Cows, Wine and Woodworking

Today on Family Fridays I have a couple of highlights to share.

The week started with decanting the Aglianico and Montepulciano wines we have settling in our shed- 90 gallons of each – that is a lot of wine! Don’t worry mom, we will not drink all of it – we give a lot of away for gifts   😉

We decant the wine away from the sediment or leas, which is made up of residual pulp and precipitated yeast cake. This makes a more clear looking and less bitter tasting wine. Using a long tube, John places one end in the wine and starting a vacuum, he allows the wine to drain from one barrel to another taking care not to suck out any sediment from the bottom of the barrel. These wines made from the grapes harvested in 2012 are already tasting fantastic!

You might wonder what we do with the left over sediment. Being real farmers, we do not want to waste anything. So, instead of just dumping the leas out, we feed it to the cows. As you can tell from the purple colored nose, Buttercup and Emme (our family milk cows) really appreciate dry red Italian wine, or at least, the vitamin rich leas from it!

Sunday night, John and all the boys headed to El Paso to help our second oldest son and daughter-in-law lay hardwood flooring in their new house. In 3 days, they put down about 1000 sq ft of oak flooring! Some of the older boys remember seeing John lay flooring 17 years ago when we built our house in Alabama. But, to most of them, it was a new experience.

Before they got there, our son had laid the plywood sub-flooring over the concrete slab. He had also purchased a manual flooring nailer which tightens the boards as they are nailed down.  Here is a picture soon after they had started Monday afternoon.

Once the boys got the hang of laying and nailing, John and a few helpers started work on the stairs.

Work progressed steadily without any problems over the next couple of days.

By 10:30 Wednesday night, they were finished and were on their way home by midnight. Our son will continue with sanding, staining and several polyurethane coats to finish.