This has been one of those amazing weeks of spring where everything (weeds especially) starts growing fast, real fast.  So we have been madly planting, weeding, irrigating, and just trying to stay upright.  This year at Zephyros we are putting in a trial of a half acre of Table grapes and a half acre of different berries.  It is something we have wanted to do for a while and now that we have it almost all planted it is a great feeling.

We have planted thirteen different types of table grapes, blue red green, purple, black and hopefully all hardy here, I am sure we will lose some and find winners in others.  Now it is hard to imagine the dense canopy that will come over the next several years as they are just bare root transplants with but a small bit of stem showing.  We will have to have patience as it will take two to four years for them to become truly productive and until then we will not let them fruit, perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of maintaining a new planting like this.

As for the berries, we have planted many different types, golden raspberries, black berries, more raspberries to come next year.  Also we have tried more unique berries and ones well suited to our environment such as, elderberries, sea berries, serviceberries, and Goji berries and Aronia to come.  Also, some that we want to have that are perhaps not as well suited but given the right microclimate (planted next to the wind break), gooseberries and currants.  As with all the berries diversity is key.  We planted five kinds of currants, and three different gooseberries with more to come next year.  Green, red, black, purple, white, gold, blue berries, we hope we can find the ones that can make it to the hands of our CSA members, farmer’s market customers and the chefs who are brave enough to try working with sea berries!  

After a long day of planting we had a barbeque and just as we pulled the last of the meat form the grill and went inside since it was raining, a rare occurrence, and even less likely visitor happened upon the doorstep for dinner.  A baby black bear and her mom wandered through the back yard and right up to the door.  The kids were on one side of the glass and the bear on the other, which was amazing to see that close.  These bears were not the bears of a David Attenborough film, but an emaciated version of the black bear, one who was hungry or sick, or both.

As the bears wandered off through the garden and the rain I worried a bit about the sheep and later with dog and rifle in hand went to check the flock, but the bears had moved on.  Somehow as unconnected and seemingly random the rain, the bears, and the berries were in our day to day life, now they seem to have all come at just the right time.  I hope the bears grow strong and recover from a long winter, and the rains keep coming, and I find myself wandering in the berry patch grazing, but not with the bears!