Gallery — Estelbrook Farms & Vineyard

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Certification Consulting

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Certification Consulting

Gallery

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Jun 19

Written By Alex Head

Click the images to see larger versions with captions

2023 Adaline riesling looking glamorous in the afternoon sun

The bees made honey in the lion’s head

Foggy harvest morning

Mt Hood from above the clouds (looking south from our farm)

Mt Adams from above the clouds (looking north from our farm)

Looking north past our vineyard, over the North Fork of Major Creek, toward Mt Adams

Lookout Mountain, Mt Hood, and Mt Defiance, among others

Looking into the hay field

Winter of 2016-2017 was very snowy

Using spray cards to make sure our settings are dialed in

One of the nine 40-yard dumpsters we filled in 2017

Compost process: Fill, spread, repeat

We cleaned this up

Using a magnet roller to try to avoid getting flat tires

More stuff we cleaned up (yes, that’s a boat)

The elm grove after removing the goat pens and chipping the tree trimmings

Years (decades?) worth of cow manure and rotten lumber we scraped out of the barn

We get lots of help from our parents, including putting a shovel of compost on every plant

Dogwood blossoms

Installing trellis posts

The mini excavator we rented to help tear out goat pens in the elm grove

Sleeping in the back of the truck before the vineyard became a vineyard — turkeys in the background

From inside the plum orchard looking out — when we bought the property, this area was an impenetrable thicket

Beautiful fall colors

All sorts of trash

The goat pens in the elm grove were such a mess

Removing MOG (material other than grapes) from harvest bins

Shiny spherical jewels

Loaded and ready for transport

Sheep doing sheep business

Everything was overgrown when we bought the property

We bought a used chipper on Craigslist and had a local mechanic fix it up

Chip drop on a frozen day

Sometimes we watch the mountain; sometimes the mountain watches us

“The best fertilizer is a farmer’s footsteps” — Japanese proverb

Young vines at daybreak

Collecting salmon carcasses that were illegally dumped — we turned them into fish tea to mix into the compost

Shahnnen in full protective gear dealing with fish slurry

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Oct 2024 was the brightest since Hale-Bopp in 1997

Digging berms and swales for our food forest

This will be filled with about 1500 trees as part of a food forest

Just before dawn

Freezing fog turns everything into a wonderland

Plum blossoms in the spring

Our setup when we used to live in Portland and work at the farm during the weekends

We use non-poison traps to catch these stingers, then we grind them up to add to compost (lots of silica)

One of our five varieties of plums

Plums on the trees, heavy with nectar

We put new siding on the barn

Alex is a professional dumpster stomper

Apples from old old trees

People often ask if we found any treasure amid the trash… no

Our dumpster is picked up every other week, so we created staging piles that lasted months

Trash, junk, debris

We’re planning on leaving the western 40 acres of our property for conservation projects

Moody clouds over the newly planted vineyard

We ended up buying an 84” snowblower for our tractor

Riesling: perfect for spring or any other season

Turning compost by hand (before our pile got too large — now we use a tractor)

Compost critters

De-stemmed grapes fermenting in an amphora

Flowers in the vineyard

Limbing trees prior to fence installation (better than cutting the trees down)

Servicing one of our two bird lasers from a macro bin strapped to pallet forks

A clean, well-lit barn just before harvest

Thinning and limbing for tree health and fire risk mitigation

One of the many trailer loads of knap weed we picked by hand (now we use root and flower weevils)

Pink skies (with another farm headache happening out of frame that we won’t mention)

Vines in the snow

Snow then ice then snow then ice until everything was frozen solid and slippery as heck

Bud break in mid May 2024

Northern lights, May 2024

Northern lights, May 2024

Catching a ride

Vines at sunset

Williams Mine Fire on the SW side of Mt Adams, Summer 2024

Bird laser just before it shut off for the night

Our 2024 Chardonnay in amphorae

We take PPE seriously

Fixing irrigation

Our spray drone

The first pair of gloves Alex wore out doing farm work

A couple of the first clusters we ever picked

Looking up a row in late summer

Homemade bouquet using plants from around the farm

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