Second batch of aronia wine from 2022

We just bottled up our second batch of aronia wine that we started brewing a few months ago. This recipe had two gallons of juice compared to the first batch which had 2.5 gallons, plus we tried a couple of different things to assist in the clearing.

With each batch, we bottle some as dry and sweeten the rest to between a semi-sweet and a sweet wine. We sweetened it up a bit more in search of a good balanced recipe.

Most of my tasters prefer the sweeter end of the spectrum but I do like how the dry turned out last year. 

This seems to be the best batch we made from 2022 berries and looks pretty good through the light. Our third batch with another variation in the recipe is almost ready for second siphoning to clear the wine.

#1 son and I drank tasted the scrubs, what we call that last bit of wine that isn't enough to fill a bottle, and it's probably the best that we produced this year.

We might be getting close to the preferred recipe but I'm looking forward to finding out how our third one turns out.

Aronia harvest and redneck wine tasting

Our aronia berries ripened about a week to 10 days early this year. "Normally" they are ready on Labor Day weekend which makes the name appropriate - Labor Day. 

With the dry, hot year, I started picking in late August to sell at the local farmer's market and picked for ourselves on the off days. Ripening lasts only a couple of weeks but, again with the hot year, the berries were drying on the vine sooner than I wanted.

 

Yields were pretty good after sorting through the discards and we sold a good portion of that and kept some for processing into our home-made wine. It takes almost 3 gallons of berries to make one gallon of juice and one recipe uses 2 1/2 gallons of juice. We have enough juice for 3 batches this year, plus I'm looking at a rhubarb/aronia mix for next spring.

 

We do not sell but have given a few bottles away. Reviews have been positive and I'm looking at further experimentation with recipe mixes. 

We don't have a license to sell and we don't, repeat, don't sell to either family, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, or even family we do like. Nope. Once we come up with a proper recipe, we may look into it but danged if there isn't a hundred wineries per county in Iowa.

Which means we have to be different to make it a success.

In the mean time... A little redneck wine tasting.

Aronia dry 2021 and a half bottle of aronia semi-sweet. I use a half-pint jar.

In my earlier life, I visited a few bars where the glasses were pint mason jars, which made for cheap beer glasses for quarter draw nights. Yep, it was a while ago.

But for here, we aren't wine snobs but still, wine deserves glass. No frills label, regular half-pint jar, and a basic home-made red. I could have spruced up with a better cloth and background but I don't want to get carried away with a snooty atmosphere.

The Aronia Dry 2021 was a pretty good year... Cheers!

Labor Day 2021

We have a tradition in my family on how we celebrate Labor Day: Work.

This is the time of year for harvesting and the harvest doesn’t give a whit about the day on the calendar. Our cash crops of popcorn and aronia berries are in full swing now that the earth is nearing the equinox. I could leave the corn on the stalks for a while longer but the last windstorm knocked over many and if I don’t get those ears soon, I could lose them. The aronias are ready now and soon will be dropping to the ground.

After the successful Battle of the Beetles™ our crop came on strong this year and I predict this will be our best year:

I spent this Sunday picking in the sun and removing stems while in the shade of the cottonwood trees at the cabin. Serenaded by crickets in the grass and cicadas in the walnut trees with an occasional catbird calling from the creek to the east. Gravity was to blame for many berries that fell victim to its law and didn’t make it to my pail.

I resisted the temptation of reading the news during a break – the modern world needed to stay away as I picked by hand. I didn’t want to interrupt the peace of the gentile breeze from the Northwest hinting that fall will soon arrive in force with winter right behind. My hands were stained purple from the juice as the aroma of the berries wafted away with the wind as I picked. I also resisted nibbling as these berries have a taste of the tart apple when eaten raw. It’s best to use them in cookies or muffins as a substitute for raisins or blueberries. Mixing up a drink with other fruit works well, too.

Oh, and I need these for the homemade wine.

At close of day, on this Labor Day’s Eve, I’m only about a third of the way through the berries and I still have to pick corn.

So, Labor Day with be honored with labor – as it has always been on the farm.

 

Linked to Poets and Storytellers United, Writers' Pantry 86: Pet Training

Beetle-mania: 2021

This year I’ve enjoyed the mid-July success of: cutting weeds, trimming trees, cutting weeds, the first green bean harvest and… cutting weeds. It’s a never-ending battle of wills against a variety of nutrient sucking noxious weeds.

Another battle that arrives in early to mid-July is the annual invasion of Japanese Beetles. These little green voracious insects emerge from the ground and immediately engage in mating, then eating, and sometimes mating and eating at the same time. With a dozen or more beetles engaged in an orgy on a single apple leaf that they devour, with short pauses to fly to another engagement, I imagine that their overindulgences would impress Caligula of ancient Rome.

Nearly every year these beetles wreak havoc on our corn, apple trees, aronia and blackberries. They strip nearly every leaf of our valued fruit, while completely neglecting the weeds at the farm. I probably wouldn’t mind their presence if they would eat the wild parsnip but they only seem to target what we humans want.

Hungry little buggers

Not using caustic chemicals on our food, I concocted a potion made of lemony fresh dish soap and Thai chili peppers and tested on the aronias that our hungry, sex crazed beetles first attacked. While I found several dead beetles, I cannot attribute it to my formula. It could be they were resting (or dead) from coitus exhaustius. The next day I had even more of an infestation maybe due to this aphrodisiac spray inducing a redhot lemon/chili sex appetite and called all of their friends to join in. At least they were clean for that round of licentious debauchery and gluttony.

He could be resting

After exhaustive research (Google), I tried neem oil and a Spinosad bacterial concentrate that are approved for organic use. I was disappointed in not viewing their immediate death but it proved successful in that I no longer see the thousands of Japanese beetles but now only dozens of still breeding monsters and a second dose was administered.

The Gala apple trees are saved although damaged. The aronia berries, while stunted, should give us our best year of production for our wines.

I’ll raise a glass to their demise.

Cheers!

Posted to Poets and Storytellers United: Writers' Pantry #79: The Latest on the Shortest

Harvesting in the rain

We were late to pick our middling aronia harvest this year by about a week to 10 days. I was on-call last weekend with my paying job and was needed there. As with the previous post, yes, I was all wet this past Sunday.

It seems that as the planting season was wet, it is fitting that the harvest season be rainy as well.

Aronia berries are about the same size as blueberries and we use them as a substitute for blueberries and raisins in recipes. The health benefits of aronias are reported to be higher than other berries as well. While tart right off the vine, the cooking process takes that out of them. Mixing uncooked aronias with other berries in a blender and you don't notice.

We made a few bottles of wine from last year's harvest and it produced a dry port.

Here's a close up of a few berries:

Yep, all wet.

Flowers on Friday, Aronia berries

We have 70+ plants with hundreds of blooms. With luck, we should have a good crop this year.

Spring 2014 thaw

The pond is filling:

One of the apple trees:

Our aronia plants were cleaned out by the native rabbits as they clipped every plant. But there are signs of hope as buds are visible:

We invested a lot of time planting last fall and putting up fencing to keep the deer out, but I didn't add enough protection against the smaller critters. Deer are known to pull these plants out of the ground and the rabbits do a very good job of "pruning" small plants.We're encouraged that the aronias will respond well after this cold winter.

2013 Fall Planting Update

In mid-October we planted all the seedlings that David aka Sam delivered up to us. A couple of swamp white oak, a couple of catalpa and what ended up with 5 Kentucky coffeetree (a few volunteers were in the pots). The chestnut is planted in what is our new grove. I planted 5 more chestnut nuts so I think that qualifies as a grove.

The catalpa are framing the cedars as "bookends" on the west and the coffeetrees were added to the row with our showcase tree and to a couple of other rows with smaller coffeetrees. The swamp white oak were planted in the last row next to the willows.

Of course. all were caged with woven wire and chicken wire or hardware cloth to prevent the large and small vermin from doing damage.

Catalpa:

Swamp white oak:

Tree number one of the chestnut grove:

I planted 51 swamp white oak acorns up the bottom three rows using an old brass planting stick. I have 100+ planted in planters in the back yard of the homestead.

50 black oak acorns are planted in the northern three rows at the farm. Another 190 black oak acorns are in a bag of peat moss in the bottom of a fridge in the basement.

I have a couple of tubs buried in the garden that I sowed aronia seeds and planters that have paw paw seedlings and hard maple seeds that fell this fall from my neighbor's tree.

After a few more chestnuts get in the ground, I think I've just about finished with the fall planting.

Fall Planting Days

Two days of planting our inaugural Aronia berries.

After getting rained out* on Saturday, we went back at it Sunday to finish up. Using an antique post hole digger, I was able to dig 43 12-15 inch holes in about 90 minutes (33 holes on Saturday). It was recommended to us to plant at 2 feet apart but I was planting at about 30 inches. This was because the mark on my digger was at 25" and I used the handle to sight the row in and then rolled the digger up and started my first cut.

Getting soaked on Saturday and enjoying a cloud-free day on Sunday, the Mrs and youngest son joined me and we were able to get our two flats of aronia plants in the ground and a woven wire fence put up on both sides to hinder the deer. It's reported that deer won't eat the plants but they pull them out of the ground.

Some ground felt to keep the weeds down and some wet straw for cover.

*"Rained out" - that's the first time I've used that phrase in over two years.

One of 76:

Our finished row:

I then added 3 more pawpaw trees for a total of 9 after planting 6 the week before. 

Pawpaw trees need shade for the first year or two of their lives or they will burn up. I could have purchased tree tubes but I opted to use burlap since I have to build cages to keep deer under check. I also surrounded the seedling with hardware cloth to keep rabbits and mice away. To top the cage off, I used some old barbed wire to aggravate deer if they stick their noses in. We will probably need to raise the shade up next summer.

 Pawpaw in a burlap and wire cage:

We added a light 10-10-10 commercial fertilizer in each of the holes, both berries and pawpaws.

We picked up the plants from a local grower during a demo field day last week. I've been researching the aronia berry for awhile now but I got my first taste during the field day. A sweetener is recommended. No sugar needed for the pawpaws, though. With a taste that is a mix of banana and mango, it was also our first experience with the fruit and the Mrs. insisted we get a few trees.

Learn more about Aronia berries with the common name of Black Chokeberry.

More information about the Pawpaw.