Sep 5, 2025 - Today is our last day of harvesting (we're picking the Syrah). It took the five us about 2 and a half hours to pick and then we took the grapes to be processed (720 pounds of grapes today) and we got to help with the processing by stomping the grapes. They want a light pink color for this batch and stomping helps attain the color wanted. We stomped for 15 minutes and it was amazing how much juice was released during that time. At first it's hard to get your foot to go to the bottom of the bin, but by the end we were always hitting the bottom.
It's a foggy morning
The Syrah seem to me like they come in a thicker, more compact clump than the Merlot
As we harvest we clip longer vines and pull off leaves so we can see hidden clumps of grapes
That's a nice looking bunch of grapes
our last bins have been added to the large harvest bin
the rows look like a tornado came through
Pacific Wine Services
I'm in
Now we need to get to work (and by the end of our 15 minutes, it was feeling like work!)
A quick video of the stomping
after stomping
it was added to the bladder press and we've got a pretty pink color
This is the cool storage for Pacific Wine
and a mash that's sitting before the bladder press
That's a lot of wine
pretty flowers
and some grapes from the vineyard
nice evening views from the deck
we got to play with a Celestron telescope that Todd got as a b-day gift
an almost full moon
Sep 6, 2025 - We didn't know what to do with ourselves today without our early morning grape picking. Todd & Laurie had told us that they could see Space-X launches from their deck, so Kev looked up the launch schedule and found that there was a launch today at 11:06 from Vandenberg Space Force Base (75 miles from here, south of Santa Maria). The mission, Starlink 17-9 carried 24 broadband satellites into a low Earth orbit. SpaceX used its Falcon 9 first stage booster B1075, which launched for a 20th time. Eight minutes 19 seconds after liftoff, the first state landed on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You". This was the 149th touchdown on this vessel and SpaceX's 501st booster landing to date. With this launch Space-X has launched over 2000 satellites in 2025.
While we waited for the launch we worked on the telescope settings some more
Lift Off!
contrails from the rocket
Kitty time
another game of cribbage
beers at Ancient Owl Beer Garden in Atascadero
a grain bin clock tower at TinCity (we went to Etto for dinner)
Night time view of Anderson Hill
