The Old Wagonhouse

The Old Wagonhouse

Friday, April 30, 2010

PREPARATION FOR NEW PLANTINGS

We started to take out the old vineyards and orchards to make place for the new plantings.  We are taking out old Palomino wine grape cultivar,  Hanepoot as well as Bullida apricot orchard.  The new plantings will consists of Chenin blanc,  Colombard and apricot cultivar Super Gold. 
Our area planted will grow by 2 ha.  This keeping up planning to enlarge the planting area to 60 ha over the next 5 years.  This falling in place with the idea of getting production up and the overheads lower.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Koos Kombuis in Calitzdorp!!

Ja Koos was in Dorpshuis in Calitzdorp.  Certainly a must see.  This was a very nice surprise for us here who missed most  of the KKNK.  I still think this must have been the best of the whole festival.  We also had a show of Stef Kruger added as a bonus. 
April and May is usually the clean up months.  The preparation for new plantings is also done.  We will take out about 2 ha of mostly apricots but also a small bit of Hanepoot.  The plantings consists of apricots (Super Gold cultivar) and wine grapes (Chenin blanc and Colombar). 
The new developement will make it possible for us to enlarge our production area but also expand our irrigation to the old family farm,  Herminashof.  This means that more than 90 percent of our farm will be able to be irrigated via drippers or micro irrigation.   Certainly great for a dry arid region like Calitzdorp.
We also planning to enlarge on of our irrigation dams.  This means that our total irrigation system will become four different units.  We are looking at a smaller little project which will use another dam which we have to enlarge which will bring our total usable dams to 7.
Well this week we will flood irrigate our last time this season and still no rain.  Calitzdorp certainly needs a very cold and wet winter.