successful, they attracted the attention of others who saw dollar signs. Ohio wineries realized that their hardy native grapes didn't produce the kind of wine that demanded top dollar, and didn't produce what is the socially-accepted definition of good wine. So they scrapped their American vines and replaced them with the much more valuable (and vulnerable) French vines. It's unlikely that any of them suspected they were only able to grow the vines now because the climate was changing and the world was gradually warming.

All primary buds on these vinifera were killed. Secondary and tertiary buds sprouted. Many vines died back to the ground.

 

Then last winter, Ohio winegrowers were surprised by a sudden change in their mild winters. The warming arctic had pushed the polar vortex from its normal position atop the globe. Huge acreages of the state's vinifera vines were wiped out by the frigid winter. Those that did survive died back to the ground, saved only by a thick cover of snow that insulated their roots against the far below zero temps.

The Mid-winter Locovore

So this is a meal Julie and I had last night that consisted of tamales, carmelized carrots, and salad.  Everything except the butter in the tamales and some of the ingredients in the salad dressing were grown in my garden.  The tamales were my first experiment with grinding my own masa from the Abenaki flour corn I grew in my garden last year.  I treated the dried corn with pickling lime before grinding it in my new hand-cranked mill. This is the nixtamalizing process I talked about in a previous post. The masa did not grind up as finely as I'm used to, but I liked the texture and they held together just like tamales made from finer masa. Even the corn husks are from my garden. They were the same husks that covered the cobs of the flour corn. We dipped the tamales in salsa made entirely from ingredients I grew in my garden as well.

Keeping busy in winter

We froze most of the venison we got this season, but a bunch of it we've been turning into jerky.  I have always liked jerky though I've not eaten it much in my life because I was a vegetarian for so long and because it is usually so expensive.  I never realized how simple it is to make.  All you do is cut the meat thin, sprinkle it with the cure, and dehydrate it for a few hours.  We dried it in Julie's dehydrator, but you could do it in a solar dehydrator or in a smokehouse.    That is my long term wish--to have a smokehouse. 

 

This season: a review

 

Pug the pug visiting my house and looking for handouts

 

I haven't really been posting much this season because I've been concentrating on other things, but I do have a lot to talk about now. I've been gradually finishing projects on the house and am now pretty much done with it. There are a few other finishing touches to add, like a stove for the kitchen, the first floor ceiling, a bit more soffit, and the railing for the stairway, but pretty much everything else is done for now.

 

I had to spend some time resurfacing the earthen floor since the light clay straw insulation sort of failed and had sunk about an inch all around and was cracking in many places. I'm hoping the floor had sunk all it was going to sink, so that when I added the layer on top it wouldn't sink again in time. We'll see, but everything looks fine so far. If it doesn't work this time I'm going to tear it up and put in foamboard insulation.   The picture above shows the entrance pad with tile laid into the earthen floor in the higher traffic area.  I also laid tile into the kitchen area part of the floor.

 

 

I finished all my curtains myself in the early spring and got them all up.  It was good to refamiliarize myself with a sewing machine.  The warm windows fabric does make it a lot easier though.  I'm really happy with how they turned out and how they work!  They make the place have much more contrast and give me a sense that I'm in some other country, which is what I was going for.  The picture above also shows the wood rack I built for my firewood, with bin on the bottom for the big stuff and shelves for kindling above.  Of course I've only lit a couple fires so far this year because the weather has been either warm or sunny, and my thermal curtains are keeping the cold out.  I reorganized this part of the downstairs for the winter, complete with comfy chair for sitting by the fire.