Happy New Year from Three Dams! Summer Update

Dec / Jan Summer Update 2017/18

Wild storms, crazy grapes, fresh raspberries and stone fruit and a NEW FRIDGE!

So here we are halfway through another Summer at Three Dams and as usual, we're hard at work with various projects around the place, namely keeping the vineyard ticking along and preparing for our first vintage in a late Feb/ early March. For whatever reason, we've ended up with a serious case of overcropping which has meant we've had to bunch thin to reduce the amount of fruit the vine has to sustain and ripen. Fortunately we've had the help and advice from several well respected wine growers up here. Special thanks has to go to Simon Osicka, Phil Meehan and Eugene Meegan for their expert knowledge.

One nice thing we have been following in the vineyard is the progress of 3 little blue eggs we noticed in a tiny nest amongst the vines one day. The perfectly round nest now has two tiny little (blue wrens?) hungrily chirping away waiting for their next meal. It won't be long now and they'll be able fly away themselves.

 

Some other big projects we've managed to get through so far this summer is the building of a wood shed. Made completely out of recycled materials and salvaged timber, the new shed will hold more than a winters supply of fire wood and will also keep it dry and out of the weather. An unintentional advantage of this shed is that it will be able to rapid dry and green firewood due to the internal temperature at this time of the year! 

A few weeks back we had a massive storm that lasted about 20 mins. Ferocious winds, lightning and horizontal rain went through bringing down lots of trees and subsequently a massive clean up/recovery effort was needed to salvage all the potential firewood. We ended up with an 8 x 5 trailer overflowing with the stuff and there are still more trees to cut.

In the garden, things have been great this year. We've had our first cherries, a decent amount of apricots and peaches and the raspberries and blackberries have also come good this year. Onions, beans, silverbeet, kale, lettuces and garlic have also been really successful this year probably due in part to the abundant late spring and early summer rainfall we had last year. As usual, the apples, figs, passionfruit and nectarines are still to come in the next few months.

OFF GRID SYSTEM UPDATE

Over the years I've been tweaking the power system to get the optimum performance from our meagre system. From our humble beginnings of 360 watts, we now have just over 1000 watts which is still tiny compared to the average household rooftop array. This is mainly because I still haven't gotten around to putting up the 6 x 250 watt panels I bought back in July last year! This is mainly due to laziness on my part but also because our current system is performing better than expected and we haven't ever needed any more power, even over the winter. This may be all about to change now as this week we purchased a fridge! Yes a brand new ELECTRIC fridge!!! For the last 5 years or so we have been running a gas fridge which has been excellent, albeit a little small for our needs. The new fridge has a 4 star energy rating and when it comes on, it uses around 100 watts for 15 min or so which I reckon our system, even in its current configuration can more than handle. For example, yesterday afternoon we had the fridge, the vineyard irrigation and the pool filter all running and the batteries remained fully charged. We'll see how things play out over the next few weeks but I'm considering tweaking the solar panel arrangement slightly. I want to have the 300 watt panel facing the east rising sun, and use the 6 new panels as follows:

4 x 250 watt panels facing north and 2 x 250 watt panels facing west. 

This configuration will allow full sun throughout the day and late into the afternoon.

I'll put an update on how that goes (if and when I get around to doing the retrofit) in the next blog update.

In any case, it's great to know now that we will be saving money on gas from now on and our meagre total energy bills will be even less. Approximately $120 per year (one 45kg bottle)

Wends is rapt to now have the vegie crisper at an accesible height and a decent freezer compartment. I'm rapt to have a 6 bottle wine rack up top!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Happy New Year! Summer update 2016

As usual, it has been a busy time at Three Dams over the last few months. The good news is that all but one of the 311 vines we planted back in early October have survived the summer so far but the local are wreaking havoc! Due to the lack of Spring and Summer rain, the only food available for the kangaroos and wallabies has been our vines so for a brief period around Christmas we had what looked like a real vineyard with lots of growth trailing along the cordon wire. Alas after an invasion by a mob of Roos one night, the whole vineyard was decimated and all the shoots eaten back to the top of the vine guard! The experts here in Heathcote have reassured us that this is not a big problem in the first year so long as the vines get their roots down deep and get established. 

The other problem with the lack of rainfall is the ability to keep the water up to the vineyard and all the veggies and fruit trees so we've set up a separate watering system using dam water pumped up into a 10,000 litre holding tank. With a bit of help from Google and some bits from the hardware, I've managed to set up an automated watering system, entirely solar powered that waters everything at pre determined intervals. 

In other news, right on cue, the nectarines are back! Smaller than last year (also due to the lack of rain) but sweeter than ever! We also had plenty of apricots, plums and a few peaches with the apples and figs still a few weeks away. All in all, the weather has been a challenge but in the last few days we've had about 45mm of rain with 42mm of that coming in about 2 hrs on Wednesday in a massive stormy downpour.

The energy efficiency of the house is ever improving. We recently made up some roll-up shade cloth blinds to protect the western side of the house from the afternoon sun. We even sourced a very efficient split system AC unit from EBay that we can run off the solar panels in the event of extreme weather. By closing up the house in the early morning, it remains a good 8-10 degrees cooler inside than out mainly due to the wall, floor and ceiling insulation and remote roof extraction fan..

But if you're feeling too hot, there's always our new pool for a cooling dip!