Howard-Hill Vineyard

I planted my first muscadine vines in the Spring of 2007.  What began as an attempt to keep neighborhood kids from cutting across a corner of my father-in-law's property, became an experiment in horticulture.  This is what lead me to discovering, and cultivating a deeply rooted love of viticulture. I purchased the first six vines from the garden center at Lowes in Longview, Texas.  I had no idea what to buy but I knew muscadines were native to the South and  their hardiness in the hot, humid, bug infested climate of East Texas was almost certain.  I skipped the 'Concord', and the 'Thompson' names that I had heard before and grabbed names like 'Summit', 'Triumph', and 'Carlos'.  There was no plan. The trellis was a pretty basic affair at 120 feet long and I assembled the whole thing in a weekend. I planted the vines without thinking about irrigation much less "terroir".  We had not yet built our house; we did not even live o...

This is my new word for the year.  I started choosing a word of the year instead of a New Year's Resolution last year.  I felt like a word could incorporate so much more into my life than a few small "wishes" if you will.  Last year I chose the word "Simplify".  I truly wanted to take stock of my life and weed out all of the junk that was causing me to feel so much chaos.  I don't feel like that word was a complete failure but to be honest I didn't really focus on making it important until the last few months of 2013.  So much was going on in my life last year that was beyond my control.  At one point we had 3 foster kids in the home, Steve quit is job of 11 years to start his own company, family members died, etc...  Not until around August did I feel like I could really step back and look at what could be cut out and made simple. Over the holidays I really feel into a funk.  It happens around this time every year and I am pretty ...