Getting ready to start harvest

K Effective

Well-known Member
Stopped by the neighbors today, grape harvest is about to start, and they are ready!
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That would be very interesting to see.

There was a YTer who posted cranberry
harvest pics - that was neat to see.
 
I took a trip to the New England states. I think I was in New
Hampshire. It was cool to see them harvesting Grapes.
I was surprised to learn they grew grapes in Canada around
Niagara falls.
There were a lot of private wineries.
I didn't realize growing grapes is a big business.
 
Lots of grapes around Northeast PA and western NY along the State line. Welches has or had a plant there. They also have a plant at Lawton MI lots of juice there goes out by the multiple semi loads each day year around. Lots of wineries around the grape country too along with many smaller private label vintners in this country. Even several in IA. If you do some searching you'll find there are probably some vintners in every state of the union.
 
The Concord grape was developed by a farmer/plant breeder named Bull in Concord, Mass. They are grown around the world at this point, but some places better than others.

Finger Lakes, NY into Ohio, Western MI, and Washington State are the main regions of growers who own the Welch's company.

My neighbors farm over 1000 acres of grapes and harvest about as many acres for smaller operations down to tiny vineyards like mine.

We have many small wineries mixed in with the juice grape vineyards, growing all kinds of foreign and domestic varieties and making some world-class wines.

Lake Michigan, as well as Ontario and Erie, provides us with a giant heat sink to keep Spring temps cooler and vines from progressing too early, to avoid many frost events in the Spring. That Lake Effect works for all kinds of fruit trees and plants and vegetables as well. That safer coverage doesn't quite make it all the way down to Terre Haute, but some of the lake effect snow does!
 
Here's some photos from a few years ago, I don't have any video to share. My place is often picked late in the season since I'm near most of their own grape acres, and often overnight. This was one of the few day time events I was home for. It was rainy/snowy and muddier than usual, they were forced to fill only one box at a time due to traction problems.


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One of the best time of the year for a Sunday drive along route 5 in pa,and ny , the best aroma of harvest ready grape , suggest you try it ,I
think you will agree a great experience.
 
I always assumed that grapes were still hand picked.

I did not imagine that they would 'mud out' a crop of grapes, using big machinery. I assume that ripeness/sugar content are very important though.

Must be a pain in the neck to fix the ruts.
 
(quoted from post at 22:04:05 09/22/22) Stopped by the neighbors today, grape harvest is about to start, and they are ready!

I did not know how you harvest grapes. Interesting
 
I'm guessing the orb is either a snowflake passing by, or the spirit of my Grandfather watching over the harvest.


This was a few years ago when we tilled our row middles. For decades, we spread manure from our beef cattle in the row centers in the Spring, then disced, rototiller, dragged, etc., for a while, then planted cover crop to provide some traction. That year, I sowed rye in the centers and then the rain stopped. It never took right all summer, and was very sparse by harvest.

Since then, I stopped the tillage, opting to compost the manure in a pile for an extra year and spread on top in the Winter just before a snow. The smell is far less objectionable and the sod remains much thicker than before.

There is a benefit of having open soil when late frosts threaten- the open soil gives off heat better than grass, and can help keep buds from freezing. Last year we had a really late hard freeze, May 8, which wiped us out, but not even irrigation or the smudge pots of old days would have saved us.

We used to hand-pick a half acre of early, Fredonia table grapes, fancy pack and take them to the Benton Harbor Fruit Market. Grandpa always bragged that that half-acre could pay the property taxes every year. Getting help for such a small plot ripening right on Labor day weekend got to be too much, and we switched those rows to Concord when I was in high school.

Harvesting machines for grapes and then blueberries began in the late 1950s and became popular in the 1960s around here. Prior, nearly every farm had an acre or two, but never 50 or hundreds or thousands. But then, nearly every farm still had a cow, chickens, some pigs, etc.
 
I help my brother harvest the grapes in his vineyard. We did some last week, some this past week, and will do some more next week. His machine is a bit older than the ones shown here, but it works the same way. That machine was shipped here from California.
 

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