North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["bluestem_farm@juno.com" <bluestem_farm@juno.com>]

Scott and I went over to the orchard and vineyard at SSE a few falls back.  
The grapes were in rough shape; I think that they don't have enough people to 
deal with them in addition to all the other things they keep going.  The 
weeds in the rows were almost hiding some of the vines, the labels were 
mostly illegible so I couldn't take notes on the ones that looked good, and 
there had pretty obviously been some serious die back the previous (?) 
winter, or maybe spring.  Lon, do you know if there is anything in the 
agreement by which they got the grapes to keep them from offering samples to 
the members?   Judging from the labels that we could read, not all are/were 
Swenson varieties.  I have no idea where I stored my notes, but some were 
named varieties that I recognized or later reserched as non-Swenson, like 
possibly Bluebell--grapes that he would have had for breeding, but that 
wouldn't be covered by 'breeder's rights'.
Muffy Barrett
Baraboo, WI (about 200 miles from the SSE Orchards)




Lon Rombaugh wrote:

The grapes were/are an effort to preserve Elmer Swenson's grapes as
much as possible.   They had some difficulties with the grapes though. 
Seems that soil and climate are different enough that some of the
varieties don't harden off well and are hurt by cold that doesn't faze
them at Elmer's location.

-Lon Rombough

Grapes, writing, consulting, my book, <bold>The Grape Grower,
</bold>at http://www.bunchgrapes.com  Winner of the Garden Writers
Association "Best Talent in Writing" award for 2003.

On Feb 14, 2006, at 11:11 AM, martha_davis wrote:



  Their orchard is mostly heirloom apples but also

hardy kiwis and grapes if I remember correctly.  






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