About this Blog and Me

My name is Dave and this blog is about my home remodeling and wine making journey.  What can those two topics possibly have in common, you might ask?  That’s a great question, but I promise you they are very much intertwined.

This Journey begins back in Feb 2011.  My realtor calls to tell me he has found an interesting place that I really need to see.  The only problem is, it was really off the beaten path, about an hour and twenty minutes south of our primary home.  When he said it was a log home with lots of land, I had to check it out.  We loaded up the kids and headed south to this place.

It was a long ride, but eventually we get there.  To say it was love at first site would be an understatement.  This was not a little log cabin.  It had a big wrap around porch with large rough exposed logs.  The blue metal roof looked like it had seen better days, but did not deter us from wanting to see more.  As we walked up to the house I was wondering what the wife was thinking, but she said nothing at first, just taking it all in, I guess.  When we walked in, first thing you noticed was the big rock two story fireplace, humble country decor and rough exposed logs, ceiling joist and wood everywhere.  Then I noticed a huge deer antler chandelier over the dinner table.  This was the biggest man cave you can imagine and I was digging it.  As we walked around, there was a lot to take in.  This house was big with a full heated and cooled basement, first floor and loft with three bedrooms upstairs.  This house was bigger than our primary home.  The more we looked the more stuff we noticed that was in poor repair, unfinished, or had some kind of issue. Pretty much every room needed work and many rooms needs lots of work!

I’m pretty handy with my hands, but even I started thinking this might be just too much to take on.  Still, there was this attraction to the house.  I tried not to make eye contact with my wife fearing she was not into the house but eventually I asked her what she thought and to my surprise, she said she liked it.  I did not expect that.  The funny thing is, had she said something like, this is going to take a ton of work, or no way we can take this on, or anything really negative, I most likely would have agreed and we would have moved on.  But she didn’t!

We took a long walk down the back side of the 49 acres, along the creek, all the way to the lake.  The lake does not touch this property, but I have first right of refusal on the land that separates me from the lake.  Sweeeeeet!   Oh did I mention there is a nice size pond with bass, catfish and brim in it?

Deer and other animals run a muck on this place.  Friends and family always comment on how quite it is.  We never hear a car, or loud noise other than the occasional gun fire during hunting season.  And at night, it’s so dark you can see a billion stars.

We did eventually made a ridiculously low offer, due to the tens of thousands of dollars needed for improvements.  After a counter and a counter to the counter, we struct a deal.  Soon after we purchased it we started working on the renovation.  Lots of it and after three years still much more to go, but it’s getting closer.  This Blog will go back to Feb of 2011 and show before and after pics along the way to get us all caught up.

Enough on the house, lets talk about the land and fruit that grow on it.  Back in the summer of 2013, I decided I wanted to try my hand at homemade wine making.  Why you might ask would I want to do that?  Well, thats how this all gets connected.  In the summer of 2011, I noticed the muscadine vines on the property were not producing much fruit.  I did a quick google search and read grapes only grow on new growth, so that year I trimmed the heck out of the one vine I could really get to.

The vine that started it all.

The following year, 2012, I still didn’t get much fruit but didn’t think to much about it.  Also on the land we have apple trees, a huge asian pear, plum, pomegranate, and Bartlett pear.  None of the trees have really produced much fruit over the past three years.  After some research I learned the trees are in pretty bad shape from years of neglect.  I will be pruning in Feb in hopes of higher and better quality fruit production.

During this past summer of 2013, I noticed a ton of Asian Pears on that tree and the one Muscadine vine I trimmed back in 2011 was taking off.  I bet we got 35 lbs of fruit off that one vine.  Muscadines have thick skin and some are pretty tart, not what I would call table grapes, so what do you do with them?  I started googling that question and two things pop up.  You make jelly or you make wine.  I don’t really eat much jelly, but wine, now that sounds like fun.  After a little more research, it  looked pretty easy to make wine, so I purchased a wine making kit and soon made my first batch of wine.  I quickly learned anyone can make wine, but to make a great wine, will take years of practice to get it right.

First wines: Asian Pear, Pomegranate, Apple, Apple with Oak, and Muscadine.

I’ve got almost three years of catching up and then I’ll log all my adventures. Fair warning, I’m accident prone and I make many mistakes.  Probably not a good combination when you play with tractors, and power tools, so expect the occasional wound or hospital visit with me.  Heck, I’ll document that too.

That’s enough about how this all got started.  I’ll get you caught up in the main blog.

Dave