Dear Members,
You will wish to be aware of the letter below from Office of the Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry, which encourages those impacted by hurricane Irene to work with their extension agents on loss reporting.
In the Central Region, we have not had the physical damage of high winds that was no doubt experienced by those in the Northern Neck, Eastern Shore, Southeastern, and Southside regions of Virginia but we have certainly been impacted by hurricane Irene and perhaps more so by hurricane Lee. These storms, coupled with the cold pressures from the Mid West has left us trapped in rain, mist and cloud without sun for many weeks now. This has simply stopped our fruit from reaching its full potential and helped the spread of disease from hail and bird damage.
Please read the Secretaries letter and let us know what damage you have had through our community page. If it is widespread then it may be worth us doing a survey to assess just how much fruit and what fruit has been lost. Formal reporting is, however, through your local Extension Agent and I urge you to contact them now.
Lucie Morton says “pick or perish” and we were certainly doing that with our Petit Verdot, which we picked in the rain today. Uurrgghhh!
Best of luck with what remains of your harvest.
Bill Tonkins
President, VVA
Aftonshire Vineyards
Letter from Virginia Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Todd P. Haymore
Chris Hill has written to me to say check the synopsis on the page below. He points out that the high pressure in the Atlantic around Bermuda is rotating clockwise, the low pressure from the leading edge of the cold fronts is rotating counter clockwise. We, are in the path of the southerly to northerly flow between the two systems, bringing moisture out of the gulf. Other wet harvest years, which he recalls are 1996. Sept. 99, and all of 2003. Other gnarly years were 89,and 94. In 86 we had a stupendous drought and he picked hislast grape, Cabernet sauvignon, on Sept 3. The next night Sept 4-5, He had 9 inches{23 cm} of rain. The wildness of our weather is awesome and as he has pointed out to me on many occassions; Virginia Viticulturists are the best in the world to manage these situations.
We clearly need to monitor the impact of years like this.
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