January 2025 - Monthly Update

The hand harvest from Hell
January 2025
Written by Katrina Miller

Similar to last summer, January greeted us with very hot temperatures; many days exceeding 40oC and some nights reaching minimums of only 28oC. Hot temperatures means speedy ripening of fruit, and so, another season of exceptionally early harvests were expected. 

This year we roped our friends and family into helping with the hand harvest of our first ever barrel fermented Chardonnay. We promised everyone, including Raffaela - the 11 month old Italian backpacker, that we’d be done late in the morning to beat the heat. We also bribed our loved ones with a wholesome lunch spread featuring handmade sourdough focaccia, vibrant green pesto from our beastly basil crop, sundried tomato and whipped ricotta dip from our sun baked homegrown tomatoes. Most importantly, Jo-Anne’s famous homemade lemon cordial, rocky road and fruit cocktail cake, each containing about a kilo of sugar as a ‘pick’ me up.

The day started with significant morale amongst our humble volunteers; smiles, chats, general good vibes. Commitment levels were high with some of our friends driving all the way from places like Freo, and staying the night before to ensure an early start. Fortunately, temperatures were closer to 30oC than 40oC the day of picking (27/1), and hopefully a little more bearable. Though morale quickly subsided as we noticed yields seemed lower than normal. It took each pair of pickers a little longer than expected to fill their crates and finish picking a row. By the time late morning hit, it was obvious the heat was getting to some of our troopers, particularly our youngest backpacker, so we commenced the feast. The grapes were weighed and only half of what we required from this harvest (1.5t) had been picked.

Despite these hurdles, plus our full bellies and strong desires to nap, our team got back out there and persevered with the sparse pickings and got through the day. We got there in the end with 1.6t picked by about 4pm. A very long day of picking. Many litres of sweat (and fortunately no blood and tears) were shed; this wine better be amazing!

Farm happenings

Wine

- Stockists of our 2024 Chittering Chardonnay now include Mane Liquor, Stuart Street Cellars and Gingin Cellarbrations. 

- Harvested Chardonnay for our blan de blanc style sparkling, unoaked vin blanc and hand picked barrel fermented chardy and Shiraz for Rosé.

- Three trips to Margs to drop off the different grape harvest to our winemaker and Ev tasted our 2024 Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon and they are delicious. 

- Nurturing our new varieties of rootlings through summer with plenty of watering.

- Planning the restoration of our new Gingin vineyard and cellar door.

Flowers 

- Our eucalypts are thriving in the heat with regular watering. We have provided small batches of foliage to friend’s weddings with yields expected to continue soaring this year. 

- We had significant problems with birds (primarily our thriving population of 28 parrots) destroying young growth on our leucospermums (pincushions) yet they are still managing to survive the heat. 

- We worked with Natalie from Muchea Tree Farm to collect grevillea cuttings from our plants that are thriving and forever flowering. 

- Our banksia nursery is thriving. We are planting out this stock along with many other species this autumn to fill out remaining empty portions of our flower farm. 

- It was a pleasure to visit Kevin Collins before Christmas and pick up some seeds of unique varieties of Banksia that we will start sowing once it cools.

Sheep

- The rams are currently with the gals (ewes) with our first lambs expected as things start greening up in late autumn. 

- Shearing all of last years lambs was done at the start of Jan to help them deal with the heat of summer.

- We still have lambs to sell from last season. Market prices seem to be holding so we will move those remaining in the coming months. 

- We will start taking pre-orders for our next run of meat boxes in February.