Brunnenburg Experience: The Museum Opening

Easter is today and I celebrated with the family at an Easter brunch. There was a lot of food to be eaten and some good old Easter fun. It was interesting to spend the holiday with a different family. Although I am far from home, I find comfort in having this family get together for the holiday.

But enough about that, let me move onto some of the interesting things that went down this week. One of the big changes this week was the opening of the museum to the public. The flood gates have been opened and anyone who wants to spend a few euros can come to Brunnenburg. They can see the agricultural history of the region, take a stroll into the Ezra Pound room, or check out all the animals. As the weather gets warmer, I suspect I will have many interactions with the different visitors and hopefully I will be of some help.

Above the croft door their has been a sign that says St. Andrews on one side and Gilford College on the other. These are two schools that been having coming to Brunnenburg for awhile, St. Andrews for over 30 years. The students wanted to represent Green Mountain so they created this colorful sign to put above the door.

A cool shot of an X in the sky

The peaks got a small dusting of snow the night before

Step one of operation Vineyard Transformation has successfully been completed. We finished pruning all of the vines this week before the full moon. A local superstition states it will bring good luck to your fields if you prune all of your vines during one full lunar cycle. We had about 7 rows left on Tuesday, the night of the full moon, but luckily we finished them. After we got through the Gold Muskatellers, the rest of the vines seemed to go by faster. Most of the PV vines are relatively young and do not have too much growth. The final vineyard was across the tapinderveg and were all PV plants. This field will need little to no spraying of chemicals. The vines are entering their 3rd season and should start producing a good amount of grapes.

Throughout all of the pruning, Nik and I worked going from one vine to the next. India and Jane both helped us when they could. It was nice when all of us could come together to finish up the last bit of vines. We made it through all the vines in record time, each of us doing one aspect of the pruning. I did not know how well the system would work but it ended up being quite successful.

The Zaushauf hanging out

Nik started pruning before I got there

A look at the vines. Many vines are not this big but vary in size.

It is interesting to see this because they were all planted at the same time but the soil is always different. Some of the vines can even be twice as big as others.

The prune crew

Lila and Gina

Heavy rains were fore casted for Tuesday, so Nik made the decision to our move work day to Wednesday. The rain did not come until Tuesday night and Wednesday had a heavy overcast. You could barely see Meran and the mountains above. But as the day progressed slivers of blue sky streaked the sky, until finally around lunch the sun broke through.

The museum was open the next day so more sweeping had to be done. Most of the day I spent my time working with Tim and Nik hauling wood from the wood shed to the front of the croft. Alaina and Kelsey also help with moving the wood. Emma and Jacquelian swept up part of the museum and cleaned out some gutters. Most of these tasks were done to make the museum look better for when it opened the next day.

Museum pieces that Emma and Jacquelian cleaned up