00:00:00.040 - 00:00:25.740

Okay I'm Joyce Griffin and Anna Darden and I are interviewing bob system this afternoon for the cinema County wine life. Today is September 27 28 1999. Are we on line stop? I thought here we go as I surface each one we're gonna start with your personal

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because we want to do whatever you like. We want to get your okay anyway. Okay so since I've got all this stuff that's how come they're doing it this way like I was saying okay so here comes the tape. I'll just stop there and shift over

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to the okay. Quite a bit written about it on the other page. Okay. I'm too yeah where you don't even remember having one? Yeah but not Okay. Now we're recording actually where you were born in your siblings. Well um I asked I'm going to have to

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be careful what I say here I am lying. We'll be making references to what we said before. No what we said before we want to get again. Well I met in the in the in the lead in of something that was going to say actually the

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family are northern California. I am my father and all of his brothers and his one sister all went to cal I've got an old yearbook that had all of them listed in. Uh huh. And on top of that there was a time when I thought you

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know if I could get to be governor or something. I I changed the name of Mount Shasta back to the name of system which is what it was to begin with because my great, great, great uncle or whatever line it comes down through was a lumber

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baron up there in that work in that part of the state, place burned down. They renamed it. But they're still a bridge between Mount Shasta city and we'd that systems passed to this day. So that's, that's where the family is. Northern California oriented. All my father

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was recruited, I guess you might put it from Berkeley High where he was going to school up to up to cow by anne smith, if that means anything to you because it was Andy smith. He was one of the most outstanding coaches that, you know, he

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has era, we were undefeated for years and it was, it was quite a deal. Anyway, World War One came along and he went in, of course he was in the ROTC and he didn't come back to school. He went to southern California. That's where things start

00:03:01.610 - 00:03:21.660

as far as I'm concerned. So you were born down there? Yeah, because he got out 19 I suppose when everybody else did. Hey and I was more than 23, I was trying to resist admitting that all admit is that I'm not 20 anymore. I can't get

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away with fooling myself on that one. But town were you born? What town were you born? Uh as far as I know, it's just L. A. It could have been Glendale could have been, they were, he spent most of his time in Glendale until the very

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end of everything when he and my stepmother moved out to the middle of the desert. So we had a an interesting thing. People have a Mhm. A lot of different opinions about broken family for me. I wound up with two sets of parents that were both

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great, couldn't have been any better as far as I'm concerned, my stepmother was Superintendent their nurses and she was one of the most highly regarded people you'd ever want to me, she was just a great person and my stepfather was and all the indiana boy that

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was in France in world War. And he wound up during the depression being on the Beverly Hills fire department. So we lived in and out of Beverly Hills on that side of the fence as I live with my mother. Were you an only child bob? Were

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you an only child? So I have a sister. Uh She lives over and well, she'd be happy here today, I'm sure Bullhead City in the point where Nevada and Arizona California darn near come together And a normal day this time with the euro with every 116.

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So she likes that weather. Well, I know whether she likes it or not, but it's something that's she doesn't seem to have any trouble with. But I really told her once, I just disowned her because her daughter's brood of which there are quite a few. I

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don't even know all our names. One of them was about to do something and that would make her a great grandmother. And I said I'm not I'm not related to anybody's great grandmother so you just can't pull that. That's the way it works now. Is she?

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Big sister? Little sister, she's suddenly you're younger than I would. I remember in all my clairvoyance. Uh she had a friend, she was playing in the backyard with Uh you know 7 8 years when you're binge hotshot teenager little kids some some kid by the name

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of Elizabeth Taylor I think it was little did I know but that was that didn't last long. She got into that National Velvet thing and that was when her mother dragged her off. I mean work on having anymore playtime in the backyard. So that was how

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it went down there. And I went I went to school all over the flights which was good. I must have gone to seven or 8 different grammar schools because the city of Beverly Hills insisted on all their employees living in town. This is on the wrong

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side of the tracks in Beverly Hills incident. And every time they relaxed the rag way we move out of there someplace else West L. A. Or something. So I would always change in school. So it kind of conditions you to get acquainted with people real quick,

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make a lot of friends and that was fine. I didn't mind that when I got into high school. Yeah. Have an interesting experience of either. I've always been this way I guess I'm either the first or the last. Because when I graduated from Grammar School in

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6th grade And we went straight into high school starting in the 7th grade, left Los Angeles and everything. Then they came in with the middle schools. Junior highs are and what they were up until recently every time that I'd go up a grade they cut it

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off. So by the time I got up around the 9th grade there wasn't any seventh or eighth. It was all over the other school. It's an interesting experience being the last. And then we had to go back into Beverly Hills and I went to school there

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which was burger really because that was one of the highly was highly rated high schools in the country. I understand there was going back in Ohio that may be rivaled it. But it was only in recent times that I got to thinking about what actually was

00:08:11.840 - 00:08:29.320

going on in Penny attention to it at the time. All of our teachers were phds you don't find high school stopped with phds that much. But then it was during the depression and you took a job wherever you could get it. But I remember dr Morrison

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dr al it was always good Lord. I'd forgotten what we call them all dr something and that's the way it was. So it was a tough school man. It paid off later because it made it a lot easier when you get into the higher, higher areas

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of learning. So that's that was my brawn as far as going that far was concerned. uh that immediately, that was winter 41 when I graduated and things happened on a large scale, not too long after that. So I spent about three years in the military on

00:09:09.810 - 00:09:31.730

active duty with the Air, not the Air Force. It was the Army Air Force for in some case it was still the Army Air Corps anyway. But when I got to the point where I thought I was going overseas on an occupation job right now. Somebody

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came in the orderly room. We don't know if any of us want to join the reserves While I had gone from being an enlisted man and a gunner on B-24s to a commission navigator, a few other things. And I said, yeah I don't care to go

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through this again. I'm going to be a reservist and I was in effect still am I'm retired from the Air Force to as well as the university of California and I spent 30 years doing that fact. That thing I gave you to read, made some mention

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of it in the why I mentioned that I have in Vegas idea but I did because I was the civil defense Wales on officer for fourth Air force and sixth to sixth Army and the state military forces command. Now that was a fun job. I was

00:10:21.270 - 00:10:44.250

responsible for every base we had in the state to have them understand. They had an obligation two provide some assistance to civilian authority for civil defense. But this was back when the Cold War was still a rather serious matter. And it was an interesting job because

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I've made it a point to visit every one of those bases and talk to the there's actual preparedness officers and what have you. And that was that was fun. We had a squadron here in Sonoma County before that. Back in the 60s when the Cuban thing

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came along that we built from scratch, went over a deal and just came back with two or three quantum huts. We took a part borrowed all this stuff from Hamilton's built the base right on the county airport. I talked to supervisors and letting us do it.

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Yeah, they're still using some of that stuff up aerial forest fire people. Do you remember what year? That was 50 would be about 62 somewhere in that lunch. Yeah. Mhm. A pack of McNamara didn't let it stay very long. Their own McNamara. But we had these

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were re recovery squatters. Our job was to have a place for people that were in trouble. The land and provide medical and everything else they needed. And there were a lot of things that weren't built into the program. So I simply rearranged it the way I

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thought it should be like giving them A meteorology briefing and everything else to get them back where they came from. And you were you farm advisor then? Uh so what year did you become farm advice? Well actually by title in 53 uh because my beginnings here

00:12:12.550 - 00:12:37.070

were in 50 and I've graduated from cal and wound up going clear to L. A. And a week later they called me and asked me if I liked it to take this research job this and on the comedy. So that's that's how that works. But we're

00:12:37.070 - 00:12:54.970

talking a lot about some of this stuff. You know the great thing in the state has been around a whole lot a long time. The 1st 1st thing I have any notes on where the plantings, that san Diego mission, The father's planet. That was about 1770,

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something like that. And the first private planning was in La In about 1824. And mostly it was situated around Anaheim where Disneyland is now. And that Anaheim thing is an interesting point of reference to because there's one disease that still haunts us and it scares a

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lot of people and they should be. But it was originally known as California vine disease. Then it became known as Anaheim disease. And then dr Pearson was working on it and became known as Pierce's disease now we just call it P. D. Now we call Pd

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So pierce's has become forever famous person by being stuck with what was believed to be the only virus of grapevine is known in the state or anywhere else for that matter. Along the way here maybe I'm having a little trouble Filling in this when I left

00:14:03.470 - 00:14:23.530

active duty in 85 and now and say it wasn't that long ago but it was probably more like 30 years ago. And when someone suddenly realized that all of the specimens that had anything to do with Pd and these were slides and stuff that had been

00:14:23.530 - 00:14:42.150

made, they never could could transmit it as a virus. You know like if we were using it for propagating material or something like that didn't do it. And all the other viruses that we now know are quite easily moved by bad choices for her using her

00:14:42.160 - 00:15:01.500

for Signer bud wood. In any event it turns out that there was always something else on the slide besides what the folks the virus and it was a bacteria and that is the cause of pierce disease, not a virus. I'll get into some of these other

00:15:01.500 - 00:15:24.200

things that we build a little further. That's all the thing that I'm amused by is that as recently as last sunday the pd the fresh democrat had this special magazine about Sonoma county and all this stuff in it And our illustrious today's sort of egg editor

00:15:24.840 - 00:15:41.180

once upon a time when he was younger, he was all egg editor. But now he's kind of drifting off into the other matters. Made the statement that the first planting in Sonoma County was at the cinema mission by their fathers and tim was quite mistaken because

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the first planting in Sonoma County was made by the Russians at for ross. I don't know the dates of Fort Ross but I have a feeling that if they were going to plant something like a great plane they would go in the ground rather rapidly after

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they made landfall. So so whenever Fort ross was created I think that's when they, the original planting was made. That was, that was the way this thing went. We are our industry more or less started with harassing and the establishment of Buena vista and he was

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commissioned by the state horticultural society or whatever bitter cultural society or something of that nature. To go to France. I am select all of that stuff that he could find and he did 1852 About. Well it would have to be somewhere in that in that range.

00:16:45.210 - 00:17:08.110

And 1861 is what I have a note on. I bet that's when that's when he went over and that was the beginning of the real, so normal planning is the old literature that I've encountered over the years gives me to acreage figures And you can take

00:17:08.110 - 00:17:26.770

your pick because I've seen 42,500 a number of times. I've also seen 60,000 acres a couple of times. So it could have been either one. I'm not so sure they were all that careful about measuring anything just to know how much it was. But there were

00:17:26.770 - 00:17:46.480

a lot of grapes And they all went out in 19 in 1878 with the 1st Phylloxera infestation. Just clean the place out. I've had occasion to mention that if you go up in today's world on the shepherd place who was a descendant of London out of

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glen Ellyn. If you get into that back country brush, there's still a few grapevines still kicking around. They have the capacity for a very long lives given a chance. In fact, I had occasion when I was first on the job as a rookie of meeting someone

00:18:06.270 - 00:18:23.730

and I couldn't locate today with to save me where it was in alexander valley. There were a block of missions that they told me they were 100 years old then and they were still kicking out eight tons to the acre. So the mission itself, this is

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different from the wild grapes. These were Europeans that were brought in. The missions were the ones that the Franciscan fathers. I guess it was the Franciscans planet at all. The missions, they were kind of uh nondescript variety, but nevertheless they grew and they made their sacramento

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and everything was fine. So that's the way it went. And then we have had ups and downs across the board In 19 what was 1919 prohibition came along and that kind of raised the dickens with them and then World War Two had a marked impact on

00:19:06.050 - 00:19:29.900

a agricultural activities this innova county because a lot of the major hard booze outfits came tearing out here and what everything they could get. National distillers on italian swiss I think taylor had what his mouth, Elmo martinis ways. He got it back from them and they

00:19:29.900 - 00:19:45.240

were using it for alcohol. That was our only interest. They didn't give a darn about wine. So they just distilled the yeah, but they, the minute the war was over, they couldn't get out of here fast enough which I laughed about many many times because national

00:19:45.240 - 00:20:03.440

distillers had the biggest facility we had in that time frame in the county and they dumped it and then after we got things going the way I thought maybe it would be a better way to do it with the premiums now they couldn't get back here

00:20:03.440 - 00:20:24.550

fast enough and they bought, I'm not sure, I can't remember the name of the outfit down there was uh in Monterey County and they bought in, bought a growing winery and went right back when they ran the first time and the rest of them are in

00:20:24.550 - 00:20:47.410

this in some way somewhere. So that's that's the story of the early days with mhm with the the grapes in the state and in the county as I see it and then there's me And that starts in with 1950 And by that time we were down

00:20:47.410 - 00:21:12.040

to about 20 acres and by 53 I've got some of the old a commissioner's reports, we're down to about 11 7 and by the time uh huh, Anybody even thought about turning something around, we were down almost nine. Oh, my livestock partner on staff used to

00:21:12.050 - 00:21:29.860

just needle the heck out of me about pulling all those dark grapes out, put them in a sheep pasture, which was happening. uh it might be in reverse these days, but what is our acreage today to compare? What is the acreage today? Well, I'm not sure

00:21:30.100 - 00:21:49.280

when I left, we were right up about 33,000 last time I saw anything or with somebody had Over 40 and pushing 45 now where we are, it's hard to say because I hate to think it created a Frankenstein's monster here. But the thing that disturbs me

00:21:49.280 - 00:22:11.880

no end or these people are, they're, they're outsiders that have come up and all of a sudden their opinion becomes something that everybody's gonna hear and they just decry monoculture As if 40, acres of grapes as monoculture in a county that has a million acres most

00:22:11.880 - 00:22:32.980

of which is in livestock and it's too bad. But there drawn to that kind of attention getting to make some kind of an outlandish statement. Anyway, the reason I came up was that we went through this business of the first Bill Oxford and, and then prohibition

00:22:32.980 - 00:22:50.580

and then the war and all of these impacted the price. Now Louisville faux Priano senior and I were at a meeting here a number of years ago and louis and I worked laughing about something And he told me he remembered paying $18 a ton for the

00:22:50.580 - 00:23:18.960

grapes that he would mind at what period that was, I'm not absolutely sure. But in my own stuff here, I've got Some cost studies that go back to 53 and we were getting actually 37 50 for whites and $40 for reds boy with a good price.

00:23:19.340 - 00:23:34.560

But this was a come down from what they got during the war of $120 a time for distilling material. Yeah. And they didn't care what it was, it was, that's all they wanted. That was great. Something that they could make alcohol out of. And when the

00:23:34.560 - 00:23:54.260

war was over, the price went on its nose and everybody was negative as, as you couldn't believe how negative they were there already quit and you know, you guys are baby on the verge of making a hell of a mistake. I am. And this was where

00:23:54.260 - 00:24:16.370

I started in the reason that I came up was because of this bud white thing. It was another scores that was Threates statewide. They were estimating that it would be a $10 million dollar loss, which was considerable money back 50 and It had been thoroughly researched.

00:24:16.380 - 00:24:36.690

My old boss found something that he started it in 37. I am. The university has several different levels of publications of Hill Guardians. The top one to hill guardians were written by our animal logical team that was on this. There were three of them from Davis

00:24:36.690 - 00:24:53.170

and one from Berkeley and they had it all figured this is this is what's doing it, this is what the symptoms are. And so all I was supposed to do was come up and find a way to control and it wasn't any doubt about what it

00:24:53.170 - 00:25:11.530

was doing and where it was going. My job was to find a control and that's what I started doing. So I was actually on the county payroll for the first couple of years because farm advisors weren't permitted to call their their fieldwork research. We had some

00:25:11.540 - 00:25:31.740

on campus residents faculty that didn't like some of these guys outside calling what they were doing research. So uh as a county assistant, I call anything, I was doing research, which is what it said right here on this and we let it go at that. And

00:25:31.750 - 00:25:51.840

it started some interesting chains of events because I got called back to duty when Korea broke mm and I had to go before a board of curls and explain why I should not be exempted. And I said, I don't even know if I'm going to have

00:25:51.840 - 00:26:06.910

a job come july because you know the thing with a year by year thing, I didn't know how long the county was going to be willing to go along with this. So they cut orders and then Berkley suddenly made a move that one of the top

00:26:06.920 - 00:26:23.100

regional director who would became my boss came up and asked if I have any objection if they went over and talked to the commanding general. See if I can stay right where I was. They didn't want that research program interfered with. So was that cast, was

00:26:23.100 - 00:26:45.060

that cast? Yeah, that was cal sure our people for we were known as agricultural extension that I mean it's always been a cooperative extension. That's the, the official federal title of the smith lever activity which established the activity but we were California, we do it our

00:26:45.060 - 00:27:04.630

way. So we were extension and so tip came up. It was quite a guy and the next thing I knew I got a telegram disregard the orders and they were so it was really a concern matter about this thing. But I've been had it for about

00:27:04.640 - 00:27:25.660

two years at that point and the further I went and the more I spent time on the microscopes. Binoculars scopes looking at these guys, they just infest the blood, something terrible, Maybe Several 100 maybe 1000 in one but a great but is like an artichoke, it

00:27:25.660 - 00:27:42.450

looks, each bracket is just like you peel off an order show to eat it. And they were they were in there and this is the uranium might. That was also being called the blood might at that time if people don't do any protective work for their

00:27:42.450 - 00:27:57.360

vineyards, the uranium mike and get out on the leaves and cause Aaron knows polyps and they look kind of ugly. I don't know that they do any much serious damage, but they are not anything you'd like to have happen. So this is this is the way

00:27:57.360 - 00:28:16.070

this thing was going. And like I say, the further I went, the more I began to wonder if that might really had anything to do with this. one of our entomologists out of the riverside campus was alerted to the whole thing by one of our farm

00:28:16.070 - 00:28:34.560

advisors. I guess it was san Bernardino County and cucamonga. I think that belongs to L. A. Or Sandberg, whichever. And he was looking at some vines down there. There's a variety was the material very slightly grown. They're not much shocks, but they were grown, they still

00:28:34.560 - 00:28:51.480

are, we call it more veterans. Sounds fancy. Thank you were growing up. You want to look a little bit now we're going to preserve two of the old ones for I don't know how long the Alicante bouchet and the ground. Who are they're both red juice

00:28:51.480 - 00:29:09.990

graves and the harvest fair is going to keep those things growing if it's the last thing they do because they can't have a good grape stomp without having read juice flying every place. Actually. The red juice variety these days is the Salvador. That's a valley grape

00:29:09.990 - 00:29:29.870

that he's a hot country. Great. But it's also a red juice. And this whole matter of juice is an interesting misconception or lack of knowledge by the rest of the, the world, except for the growers and I'm not so sure all of them are aware of

00:29:29.870 - 00:29:47.960

it, the better sure are because most of the champagne, an awful lot of the champagne that's made in champagne is made from pinot Noirs. And if that's burgundy, if you let them go and keep them on the skins and so you can, you can use dark

00:29:47.970 - 00:30:11.540

skin grace for no color. Are people up in the Sierra foothills have been doing this with zinfandels. They put that white Zinfandel allowed to take advantage of this flash white domination thing. Anyway, uh huh, when Barnes started working on that bunch of meth arrows down there,

00:30:11.550 - 00:30:28.960

he found all the symptoms that have been described just as I was finding them here there and yon all over the county, but never for sure associated with the mic and in his case there weren't any might and that when he did that he and I

00:30:28.960 - 00:30:52.500

were in communication. So well he's, I said, I've got a lead, one of my growers one year, couldn't get all these pruning done by the normal time of say the end of january or something like that. Get out of here. E anyway, he wound up doing

00:30:52.500 - 00:31:13.400

it very late, clearing into april to get the job finished and all the stuff. The prune late was totally free of the symptoms. Well, we got to take a hard look at this. So Barnes immediately set up six months, studied november december january, february, March and

00:31:13.400 - 00:31:37.090

april, which I duplicated here. And this is an interesting point that any research that we do away from the university owned property like the Oakville vineyards in Napa County, which belongs still up to the university was an old USDA thing. But at one time anyway, it's

00:31:37.100 - 00:31:55.700

entirely based on you folks as growers to be a cooperator. If we're going to get anything done and take your chances on us reckon it and I never really had any problem with it. Most of the guys were more than willing to be a part of

00:31:55.700 - 00:32:13.410

the research and that's the way this went. And it was the way it was going when I was down at the country place that was one of these things were being good is nice, but being lucky, he doesn't hurt Because they had three blocks of grapes

00:32:13.420 - 00:32:34.120

in from highway 12 that were an incredible thing. I couldn't have designed a location any better, deliberately. The first block was all materials. The second block was half Matar rose and half caravans, which was the one showing the worst symptoms up here. The 3rd 1 was

00:32:34.120 - 00:32:54.660

all carrying out. I don't know why big boy clinical that way, but I didn't care. So can I dive there? Well in the meanwhile, I've been talking to Professor Winkler about this whole thing from day one and we wouldn't have anything to do with those first

00:32:54.660 - 00:33:12.450

couple of years and this, he'd been completely taken him in, told by the high powered publications of the anim ologists and all that stuff and he wouldn't have it. He said, this is an animal, logical problem. So after that 1st, 2nd and 3rd year, I went

00:33:12.450 - 00:33:29.260

back and said, now we're gonna have a long talk. I said we were looking at something here that may not have anything to do with that white and it's entirely possible that there are other things that are causing this problem that haven't even been examined yet.

00:33:29.940 - 00:33:48.160

So dan he decided he was gonna get in the act. So he came over and we started working together, which was ultimately good for sure and maybe a lot of other peoples in the long run. But oh, that's when we got into this and the stuff

00:33:48.160 - 00:34:10.000

I was working with kept defying old conventional wisdom and it is bothering, you know, I mean, some of these beliefs go back for virtually centuries. I am a one of them was that it doesn't make any difference what time during the dormant season? You prune a

00:34:10.000 - 00:34:30.670

grapevine. It's gonna behave the same as long as the leaves have fallen. And the thing is out of commission dormant until you get so much growth that you don't wait any longer. You can have terminal growth out on the canes. That's okay. But that, that's didn't

00:34:30.670 - 00:34:48.170

mean anything as long as they got prune sometimes. And yet. What Barnes and I were both finding out was that there was a clear cut difference in the vines behavior if they're pruned in his case november and april were pretty much the same december and marsh

00:34:48.170 - 00:35:05.830

were pretty much the same. And february was so, so, and we both found out january was the worst month you could pick because that's when the symptoms showed the strongest. The least symptoms were the late March in april. And that wasn't supposed to happen. So thank

00:35:05.860 - 00:35:25.140

God, I got very interested in that. And I went even further because I figure if there's any way that this, this has some application because all the stuff I've done testing materials was not proving anything. We had a parasites on the shelf that we're quite capable

00:35:25.140 - 00:35:38.160

and very good at killing the mic, but you couldn't get them to the mic. And we had to use a wedding agent to get anything inside that. But in the wedding agents killed the bud. So so much for the chemical approach. So, well, maybe we can

00:35:38.170 - 00:35:56.520

do something this way. And I said obviously nobody with any size of a planet is going to be able to wait until the middle of february and do all their approving it in that period through March and maybe the first week or so in april, it

00:35:56.530 - 00:36:16.220

just isn't going to happen. So I had to find out whether or not there was some way that this could be done partially and it went back to something else that I had run onto. So I started in testing to see whether we could partly, partly

00:36:16.220 - 00:36:35.770

prune the vine and then completely finish it later. And I worked that down. I wanted to find out how much more pain had to be taken off beyond the budget that you wanted to save for the reaction to take place. So I started in saying, okay,

00:36:35.780 - 00:36:51.340

this is gonna be a two budgets for, this is gonna be a three bunch spur, I'll leave just a piece of wood, I'll leave one extra but two extra buttons, three. I went out to four, half a cane and the whole thing. And I found out

00:36:52.230 - 00:37:13.260

that Leaving 1, 2 and three and the piece of wood did absolutely nothing, they behaved the way they is if they've been proven completely when you did it this the in between time was january, But when we got to four extra buds then when you took

00:37:13.260 - 00:37:29.250

that piece off the vine acted like it had been proven in april, just bang, just like somebody threw a switch. And on top of that we found out there was a break point in, in february, February 15 to be precise. Where if you prove it after

00:37:29.250 - 00:37:45.560

that time you got the late season effect and prior to that date you got the midwinter effect and don't ask me to explain because nobody can. It's just one of those things that we have an answer for. But for some weird reason, like I have occasionally

00:37:45.570 - 00:38:02.940

said, the only thing unique about the 15th of favor worries the length of day and that's a constant. Everything else is a variable the weather or anything you want to name, but it's the way it works. So the rationale that I was after was that you

00:38:02.940 - 00:38:20.640

could put experience pruners in anytime december january, I don't care what and have them leave four budget more than they ultimately want to wind up with and then you can hire anybody that could work a pair of shears and tell him to cut four buds off

00:38:22.120 - 00:38:43.830

and you could practically run and do that. So yep, it's the way it went and we were trying to do this and they never did get put into practice to any real serious extent. We sounds that some other things At the same time, there was a

00:38:43.840 - 00:39:02.650

delay factor that was introduced in the budding out after 15 February, Maybe as much as 10 days to two weeks difference in budding out between the january prune stuff and the late March april prune stuff. And that was being used by the growers as frost protection.

00:39:03.720 - 00:39:21.500

They brought that right now, we'll use it for frost protection and if it does some other good, that's nice too. And then we found out that there was an increase in crop on the late prune stuff over the midwinter prone stuff. No more clusters, maybe better

00:39:21.500 - 00:39:38.120

fill clusters. I don't know what I mean. It was all stuff that that Winkler just shook his head time and time and time and time again, is that this can't be happening and yet at once. So that's, that's how we, we got to the point where

00:39:38.120 - 00:39:58.030

we were getting. And in the course of having dr Mickler over here for that long and then we went at this for five years. I wound up getting the About three or 4 semesters worth of viticulture with him as my personal tour and that I appreciate

00:39:58.030 - 00:40:20.220

it greatly. He used to accuse be vacuuming his head and the one that really got him the worst was when we took uhh several single vines and prune half, half of one even quarters, one quarter in january, the next quarter and March the next quarter in

00:40:20.220 - 00:40:39.830

january the next quarter in March. And we found out in a hurry, that a vine doesn't act as a unit. It acts by as an integrated system kind of like some of the stuff you see on the how the old star trek things or there's many

00:40:40.910 - 00:41:03.420

inputs coming from something and you wind up with an end result. But that wasn't supposed to happen. But those vines, the january prune halves were out two weeks before the other half were. And if you think that didn't shake a professor or a, it was really,

00:41:03.430 - 00:41:24.560

it was really amusing because all this stuff was just, all the old literature can't happen. But this time of pruning business originally started because of the bud might. They thought this is what I was doing was using it because in that late prune stuff, these symptoms

00:41:24.560 - 00:41:46.900

almost disappeared completely. And then we found out That in that Middle Block where the matter is and the recurring airs were together, the carrying as could carry populations where there were 5, 600,000 of these damn things. Blacked on the bloods Marrow's had none. A stray once

00:41:46.900 - 00:42:06.510

in a while would be over there. So there were differences in their tastes too. But they're not the only creatures that are taste sensitive. I've found out over time that some species, other species of mites, like the pacific mike mike, the ones that you have to

00:42:06.520 - 00:42:31.320

be very careful about because they can just about defoliated fine if you don't do something are attracted to zinfandels. Are there a prime target? Other varieties? Not so much. Yeah, this thing goes on. I have seen cases going back to these early days and I didn't

00:42:31.320 - 00:42:57.750

mention that most everything that was in the ground were standard varieties. Something like well I wouldn't call, I don't call the Zinfandel a standard, I call it a a medium premium. That's my own definition. And the term premium wasn't being used either. I mean it was

00:42:57.750 - 00:43:25.450

something I shifted over to use to describe what I wanted to growers to start thinking about was grow on the real class stuff. Mhm. So we were we were looking at all these things and yeah, I'll see what we want to go into next. I was

00:43:25.460 - 00:43:44.690

backing up for a reason that you found out that the late pruning helps the But the thing I was going on was the absence of premiums. We only had three plannings, only one of which had an active winery and that was frank Bartholomew was when a

00:43:44.690 - 00:44:03.270

vista that he had taken over that was harassed these original place and he had give extra meters. He had cabernets. He had several if you look at these old egg reports, I had a long drawn out difference of opinion with the Egg Commissioner is a good

00:44:03.280 - 00:44:23.700

friend of mine. I don't want to put down all the names. I said you've got to so I want people to know what's happening here. If you look at the at the really elderly ones properly force. See if I find one that's somewhere now. Uh huh.

00:44:25.190 - 00:44:38.550

No may is here. Well it doesn't matter. He didn't want to call the Cameron. He just called it reds and whites probably you know to show what we were doing. So they just called it reds and whites in the. Well that basically was it. Although they

00:44:38.550 - 00:44:58.910

would they would run a list. I am the list. I'm thinking that I was looking at just just to review myself yesterday or the day before. Uhh there were no cabernets. Well there were 35 acres I think there was all Louis Martini's Because he had the

00:44:58.920 - 00:45:15.350

Monte Rosa. The other two planning this one was his up on monty ross although Goldstein Ranch. And the third one was found growth which still had a planning at that time. That was being taken care of By a chap known as George K. In the 50s.

00:45:15.750 - 00:45:33.730

This is in 50 in the very beginning I got to know k very quite well. He was very proud of that planning. I mean he was turning out premium stuff and the founder of label was welcomed. Well thought of prior to its decline and then it

00:45:33.730 - 00:45:48.540

was the place was taken over by a guy that wanted to run her furs. Well I thought that the man who ran it. Well never mind. That's another story. I guess you're talking about the prince right? The Japanese man. Well he was long gone but I

00:45:48.540 - 00:46:06.040

thought he liked having cattle on it also. Well, I'm not saying there weren't cattle, I mean there were planning wasn't very big, but this guy Beckel that came along and bought the whole thing. I think water's bought it from him and walter. His whole thing was

00:46:06.040 - 00:46:31.940

strictly cowboy. Well, walter was a horseman. Walter was a horseman. Yeah, he was the horsemen. Beckel was more cowboy than anything. Uh, so getting along with things here, I started in the course of looking for these research locations where we could run trials. I still thought

00:46:31.940 - 00:46:51.230

everything that was happening. And one of the things that really bothered me was they were being grown right on the ground. I mean virtually you didn't have even a foot Claris from the lower part of the head to the ground and that was not what we

00:46:51.230 - 00:47:19.400

were after. So one of the first things that I wound up doing was too, no, what happened to him? Good, good show. Um, They didn't use stakes. Maybe they had some pickets in the ground 3-3 ft high. They couldn't use roll flowers. They had, they were

00:47:19.400 - 00:47:39.570

cross cultivating and everything. You, you looked at, This is another observation. They're all close planets seven x 7 or eight by Huh? And you couldn't get equipment and they had to use special design tractors for any power equipment. Couldn't pull spray rigs, you couldn't have used

00:47:39.570 - 00:47:54.650

a Duster, you wound up picking the fruit off the ground. Just about and a lot of them didn't get a clean pick because the pickers wouldn't get down there. And when it was muddy particularly and get those clusters they were down low and all these things

00:47:54.650 - 00:48:15.420

were really given me some cross for concern. one of the first things I was task to do was to find a rope plow that would work under those conditions. We have lots of rope files, but they were all either pneumatic or hydraulic And they were designed

00:48:15.430 - 00:48:30.750

for vines that were headed up here around 30, 30 years is they're so high and they had a lot of trunk so that the trip lever on the cloud had something that trunk, right? You couldn't use them on the on our stuff. They went right over

00:48:30.750 - 00:48:48.000

the top of it. So I finally found one in the valley that was spring loaded to stay in a working position and it would get under him and it would activate on about that high off the ground. It was the like and plow. We had a

00:48:48.000 - 00:49:05.290

lot of those around because the guy saw that was a great get rid of those disk blocks because they had to go in on hand wheel practically those blocks. So that was another thing that needed to be worked on seriously. I don't think there was anybody

00:49:05.290 - 00:49:19.670

that was growing grapes in those days. They didn't have a bad back because they were all having to do everything bent over. I mean I don't care if there was throwing a pecking or what it was, It was bent over all the time. And I say

00:49:19.670 - 00:49:45.730

we couldn't accommodate commercial, that's control rigs. And then we get into this matter of good place to do that. Of the mildew, which we call mildew is odium in europe. They're mildew and downy mildew, which we had. We have a guest on roses, we had a

00:49:45.740 - 00:50:09.140

strain that was hot mildred. That was Downey, mm, fortunately we never have had down to get involved with the grapes to take summer rainfall really to flirt up what we call pottery mildew. They call audience and our people have the interesting idea that what they wanted

00:50:09.140 - 00:50:23.710

was to buy the heaviest sufferer that they could get that stunk to high heaven on a day like this would just be wonderful for them if you could smell one of those fingers about a mile and a half away and it was the fumes that was

00:50:23.720 - 00:50:41.280

what was giving them the prevention or control of the mildew. So I had a dubious job of stepping on another one of the old, the old things this, this went on and on and on. You don't just suddenly show up and start saying, hey, you're doing

00:50:41.280 - 00:51:00.960

this all wrong. You know, I mean, it's not the way you do it, You try and discuss it intelligently and friendly. One of my top growers out in the, all of that, flat out there west of santa rosa. He and I were talking one day under,

00:51:00.970 - 00:51:16.770

under his trellis about the height of the vines. Why can't we get these things up in the air where they belong or you can do something to him? Oh, they can't, the trucks wouldn't be able to handle the weight. And we were standing under his trellis

00:51:17.110 - 00:51:35.060

with four vines with trunks about 5" in diameter. And I said, how do you account for the, and he looked at him a minute and he said, well maybe you've got a point. Oh, and that's that's that's how you kind of split it in gently. It

00:51:35.060 - 00:52:02.060

wasn't too hard to get people to and to pay attention. Anyway, that's where we were at that point in time and this was mostly height off the ground, height off the ground. And the other thing that I saw in great abundance was this close space business.

00:52:02.060 - 00:52:28.730

There was uh huh. Oh no. Would you like to take a bit of a break? No, I just wanted to try and find my notes here. And that was one page suddenly has taken flight. We got them all back. Yeah. Well, okay, let's just stop for

00:52:28.730 - 00:52:52.430

a minute. If I can figure out how to stop this guy. Yeah. So you've had six lamps altogether Old. Tar was one and then bud was his second Bonnie. one was 3rd Bonnie to his 4th tina was fifth And this one is sex? And what's this

00:52:52.430 - 00:53:12.960

one's name? She's another bunny uh bunny teal. That's the name that's on the paper now. Her real name that I'm called her is poco negro diablo. And that's how you call her every time. Hey you get out, that's all I can tell you. Get out, Hong

00:53:12.960 - 00:53:32.390

kong they grow the album. But she's been extremely good therapy because mrs was she was hurting from losing the house. And then when we had the old dog go out about three months ago, that was that was more than she could handle. And I was really

00:53:32.390 - 00:53:51.530

holding out to try and find one, you know a canine companion or a guide dog reject or something that maybe you're too old. Mhm. And skip all this puppy business. But she didn't want to do that. She wanted to start from scratch. Have our own. But

00:53:51.530 - 00:54:17.160

it does concern me. Of course my daughter has a lab. So the thing that makes me mindful is after we got through getting out of that house and whenever we're going going into the pretzels mold. I had a little problem Where the Bypass was the second

00:54:17.160 - 00:54:33.830

one I had really the other one held up for 22 years. Not bad. And this one just suddenly waited until I got everything out and then I wound up all of a sudden flight and went back for about three weeks. When was this? When was a

00:54:34.210 - 00:54:52.560

year ago? When your house slid down the hill. You mean? Well it was in the process of moving. Consider you got everything out of the house and then you had to go to the hospital. Very hard. Yeah. Big fun deal. Are you still on the property

00:54:53.140 - 00:55:11.110

for all the difference it makes. I'm stuck with it because the whole acre and a half a shot. Yes, it's virtually unusable. I'm kind of put out with a board because they just cut us out of that buyout thing that they had gone with bonito on

00:55:11.110 - 00:55:28.530

the fema deal. We were supposed to be included and they just chopped it off with a needle. I see miserable. All right. I look at all this stuff and I think of all the tax money they've got to play with because of this and then make

00:55:28.530 - 00:55:49.930

them. But these are all urban people. If I had one of my boards like Helen Rudy or Helen Putnam or Nika pastilles or Harry Connick saw for or briancon, they would have never happened. I don't know these people and I'm not gonna say anything because they

00:55:49.940 - 00:56:09.660

do provide well for the office and that's my main concern is I wouldn't, I wouldn't make a stink just to protect the staff but once you're it's the only house in the area that slid. Yeah. Uh huh. At this point in time I've got to neighbors

00:56:10.230 - 00:56:26.440

mm. I would not care to be in their shoes and I think I think it's time we get rid of this place because nobody's gonna even takes who looks at and I'm gonna try and take that other one down. I haven't done that yet. But I

00:56:26.440 - 00:56:47.650

was talking to him guy hire an engineering house that and they're going to build some kind of a, I don't know what I talked to A young fellow that was putting observation holds down because there's things about a 40-foot deep movement and if it's not more

00:56:48.230 - 00:57:04.310

anyway I asked him, I said what are you guys gonna do if he wants to to try and reinforce this thing? And he said well we'll come up with something. I said yeah like you but not for the north and the Golden Gate bridge and that's

00:57:04.310 - 00:57:21.990

about what it will take. I don't have an, I have no idea. If we get a couple more El nino type heavy winters I wouldn't give you a plug nickel for either one of them. So where are you living now bob, where are you living now?

00:57:22.000 - 00:57:43.930

Well we had to move three times that year to first time put everything in stories and rolling my daughter's place. She's got on rental with a cozy little arrangement for a couple and we found a rental all Russian aid and then fortunately I had an outstanding

00:57:43.930 - 00:57:58.020

staff. I got into a big argument with one of my regional super writers that How about a young fellow that wanted to come down and be our four H guy one, what are the others left? And she says you can't have him, you got all the

00:57:58.020 - 00:58:18.320

good ones already. And I said I've got news for you. I said anything, I've got yours. She shut up. Mm. But that makes you shut up. Mhm. But that's the way it worked. And one of the gals was on about six months before I was with

00:58:18.330 - 00:58:33.920

my other four H advisor. She was really a cracker Jack when she retired about 34 years after I did, she went into real estate. So I just got ahold harry and said, hey, finally find me something that Betty will stand still for sure. So the two

00:58:33.920 - 00:58:51.320

of them want out and we wound up over mrs Nielsen's old christmas, freeform behind yardbirds. Oh yes, on a corner lot, perfectly content with it. I mean it doesn't have that acre and a half to take care of anymore. Maybe that's good any time you're ready

00:58:51.420 - 00:59:04.690

to go. Okay, so let's start forever. Okay, let's go on the other hand, I really don't want to leave anything out. All right, so let's get back to business is for the archives. We're going to have to get something said about nearly everything or it's going

00:59:04.690 - 00:59:23.390

to be forgotten. All right. So we were talking about vine head height. Oh yeah, well we're talking we'll go now as soon as you're okay, The next thing that was of concern to me was this matter of spacing and at the time that all this was

00:59:23.400 - 00:59:41.430

happening? We were still in the blood white project of course. But oh doc Winkler was running some some vine spacing trials over at the Oakville vineyard. eight x 12 is what we were trying to get around to. And he figured that that was that was the

00:59:41.430 - 00:59:57.520

one that was about right. So I said, well let's find out what happens if we open some of these old ones up now. This is where you get you take your cooperators right to the edge of the envelope because I wanted to go in and take

00:59:57.520 - 01:00:16.990

out every other role on a diagonal a chunk. Pretty good size chunk and or two or 3. I'm perfectly willing to do that to find out if the, if the opening up of the area would increase the water supply And the vines would make up the

01:00:16.990 - 01:00:45.830

difference. And in three years and I think you have a a copy of this, believe and I'm sure this matter of yield and quality response, I think. So anyway, in three years that controls were putting out as much production as the old unaffected seven x 7

01:00:46.300 - 01:01:08.050

and we did the same thing with eight x 8s and had the same results. So between Winkler's work starting from scratch and what I did. We uh pretty well we made our point as far as, you know, open ending open the things up so that we

01:01:08.050 - 01:01:20.540

could get adam to do whatever had to be done. So when you did that, did you add trellis then? No, these were these were just left alone. I mean they were right down the ground but at least you could get at them. So how the thing

01:01:20.540 - 01:01:35.520

about the the real problem of being on the ground and close spaces that you couldn't spray for fighter mike's or something like that. So by close space, do you mean eight x 8 or seven x 7 x 7? You couldn't get through with the spray rate.

01:01:36.210 - 01:02:01.610

Now profits whiter who worked a lot with the root stocks and was one of Winkler's ace staff members. And I went into a trial where we went. We were well I'll back up a minute Winkler had and approach that's set in a seven by seven's planting.

01:02:01.620 - 01:02:17.600

If you have one vine that's missing, it's not it's no miss the surrounding vines will immediately pick up the difference. That's what led me to do this opening up thing to begin with. Yeah, but the only thing that was necessary was you couldn't have the dragon

01:02:17.600 - 01:02:35.020

root stock still growing. So if you have broken off too bad root stock could take over and you gain nothing so lighter. And I went out and started to see if we couldn't find some chemical that we could put a basin around the root stock and

01:02:35.020 - 01:02:48.450

knock it out so that the rest of the vines could move in and take over. And that's what that was. We found two or three things that would work. We Vape ham and some other stuff. This was before round up. This was before round up. Yeah,

01:02:48.450 - 01:03:16.370

I'll round up is another matter. We'll get to that. I was in round up up to my ears. The next thing that I think is a matter of some importance was this matter of water. It was a very sticky wicket because the prevailing wisdom of this

01:03:16.380 - 01:03:37.840

area was that all of the fruit grown in Sonoma County and the coast, it was outstanding quality because all non irrigated and all the fruit grown in the san Joaquin as junk because it is irrigated and oh my word. So here we go again. So we

01:03:37.840 - 01:04:01.860

got going on this on this water thing. And it was it was so bad that you didn't even say irrigation. I mean, I thought of more synonyms for irrigation. You've ever heard of supplemental water finally settled on water management. That said nothing. But it said everything

01:04:02.290 - 01:04:19.930

and actually it's probably the best description because if you're gonna do it right, you're going to manage it carefully and you may be adding additional water in some form of irrigation, but it's still being managed. You don't just fill up with valley type trench and let

01:04:19.930 - 01:04:45.750

it run. So we had to get this in hand. And the thing was that the growers didn't understand that the vine didn't care. Horace water came and some of them like your situation here or joe's are going down to Korbel as these alluvial soils along the

01:04:45.750 - 01:05:03.120

river are so deep that they are used. It just doesn't matter there. I expect. We could probably go down to the bottom of the river 90 ft. Is that where the bottom is? Somewhere like that? Down 80 ft. And they wouldn't change. I mean, they're all

01:05:03.130 - 01:05:24.030

homogeneous haif soil, A grapevine and a lot of other things too, but a grapevine roots to 10 ft effectively. and from 10 ft in that zone, it can extract the water to the permanent wielding percentage. And if you've got the kind of soil that you folks

01:05:24.030 - 01:05:41.270

have, and we have 10 ft of a YOLO series like this, It'll hold unusual about 2" to the foot that the plants can get. Now, that's about half of water. You can cook out another 2" in another. We don't really care about that. It's the 2"

01:05:41.270 - 01:06:05.820

that's available. And then you start understanding That not only is that soil there, it can store 20" in 10 ft Store 20" that the vice can get at. Yeah, but they didn't understand was that the climate got into the act here and dictates how much water

01:06:05.830 - 01:06:27.380

vine needs to grow for the entire season to get as big as its genetics say it can get and be as productive as good management says makes sense. And I'll make a comment about that because we had the situation over here Fenton acres when joe garagiola

01:06:27.390 - 01:06:44.290

sr wanted decided he wanted to go grapes. That's okay. We'll get going. I said, you're on such powerful soil because we knew what he'd think. Ronnie was hot man and beans and all that stuff he's got going on it. And he was, I said, I think

01:06:44.300 - 01:07:06.000

we're, we're going to have some awfully vigorous find what I want to do. Here's a Go bigger than your spacing. We'll go 10 x 14. And he planted the 1st 11 acres, two column Bards and you know, they weren't called west prolific for no reason. And

01:07:06.380 - 01:07:21.020

so I told, I told you that, I said, you know, this isn't gonna go for regular cane pruning joe. I said, we've got to find some way to to close this space up in the role. So I said, well, go to corden's now. That was the

01:07:21.020 - 01:07:37.380

first card on prune. Now louis martini had a few that he had corridor end up on the hill. I won't say it was the only one and certainly not a new technique, but it's the only one that got involved with our new move of getting the

01:07:37.390 - 01:07:58.610

converts into the act and that that brings up my clientele. That's another story. But there were three the regular growers that have been going at it like the candies and many, many, many others, you've got neighbors around here that are still really not part of today's

01:07:58.620 - 01:08:15.400

world by their own choice. And then we had the converts that were a real pleasure to work with people like bobby young and Anderson Jack, come on joe. And all the rest of them, they knew the ranch, they knew how to work the ground. They knew

01:08:15.870 - 01:08:33.100

all they needed to know about the machinery, They understood all this stuff. All they needed was somebody to show you how to grow a grapevine. That was a piece of cake and a pleasure, I assure you. And get them started with the right, the right variety

01:08:33.110 - 01:08:46.390

in the right place so that we didn't make any mistakes in that area. And that was one of my big concerns. And one of the reasons I spent so much time working on research on the climate was to be sure, now that I could say if

01:08:46.390 - 01:09:04.310

you put on here, you're gonna have a real problem. If you think you're going to put in cabernets, it's just, and we have to take we our group have to take some responsibility. I think for the cabernets that got in on the beach down in Monterey

01:09:04.310 - 01:09:23.640

County, there was one leaflet that came out that I immediately tried to hide. I told my secretary anybody have this, but Dick Hafner up swears to God. He got his copy of that thing for me. I don't think so, you could have gone across the street

01:09:23.640 - 01:09:48.290

down there and gotten it from University Hall. We had a place where you could go and get the leaflets and the publications in those days. Anyway they had some erroneous, terribly erroneous stuff in that, in that leaflet about where something should go and it was really

01:09:48.870 - 01:10:13.430

scary, really scary. You mean about what variety was suitable for what area we're gonna happen, wait until we get to a spot here and I want to get into this particular thing about placement. Well before we do that, you were talking about your clients, the old

01:10:13.440 - 01:10:32.430

guard and then converted and then there was a group from everywhere, the third type, the doctors from san Francisco pilots. One of the first, one of that bunch was show swan out in the pilot's a success story and joe was an airline pilot and he wanted

01:10:32.430 - 01:10:52.550

to be a grape grower and he did on Laguna Road and there were many like him, Henry trio knees for example. Henry's a story in his own right, everybody knows I think who Henry is the benefactor of the county and all that stuff. Yes, well Henry

01:10:52.760 - 01:11:09.200

cornered me because jim keegan was Wells Fargo was a buddy of Henry's and a good friend of mine and he said I want to talk to you about Grace, he said I think I think maybe I might get interested Now, this was back when we were

01:11:09.200 - 01:11:26.800

still in what we call the dog kennel, some temporary quarters down in Petaluma Hill Road. Early sixties late fifties, late fifties. Yeah, it went up into the sixties. We moved in 60 I believe. Yeah. I said fine Henry. I said we'll talk about it. I said,

01:11:26.800 - 01:11:45.530

I think it's something that you'd probably enjoy getting into. Okay, I'll be in touch. So a year went around the same time the next year he called me up again and we went through the same conversation and once more the clock went around again. He still

01:11:45.530 - 01:11:58.400

hadn't done anything the third time. He says, I mean at this time I said, when do you want to get together? We'll have lunch we picked today. And then I went through this whole thing with him. I said, this is what it adds up to. We're

01:11:58.400 - 01:12:13.290

gonna get into the premiums, this is napa county is nothing special that we've got the same thing. You do whatever you want and you know where he went with it. I mean he took off and bought guys Orpik and and really did some good things. But

01:12:13.440 - 01:12:31.200

these were the kind of people that I mean by my came from everywhere group and and I had him call me from ever. There was one guy that with that own action toys, Mark Nixon remark, make tom Macdonald, I know that vineyard. Well that was the

01:12:31.200 - 01:12:50.480

old two brothers. They had an airstrip on the thing that was that was before badge belt and got the place and I can't think of the names of those two brothers but they were bachelors and they live there and had their airstrip and whatever they did

01:12:51.050 - 01:13:11.870

anyway as Shelton bought that turn it over to his kid. I finally sold it to make them and we got it in two chardonnays and everybody was happy but that's the kind of people. I mean all well gelatin himself was an outsider. There's a guy that's

01:13:11.870 - 01:13:30.730

just down the road from on Shaq hill from Honolulu he fly clear over just just to sit down and talk uh and it went went on and on. So I mean it was it was interesting. I met an incredible group of people. In fact I may

01:13:30.730 - 01:13:44.850

even make some mention of them in that report that I wrote, if you're interested in you don't have the thing have any interest in. Anyway. That was that was the clientele. So we had those three and the only one that I had any qualms about where

01:13:44.850 - 01:14:02.150

the old timers and I knew there were some that weren't gonna budge. They didn't want anybody telling them they get your vines up waist high and put them on wire and do all this stuff and they weren't gonna do it. And so I said well this

01:14:02.150 - 01:14:19.180

is my goal is to have this place be equal to napa county and I'm it can be and it will be and if they don't want to play, that's their shorts. If they have a problem, all they have to do is ask and I'll do what

01:14:19.180 - 01:14:31.470

I can for him. But I'm not going to try and make any effort to sell them on being part of it. I mean if they want to do it, you want to do it. Because I made myself a promise back in the beginning that I wouldn't

01:14:31.470 - 01:14:55.800

talk anybody into doing this. Anybody bob young has a different opinion about it because he blames me for him being involved. And I'm not gonna argue who's gonna, who doesn't want to say, well he says you're the responsible person, bye. But his neighbor was Mr Rouss

01:14:55.800 - 01:15:18.520

Atkins gotta get some of these fellas names anyway. He was getting along in years. I'll think of it shortly. Okay, we can put it in later. Anyway. Edc our our our okay, Ed Ed was there. He asked me a question, I went up to someone, he

01:15:18.530 - 01:15:32.330

asked me to come up And he asked one question, you know, he says whether or not a certain area, if there were the first lake was could be used for grapes or something. So I said it not only could be, but I think it's something you

01:15:32.330 - 01:15:56.410

should do and I really went after him because I knew the guy was anybody that had his background. Couldn't just sit and vegetate and here are we now with our, what year are we? I couldn't tell you late sixties. Probably somewhere back there because he bought

01:15:56.420 - 01:16:13.510

what was the actual place, you know, it was an actual place was in the 70s, wasn't it? Well then it could have been anyway. Ed was up there and I really went after him and then he went crazy and start buying everything to get his hands

01:16:13.510 - 01:16:29.510

on and planted the whole mountain and it was, but I wasn't concerned if he got burned a little bit, it wasn't gonna killing. And that was what I was afraid of. It's just like this thing that the gallows are doing donna today. If that doesn't wash

01:16:29.520 - 01:16:47.160

so big deal right off the tax laws, I would have never suggested to an individual They wanted to plant 20 acres. That that'd be a good place to go because one, well you'd have to accept the high probability that you're going to have a total crop

01:16:47.170 - 01:17:05.560

loss At least once every 10 years, maybe even every five failure to get ripe enough to pick and that would kill. So I just, I just couldn't do it. So I made that promise to myself and I stayed with it. They said somebody had to say

01:17:07.030 - 01:17:23.070

what we need to be able to do or what do we need to know in order to do this. I said you've already decided you'd like to do it. Yeah. Okay. Let's start from here and then we go through this whole, this whole litany of things

01:17:23.070 - 01:17:41.820

that were going, you know, piece by piece. All these things were happening at the same time. So the water thing was one of the real sticky wickets and like I got off the track on the water with core belt. So if you imagine that your climate

01:17:41.830 - 01:18:00.160

or core bells climate with your infinitely deep over 10 ft of soil with 20 inches in it, you don't have a 20 inch climate here in spite of the way today is it hasn't been that way all summer asshole. You probably wouldn't have to have more

01:18:00.160 - 01:18:14.960

than 16 inches I would say at the most for vines to get as big as their genetics say they can be and be as productive as good management says makes sense and I'll hammer that point because you don't just put them out there and let them

01:18:14.960 - 01:18:32.750

bear as much as they can they will, but they can't. And that's what happened with joe over here when we started with that vineyard. It was interesting because the guys, we were still butting at that time and the guys but did it and that first spring

01:18:33.120 - 01:18:51.250

the like Jack and the beanstalk beans, those vines went up the stairs like a shot And I bought four July, I went hot out, Oh man, I said joe, you know, if you have the will or the desire, we can court on these things right now.

01:18:52.320 - 01:19:09.890

So we laid them over horizontal cord on bilateral. They grew out until they were as far as we wanted him to go laterally not touching each other. And even they even grew a couple spurs that were big enough to be left as spurs all in one

01:19:09.890 - 01:19:26.350

summer. And the first year I sold, joe was careful. He dropped all the fruit, he said we're not going to overstress them. So we dropped all the fruit the second year they got two tons to the acre out of that stuff. The next column bars, Yeah,

01:19:26.360 - 01:19:45.760

your column The next year, four times Hayes were right on up to 11 And he found out in a hurry. 11 was over crop even though the vine had the capacity to do it And they backed him down to eight or 7 or something like that

01:19:45.760 - 01:20:03.740

and held it there and they got right when they should and everything was cool. So by over crops they just didn't get right. That's what it basically over crop adds up to. It's a a situation where you have the control in the sense of either fruit

01:20:03.750 - 01:20:29.950

thinning or pruning more more severely. And you have to be careful because you know, we can put six tons of chardonnays on Ron dix bell terror chardonnay is up on the river in alexander valley And it doesn't, it's nothing. I mean they're far more capable than

01:20:29.950 - 01:20:50.580

that. But Ron Figures six tons of he's a really good farmer, he's right across the road from me. My dad was too, I've been really impressed watching him. Well, Ron is somebody who is she is impressive. He was an officer with the army in Germany for

01:20:50.580 - 01:21:11.530

a while, that's all he was old and of course was with him. Anyway, that was the case there. Well, six tons. We went into an interesting situation once with some Cameron AIDS. Now I I said something about gallo son, all mine gina and all that stuff

01:21:11.530 - 01:21:31.960

with with haven't met Gina, I guess she's mad. She's uhh Julio's granddaughter I think. Yes, yes, and I think she's from the Giulio side, a way I don't even know Ernest but Julia and I used to have some interesting situations anyway. Well he was very aware

01:21:31.960 - 01:21:51.620

of his vineyards. Oh yeah, he was and he had a crack chief of staff. Who was that? I'm trying to think Uh huh Daddy called me up, I know his name as well as anybody else like Alan, Well you'll think of it, it'll pop. Anyway, he

01:21:51.630 - 01:22:10.270

called me when they finally decided to make their move and this is, this is disturbing. Like I said, I'm not 20 anymore. So I guess you get you get to forgive yourself anyway, most of this stuff I can remember fairly well anyway, this is, this is

01:22:10.270 - 01:22:28.090

the kind of thing that we were doing so on this water business, there were a couple of them that bought in fairly easily. And even Ascona italian swiss when they were still doing business, I was perfectly willing to use some water. And one of the, one

01:22:28.090 - 01:22:42.390

of the fellas down in glen Ellyn. No, there were one here and there, but across the board there were still a big taboo about even even talking about it. But I got two of the guys at the lower end of Dry creek one day. This was

01:22:42.390 - 01:23:01.870

a case where one of them was between Dry Creek road and the creek and the other guy was up the hill. They're both sent and al gore and we're standing there talking and I said, I'm curious about something. So you guys both grow zinfandels deal, consider

01:23:01.870 - 01:23:17.170

your quality equal. Oh yes, there's no question about it. We both have the same quality stuff. I'm sure glad to hear that. So there's one thing that makes me wonder though is how come the guy on the hill, I said, how come you're willing to let

01:23:17.170 - 01:23:36.250

your neighbors have six tons to the acre when you're only getting three. And that brought a bigger sudden silence Shit on. I said, this is all because of soil depth and water retention in the soil reservoir. I said your neighbor has in excess of 10 ft.

01:23:36.250 - 01:23:56.340

He's got 20 and probably a 14" zone right up in that sector and you are sitting there with three or four ft under even the best you've got is eight if you've got that much and if you're happy with that arrangement, I said that your blinds

01:23:56.340 - 01:24:21.780

wouldn't give a tinker's nothing for water from any source if they had it. And so that was, that was how I had to kind of tiptoe around on this water thing. It was, it was something that you just didn't, you know, slam into. I started in.

01:24:21.790 - 01:24:38.610

One of the things that I that I had really I guess initiated was the use of tobacco as an evaluation tool. If anybody bought a place and they said we want to, we want to okay, first thing we're gonna do is find out how deep is

01:24:38.610 - 01:24:51.920

deep. So you get a backhoe in there, call me. I'll knock them up and I'll be there with a guy makes, will cut some slits, rashes And you get down there 6, 8 ft with those things. I used to get down in them. But I got

01:24:51.930 - 01:25:14.180

called a couple times anyway. Uh huh. They were very revealing because something like the pine or flat has about 26" of the overlay of a good loan soil and under it is concrete. It's a cemented clay pan and the growers out there used to dynamite holes

01:25:14.180 - 01:25:30.470

in it to plant fruit trees or get a big ripper in. Oh it all worked fine except that the minute it got wet again the next winter it all ran back together and that's a cemented clay pan. I mean it was an old ocean bottom that

01:25:30.470 - 01:25:50.490

formed over eons with colloidal precipitation plugging every, every pore space there was. And I asked one of our geologist one time, is there anything we can do to change that? He said, yeah, so that we can revert back to the Big Bang and start all in

01:25:50.500 - 01:26:12.580

for again and let it let it read disintegrate and that's about it. There's nothing you can do. Now people mistake semantic clay pans for hard pan Julia always wonderful because in the valley there's a lot of spots down there where they have a sedimentary layer that

01:26:12.580 - 01:26:27.570

has come in Over something that maybe 5, 6 ft D Layer, two ft. And then it went back to the original and came back again And they had three ft on top of it. And all they had to do was get a river down deep enough

01:26:27.570 - 01:26:45.890

to break that stuff up and it stayed broken. I mean it was, it was a sedimentary layer, not a, not a semantic playpen and that's a huge difference between a hard pan of that type and and the stuff out here. And I've seen cases, there was

01:26:45.900 - 01:26:58.950

one guy that I told we've got to look at your place, he's a pair of roller Sonoma Valley down in cinema below. So no, I said, well if you just let me know, I'll come down and we'll get the backhoe in. He called me up. He

01:26:58.950 - 01:27:16.660

says, well he says, I already had tobacco in. Oh no. And so we went down and the parents were still there And you could get in that trench. Those the guy must have ducked those damn things 8ft deep. If there were an inch if he somebody

01:27:16.660 - 01:27:34.170

had fallen into one that I would have been suit but in town the other and I was just horrified that he's done this before I could come down and make sure that they didn't stay open. Anyway, right at that 26" layer It was just a dead

01:27:34.170 - 01:27:55.660

zone. The roots of those old para trees were all masked in that upper two ft and below it absolutely nothing. And we had other cases where it isn't quite that dramatic. I learned to read my own interpretation of the soil. I use an ice ax and

01:27:55.670 - 01:28:12.030

work down the side of the trench. And yeah, if we were going to use the tool here would get right alongside one of your trees on the drip zone. I want the feeder roots from the tree coming through the side walls of that trench. That's what

01:28:12.030 - 01:28:26.190

I read most easily a perennial bush. I don't care. I got mixed up with poison oak thicket up here and drank grape one day. I didn't know it was poison and I found out in a hurry that the roots of that stuff just as toxic as

01:28:26.790 - 01:28:47.820

totally toxic. Yeah. So who was first to use irrigation here? I'm sorry. So who was first to use irrigation here? Well, water management, right management, Right. I would say we'll get to this at the end of things. I'd like to say this waterfronts protection thing of

01:28:47.820 - 01:29:09.550

like that. I was really an instigator of her last hi. And at that point in time when those systems started being installed, it was awfully hard for a guy to sit there and look at that and say, I put that in for a cross protection. And

01:29:09.900 - 01:29:27.180

I told him in the beginning, I said, this is a multipurpose system. I said it's basic reason is frost protection. One time I'm getting, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'll for meant that one time that we saved the crop is paid for In the meanwhile,

01:29:27.190 - 01:29:41.470

if you get in, we have an extremely dry spring and it gets away from you. All you have to do is turn them on and bring the soil back up to feel capacity and you can work up to your heart's content. That's one to extreme heat

01:29:41.480 - 01:30:05.430

jumps not heat, but he jumps, he's shocked during the bloom can just knock the very way out of out of the set And it's not the fact that it was 95 or 98 or 100. Yes, the Suddenly it went from 72 up to 92 overnight. And

01:30:05.430 - 01:30:22.650

that's he's shocked and we can use evaporative cooling By turning those things on running them for 10 or 15 minutes and shut them down and do that about once or twice an hour. And we can keep the temperature of the whole vineyard down by using them

01:30:22.650 - 01:30:41.440

in that matter. And then the other one that never has really gone anywhere is that we actually can use them as a spray rate. And we tested that donna Korbel as the spray rig injecting into the overhead, injected it into the overhead and it would accept

01:30:41.440 - 01:30:57.040

anything that you can over spray a bind with. You don't use weed control materials on it. Clearly not. But we could, we could put little sulfur out or something like that. So I mean or some of the parasite is something of that that would work without

01:30:57.040 - 01:31:14.080

hurting the vine. And so these were all things that were part of that system that I wasn't going to talk about until they were later. But you ask about who did water first and it started to just kind of ease this way in. I couldn't point

01:31:14.080 - 01:31:35.440

to any particular person I would say that mm uh huh I don't even think bob used for young for irrigation. He didn't need to because we had the depth again, see when we get into the warmer end of the county. What I call coastal warm ask

01:31:35.440 - 01:31:59.910

him we haven't got anybody yet. It won't get into that too have the coastal warm part says that we're talking about Climate-controlled consumption requirements of 20-23 Far in excess of the 20 that you could store if you had a 10-foot deep. So now that is where

01:31:59.910 - 01:32:18.620

you get into somebody that's going to start thinking about, hey, I could use a little extra. So other than that, it's the thin soils that were the ones that were the beneficiaries. But to the greatest extent the alluvial stuff, most of the alluvial stuff except up

01:32:18.620 - 01:32:37.350

around cloverdale. He is and donald Ron's, uh, we had a incident, one time we had a busload of people come up to worry. The growers love to come up here and look around And I'm standing there talking about, we've got 10 ft of this in excess

01:32:37.350 - 01:32:53.590

of 10 ft of this under it. It'll hold 20". The climate demand factor is about 20 in. There's no need for the grower to use any supplemental. And they're all standing there shaking their heads. Couldn't believe it because they had to use about four ft of

01:32:53.590 - 01:33:18.100

irrigation to keep the vines alive down where they came from. And that was, that was the kind of thing that was going on. So we got into this, mm hmm. I use the radio a lot. Talking about using water management. Uh, we used to have a

01:33:18.110 - 01:33:35.370

radio problem was the oldest radio person on K. S. R. O. There for quite a few years. Uh, because we had a, we had a A regular spot at noon five minutes show that everybody on staff just loved to have. You can well imagine. And one

01:33:35.370 - 01:33:53.470

of my partners who was my ace agronomist then as a friend and later as a staff member uh huh. He wouldn't work by himself. So we used to double team and be Huntley Brinkley and it was better that way anyway that somebody delivering a monologue. So

01:33:53.470 - 01:34:13.360

we we use we use the radio and then this thing I've given you, I mean this kind of this kind of coverage in the pd when there's the farm page and it was a whole page just as you found out and in today's world, forget it.

01:34:14.140 - 01:34:38.430

But fortunately I was able to do all this before these people became urbanized. Okay now go into the next arena and say we were talking about the water and the next thing that was a real concern to me. It was the fact that they were picking

01:34:38.430 - 01:34:58.100

everything in boxes, field picking boxes even in a year where there's no problem during the rain season having getting here early. Uh they pick them and haul them out, carry them out to the end of the road because they didn't have room to run in and

01:34:58.100 - 01:35:14.610

get them in wooden boxes like the apple boxes and they stack them up about seven or eight high, they'd be full crown full and they would get some self crushing now if when they got soft when rains came along. Now these varieties, this is one of

01:35:14.610 - 01:35:31.210

the things that I set out to do from the very beginning. So we're gonna put varieties in places where they're going to get right by Halloween, that was my, that was my favorite mantra. Get them in the can by Halloween and we're gonna have trouble doing

01:35:31.210 - 01:35:47.690

that this year because I didn't see anybody doing anything on the road out coming out there picking in the alexander valley left and right, but you're not an alexander valley. See we're in a different climate regime. This is cool, they're they're picking reds up there started

01:35:47.690 - 01:36:06.740

today. Well, uh we could have been picking sparkling based stuff a long time ago because we only need 17.5 bricks or so for that and not the 22 or 23 we usually want to shoot for. But anyway, this box thing was a real concern to me.

01:36:07.230 - 01:36:24.700

I didn't introduce the idea of bulk handling, but I saw what you could do with it and what it offered and then I let out and started beating the radio and the newspaper and everybody else that I could get to get people to do this, but

01:36:24.700 - 01:36:43.730

we had to get both sides because the winery's weren't ready Korbel, couldn't take stuff, bulk Elmo martini, could frei ranch was doing it, they were picking into containers, italian swiss was doing a little bit but they were all of these things on their own property over

01:36:43.730 - 01:37:02.280

to the correction and we had to come up with a series of tools like the ones that we had in the newspaper that showed the country's making them and louis martini. I call it the martinis as to other people call it the valley system, the bins

01:37:02.280 - 01:37:19.130

and the trucks and louis would had flat trailer. He used flatbeds and put the tanks up on trial on cleverness is so that they And you can pick for four or 5 different varieties at once and carry a a tank full of fish if you wanted

01:37:19.140 - 01:37:39.740

to. He oftentimes took two at a time. So that was the other system. The third system, some of the guys along in this area or whether it was mounts or who it was or frost started in with kroon boxes that they picked up with a forklift

01:37:40.320 - 01:38:00.570

and rotated sideways and then right. I've seen those where it grabs it on the sides were those were the primary ones that were over and above the country's system of course is the ones that bob invented this himself. They have their own loader, they're still using

01:38:00.570 - 01:38:19.880

it. They had small ton of 10 on the quarter sized gun. What railroad cars, you might say they put them through the vineyard in a train and spot him. Let the pickers picked into a pan and we got rid of the grape juice, mud and all

01:38:19.880 - 01:38:36.760

these other things that were not so pretty good when they were using the box is not to mention the fact that when we get into tough years, They were lined up 15 2030, 40 trucks in a row just sitting there waiting their turn mentioned a couple

01:38:36.760 - 01:38:54.550

times. One young fellow that I took his picture was looking back at the edge of his flatbed and all the juice was running in a stream right off down Elmo martinis driveway. In the meanwhile we were washing down the streets of Sonoma County with free run

01:38:54.550 - 01:39:14.830

juice, which is in some people's mind considered to be the superior type of fluid anyhow. All this had to had to come to the hall. So I just started putting it all together and urging everyone to get on the, on the thing and go, well. It

01:39:14.830 - 01:39:29.590

made so much sense that it was an easy sell. It was just a matter of the wineries being able to receive them all of a sudden people could come and go and not stand there for hours on end waiting their turn to unload it one box

01:39:29.590 - 01:39:50.530

at a time. So that was one of the things that I went after was I wanted to get a 100% bulk. Now the venturing further into machine harvesting came later and we, I was always a little bit leery because the machine harvester was really designed for

01:39:50.530 - 01:40:08.120

the valley and the table grapes, the raisins, grapes, stuff like that, We've got some varieties that can be machine harvested when J Benoit had his place over there on the other side of the river. What was that? Huh. J J Ben wa Yeah, there's joe Greece's

01:40:08.120 - 01:40:30.290

grandson, mm And they had they had a ranch just downriver from you, right across from from McMurray's place, All right. And he went up one of Chisholm had her cattle ranch I guess next door. And jay was picking cabernets with an upright and that was working

01:40:30.290 - 01:40:49.100

out all right. I've seen people try to use it on soft skin whites like one time in alexander Valley ever, there were still Shannon's being grown and that brings up another point was that I walked the road and I was just feeling leaves and see how

01:40:49.100 - 01:41:03.380

what they were getting and my feet got muddy with grape juice, mud just following the harvester. So you have to be careful what you were after and like I say, there are some varieties, but I don't see many people think, I don't think they'd want to

01:41:03.390 - 01:41:19.890

take their shirt amazing and risk that or the api known orders and some of those that are thin skinned, the tough, tough skin guys, it's okay. And besides that the cabernet very shattered very well. I mean the valley people were able to take Thompson's because they

01:41:19.890 - 01:41:38.790

would cluster snap and the whole cluster would come off when they were shaken. So we got into this business so of using all these tools. But the one that I was most interested in was getting bulk, bulk handling totally adopted. And as far as I know,

01:41:39.000 - 01:41:56.210

I don't, I said there may be somebody with three acres somewhere that still picks and boxes I think actually no, they use plastic tubs now. You know those little champagne tubs that that interlock so that they can stack them whatever the case. Why? I think doing

01:41:56.210 - 01:42:10.730

it the old hard way is kind of passe wood is getting more expensive so it's easier to use blasting and all that. But I think maybe the food and drug might have something to get interested in with all those boxes. By the time you got through

01:42:10.730 - 01:42:29.650

with the harvest season, those things were coated with three quarters of financial grape juice mud. It all comes out in the line. I didn't say anything. I just said, I think there are agencies that would love to say, hey, you can't do it that way because

01:42:29.650 - 01:42:55.280

it's unsanitary. Okay. The water, the boxes and understanding this business of the powdery mildew that we touched on a little bit earlier, I noticed that what people were doing in those days in addition to using this heavy anchor brand stinks real good sulfur to get the

01:42:55.290 - 01:43:12.330

fumes. They were applying it to the vice by shaking it on with a burlap sack and hold jobs out on the vine and the more it stumped, the better they liked it. And it took me a while to get the idea across that properly done. We

01:43:12.330 - 01:43:30.630

don't need very much sulfur to cover a vineyard. £10 of the acre will provide a coating on all the green surfaces of a vine. If you could meet her a dust her down to 10 lb of divine, which you can't To the acre because we have

01:43:30.630 - 01:43:49.900

to use about £30 in order to do it because the machines just aren't are capable of metering it down any further. But the idea was to have them understand that you can't fire sell for small micro micro particles of sulfur through the air. You have to

01:43:49.900 - 01:44:07.120

move a block of air from the machine and displace a block of air over the vine role. And you have a new massive air sitting on around the mine that's full of sulfur that settles out on all the surfaces and that's how dusting is properly done.

01:44:07.690 - 01:44:26.760

And if you do it right, you can't even tell you've done it as soon as you get through, you just have, there's no way that you can tell the vineyards been dusted in the last two hours. It doesn't smell and it really does the job of

01:44:26.770 - 01:44:44.340

covering them up. So that was the military business. And as I mentioned this other problem with the spider mites that occasionally I haven't heard too much said about there being a big, big pain, I think most of our premiums seem to have some resistance. But zenz

01:44:44.340 - 01:44:59.130

were boy. They, they were home and mother to pacific might. I mean they just, they just burn them up and they will destroy the canopy and those leaves are out of commission. That's it. They're not gonna get any more maturity. We have some spider mite problems

01:44:59.130 - 01:45:12.180

in the alexander valley this summer. I saw a number of really good growers using a little bit of open in that case we've got the tools and the knowledge had no problem. But it was not something that could be done in my early days because the

01:45:12.180 - 01:45:32.620

only way you could do it was to drag a hose from a spray rig at the end of the avenue and that just isn't two. And what did you apply? What did you apply when? What quite material? Oh guy. There's a whole array of materials that

01:45:34.990 - 01:45:52.310

are good at cara sides. Mm I don't know. I don't really have a brand name and mind without getting into a lot of things as a half. The ones that I used never got beyond the number stage. Right? And the others are all long gone. They've

01:45:52.320 - 01:46:09.380

been replaced with something else. So There's their side to remember. Cara fame very well. That was a good one. If you did it on a hot day, you could defoliate the finer about 10 minutes flag. Just don't believe a good way to control those mice. But

01:46:09.390 - 01:46:32.630

on the other hand, there were some, some effective my decides that we're there to be had. So we were using all roles and then we got into another matter of serious disease problem known as over fungus are malaria. Hey on that has always been with, it's

01:46:32.630 - 01:47:00.390

always been here. It became a real surfaced problem when we started following archers with new players. And so I kind of pioneer, you know, preplant soil fumigation and that's what we've got here. I think I'll give you that car. That proved well I suspected we had

01:47:00.390 - 01:47:21.500

been watching people that had been doing some treating. I told a story once, a good friend of mine. Uh huh Who was giving me a hard time boy. We gotta do something about this. Okay, fungus killing all our minds and eyes. Well bob, it's real easy.

01:47:22.380 - 01:47:46.080

We can do it right now if you want to because all we have to do is lay out a pattern of Of rose diamonds spaced 18" centers. Put a couple of guys out there with whether or half inch rebar poke a hole six inches deep and

01:47:46.080 - 01:48:04.920

pour two ounces of carbon by sulfide in the hole and then step on it quick And when you get through, you just bought the ranch back because it will cost you about $600 an acre. And at that point in time are economists valued the venue At

01:48:04.920 - 01:48:27.500

about $600 an acre cost of the land and that is kind of painful, but that's where we stood. Now. The carbon by sulfide was highly effective and I don't know what happened to those two older publications in mind. Well we can look later that whatever the

01:48:27.510 - 01:48:48.120

case anyway, Take it for what it's worth in 53 when people like an economist got through doing all the breakdown of depreciation etc At the price we were getting for the grapes, they were making about $0.46 an acre net profit and there were already too quick

01:48:48.130 - 01:49:08.180

which is fairly understandable, fairly understandable. But then this are malaria thing we had that kind of progressively became more more that we could do without going the hard way with poking the holes in the ground and filling them up with a can because that carbon is

01:49:08.180 - 01:49:26.240

nothing to play with. I mean it's explosive, it's corrosive, flammable, like gasoline in your tank, remind everybody that you're riding around on something that's almost the same and they all are definitely afraid of carving myself and now it's spending more or less replaced with mental bro

01:49:26.240 - 01:49:41.390

might have been more or less, it totally replaced. I just spent a year and a half working with they add commissioner and they're one Sean West to be trying to run down a source of carbon that I did all my work with on my research work

01:49:42.170 - 01:49:59.370

and nobody knew what I was talking about. I went from one coast to the other and every place in between on the internet. Everything we tried every source we could think of, nobody knew what we were talking about. And so we're stuck with methyl bromide for

01:49:59.370 - 01:50:16.360

the time in now whether we have something new showed up maybe help but in the mean there's something in process because methyl bromide now is the problem. Well it's been extended another five years so we do have a little breather there. This is a great concern

01:50:16.360 - 01:50:33.860

to me because I'm very worried about the apple country and losing it to the other than agriculture, shall we say. Well other than agriculture you can't deal with that with methyl bromide if we can help it. But we have another one that one of our profits

01:50:33.860 - 01:50:53.150

that riverside is working as methyl iodide. It's more expensive and it's unknown as to how effective it will be and what are malaria is deadly. There's no defense period. As far as grapes are concerned that nothing can withstand it. We had a profit out of Berkeley

01:50:53.160 - 01:51:09.200

Professor Robbie who tested every kind of grape that he could get his hands on. Over the years, He found two or 3 that looked very promising as far as being a resistant rootstock and he sent him up and proof lighter and I took him up to

01:51:09.200 - 01:51:31.770

cloverdale one of the spots where we knew there was an infection, an infected area and threw him down on the planting holes with the blinds and they never grew, they just didn't have it. So there were still sitting there with with no biological control possible on

01:51:31.770 - 01:51:52.130

the immediate horizon. Now whatever sets out there is another matter. But it's when I was out to prove with this research that I did on this thing with the country's up on their cinema Mountain ranch was to follow up on an observation that we made for

01:51:52.130 - 01:52:12.510

these people had done some fumigating the vines, took off much faster than where they planted back without any fumigation and they got bigger quicker and they got em bearing faster. And I thought, you know, there's a good possibility that if we measure this, we can find

01:52:12.510 - 01:52:33.350

out if it's really costing us as much as we think it's the price tag on on buying the application of the carbon myself. I and at that point in time stalker was the outlet for it. They had a mechanical injector that they were using. They wouldn't

01:52:33.350 - 01:52:50.540

go near any place that had a piece of pea gravel and if they were definitely afraid of a rock because it would backfire and pull out about happening behind you after it's over. But Horford supply got that thing from them and what the then they made

01:52:50.540 - 01:53:06.760

the deal with the growers that if there was a blow back it was your loss and we'll just do it over and go from there. So that's how we were doing it. We had a mechanical applicator. And then we found out that what we were doing.

01:53:10.250 - 01:53:29.480

Have we got some tape? Yeah we got about five minutes. Okay then we got more tape to what we were doing was in effect what we thought was happening. What we found out was with the one root stock that we were using. They were making a

01:53:30.350 - 01:53:48.480

comparison study between the XR one in ST George And we'll get into that a little later. But at that point in time the XR1 with the superior under stock and there's two things that a root stock is going to have to do. It's going to have

01:53:48.480 - 01:54:05.820

to grow a decent producing fine for you and provide some protection and there may be separate but they work together. So we wanted to know how good the under shock thing was and the the XR one out produce the ST George 2 to 1. And in

01:54:05.820 - 01:54:23.180

both cases where we use the XR one we not only got all the money back that it costs a fumigate but we made a profit. Mhm. And on the ST George we got about two thirds of the money back on that. So that kind of sealed

01:54:23.180 - 01:54:45.950

the deal. I mean that became a statewide. Uh huh. Matter of standard operating procedure was preplant fumigation and it holds to this day. But that's where it all started with when I ran that study when I presented that data at the annual uh technology Society meetings.

01:54:46.340 - 01:55:07.420

Everybody is that they're super their head. They couldn't believe the difference in the dollars and it was instantly accepted as all. So that's the story on the r malaria but it hasn't gone away. The old tree is being unfairly maligned by being blamed for it. You

01:55:07.420 - 01:55:28.240

can find it in almost any prune orchard, any pear orchard. And almost for sure in the apple origin and also the wild stuff that grows all around us. I've I had one experience with mrs Edelson oh, behind Sebastian and up in the high country, up a

01:55:28.250 - 01:55:44.170

canyon and she had something had never been planted as he opened it up and cleared it and I helped her pick out stuff and do the do the work. She got it planted. And by three years later we had three or 4 big dead holes. Oprah

01:55:45.540 - 01:56:03.330

no domestic stuff had ever been grown there. It was it was living on the wild plant. Other arguments are leaving in oak trees. Yeah. So you can't, you can't just Wander off in the back 40 up here and hope that there's there's no way of being

01:56:03.330 - 01:56:23.120

sure that it's not there. I have, you can be darn sure it is there if you can find a route and peel it and find the mycelium of the fungus between the bark and the wood. That's the normal location where that stuff works, it's a better

01:56:23.120 - 01:56:42.910

sacrifice than it is a parasite. So the minute whatever it's working on dies, it's immediately explodes and takes over the whole thing. We we ran a test Professor Hewitt and some of the rest of us over in Napa County where we buried some roots. That world

01:56:42.910 - 01:56:59.700

group fungus in fact infected and also some more that had families that we knew it was there And left him for 10 years and then went back and dug him up. They were just as infectious as they were when we put them in. So the bottom

01:56:59.700 - 01:57:23.740

line is as long as there's a physical a piece of something would as long as it doesn't turn to mush and simply biodegrade nothing. The organism is able to survive. And it can put out feeding extensions of its body and find something else to infect within

01:57:23.740 - 01:57:42.140

several feet. So it's an insidious thing and it's really bad. And the chap from riverside that came up to talk to the grower group here a couple of three springs ago said that they had evidence to indicate that it could stay viable for 100 years. So

01:57:42.140 - 01:57:59.420

there and that's what this did for me, besides telling me that I could tell people have few preplant fumigate, it really isn't costing anything you're gonna make, you're gonna make a profit. You got to take that on faith. If you don't have a control to look

01:57:59.430 - 01:58:20.470

at. But at the same time, it also provoked me to get on people like you and everyone else that lives along one of the watercourses have to be extremely careful if we ever get inundated with floodwater that you go down wherever the high water mark was,

01:58:20.470 - 01:58:34.420

and pick up every piece of stuff that was left behind. When that flood water went down and take every bit of it. Pick up every piece of half inch or bigger. Get out of them once.