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I'm sorry to be missing that. Should be fun. And what a gorgeous day for harvest!!!

It was fun, only ended up with 6 lugs so it didn't take long.

Did pick up some slightly overripe peaches. Halving and de-stoning now. I didn't know how many to buy but it looks like I'll end up with four 6 gallons buckets worth. No idea how much that will make or how much water I'll add. So for now just going to freeze them.
 
It was fun, only ended up with 6 lugs so it didn't take long.

Did pick up some slightly overripe peaches. Halving and de-stoning now. I didn't know how many to buy but it looks like I'll end up with four 6 gallons buckets worth. No idea how much that will make or how much water I'll add. So for now just going to freeze them.

Any idea how many pounds? Freezing first definitely helps, IMHO.
 
Last year peach I got 5 gallons from 50 lbs. The only water I added was in the simple syrup to adjust sg. @Scooter68 can definitely give some better tips.

Go heavy on the Pectic Enzyme peach loaded with pectin.
 
Last year peach I got 5 gallons from 50 lbs. The only water I added was in the simple syrup to adjust sg.
Go heavy on the Pectic Enzyme peach loaded with pectin.

I used to read that adjusting the SG with Welch's White Grape-Peach concentrate was a good way to go, but I've had a hard time locating that in the last couple years.
 
Harvesting Concord today. Ripened early this year in south central PA. Thinking I'd like to back sweeten 2018 Concord before bottling. Can I use this year's juice? New to this - love some advice.
 
Degassed 5 g of pear wine today. Added kieselsol/chitosan too and clearing pretty nice. Probably will need more pectic enzyme though. Tastes very delicate the 12% etoh is very mild in it surprisingly.
 
Today? Rejoicing a bit. After 8 long months of record flooding and no electricity at the property, the waters went down a few weeks ago, and lo and behold, power was restored yesterday evening. We have to install a new water well, as the old one was underwater so long, controls ruined, and the casings contaminated, this one on high ground by the camps. Lots of cleanup and recovery to do, but at least it can get started.
 
That's a shame, hope it's not an annual thing.

A little water is typical, not normally enough to close the roads, which happens when the water hits elevation 90. It's been over 90 a few times in the last 20 years, for a few weeks in the spring. This year it was between 95 and 98 for nearly 7 months, historical height and duration. The triangular shaped 600,000 acre area is known as the Yazoo Backwater, is "protected" by a system of levees along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers which intersect just north of Vicksburg, MS.
When the MS River basin gets a lot of rain/snow up north and the rivers rise, flood gates in the levees are closed to prevent the rivers from flowing backwards into the area. Pretty smart, right? The rain that falls in the area stays inside as long as the flood gates are closed, and they remain closed as long as the water is higher outside than it is inside. The final piece of the project, pumps to maintain the water elevation at 87 feet in the backwater, were never installed due to a ruling by the EPA, blocking the completion of the project. Hence, catastrophic flooding is possible with high rivers and lots of rain in the area, the perfect storm so to speak. They opposed the pumps, saying that they would destroy the wetlands by draining them.
At 87 feet, the wetlands portions (about half the acreage) are flooded and it's an incredible wildlife habitat for all sorts of birds and animals, an incredibly beautiful and bountiful wetlands habitat for all sorts of migratory waterfowl, native birds, deer, rabbits, possums, pigs, raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, black bears, etc.. Corn and soybeans are farmed in the adjacent farmland, providing even more food / habitat. When the water is 95 - 98 feet, it's not wetlands, it's a 10 foot deep lake with no dry land, mammals leave for higher ground or die if they can't get out. The big mammals, deer, pigs, bears, coyotes and bobcats can travel to higher ground, but they're confined to small tracts of dry land where they starve as the land is stripped of its vegetation due to overgrazing. The smaller mammals die of starvation in the trees as they hang on for life. People have their homes flooded, and farmland is underwater and can't be farmed. The farmers planted no crops this year in some of the most fertile land in the MS river valley.
There's a move afoot to bring the pump project back to life, hopefully, politics won't get in the way this time..............Sorry for the long soap box.........
 
A little water is typical, not normally enough to close the roads, which happens when the water hits elevation 90. It's been over 90 a few times in the last 20 years, for a few weeks in the spring. This year it was between 95 and 98 for nearly 7 months, historical height and duration. The triangular shaped 600,000 acre area is known as the Yazoo Backwater, is "protected" by a system of levees along the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers which intersect just north of Vicksburg, MS.
When the MS River basin gets a lot of rain/snow up north and the rivers rise, flood gates in the levees are closed to prevent the rivers from flowing backwards into the area. Pretty smart, right? The rain that falls in the area stays inside as long as the flood gates are closed, and they remain closed as long as the water is higher outside than it is inside. The final piece of the project, pumps to maintain the water elevation at 87 feet in the backwater, were never installed due to a ruling by the EPA, blocking the completion of the project. Hence, catastrophic flooding is possible with high rivers and lots of rain in the area, the perfect storm so to speak. They opposed the pumps, saying that they would destroy the wetlands by draining them.
At 87 feet, the wetlands portions (about half the acreage) are flooded and it's an incredible wildlife habitat for all sorts of birds and animals, an incredibly beautiful and bountiful wetlands habitat for all sorts of migratory waterfowl, native birds, deer, rabbits, possums, pigs, raccoons, coyotes, bobcats, black bears, etc.. Corn and soybeans are farmed in the adjacent farmland, providing even more food / habitat. When the water is 95 - 98 feet, it's not wetlands, it's a 10 foot deep lake with no dry land, mammals leave for higher ground or die if they can't get out. The big mammals, deer, pigs, bears, coyotes and bobcats can travel to higher ground, but they're confined to small tracts of dry land where they starve as the land is stripped of its vegetation due to overgrazing. The smaller mammals die of starvation in the trees as they hang on for life. People have their homes flooded, and farmland is underwater and can't be farmed. The farmers planted no crops this year in some of the most fertile land in the MS river valley.
There's a move afoot to bring the pump project back to life, hopefully, politics won't get in the way this time..............Sorry for the long soap box.........

That is a lot of information but interesting.
 
Congrats John! I hope this is not the new normal but flooding on and along the Mississippi river for months on end seems to be just that.....
 
Today? Rejoicing a bit. After 8 long months of record flooding and no electricity at the property, the waters went down a few weeks ago, and lo and behold, power was restored yesterday evening. We have to install a new water well, as the old one was underwater so long, controls ruined, and the casings contaminated, this one on high ground by the camps. Lots of cleanup and recovery to do, but at least it can get started.

I never had a well under water before... Is there any way to decontaminate a well casing?
 
I never had a well under water before... Is there any way to decontaminate a well casing?

Yes, there is. You have to pump / pour 300 gallons of very chlorinated water down into the well, then flush the system for a few days, have the tank disconnected and steam cleaned, then have it all tested / certified. We've had it done before, it's costly, and only a few occurrences make it cheaper to put in a new well that can't flood.
 
Well, I took dimensions yesterday and started playing with laying out my walk-out winery area then did something to shut down my program after about 3 hours without saving. Dumb. I have 132 sq. feet carpeted, air conditioned/heated office, drinking, man cave entrance area. A total of a little over 300 sq. ft. of block floor area to set up my work area and another 100 sq. ft. of dirt floor next to that. This doesn't count the crawl space area above the office and blocked area for additional storage. NewWinery1.jpg newWinery2.jpg NewWinery5.jpg We've been right at 100 every day and 70 overnight lows for weeks now and the walk out is right at 72 late in the day. Looks like whoever lived here before wasn't very modest but once I partition the toilet/sink off I think having a bathroom will be the one thing I always missed having in my tiny old winehouse. Clean up and Construction can't start till the house is updated and we move in, maybe late October, but I'm sure it'll be here before I know it.
Mike
 
Doing a happy dance! My yeasts and ML came in the mail yesterday - This fall planning on Merlot, Petite Verdot, Peach, Strawberry, Apricot, and Apple. Now just waiting - oh so patiently - for the brix to rise!
 

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