CUTTING WOOD FOR WINTER

_____The winter of 2000-2001 has been a cold, windy one. The couple of white oak trees near our power lines on Steiner Road by the tasting room are firewood now. Wind storms and gravity took their toll, so for safety's sake, some friends fell them. _____Charles earned his degree in Forestry from U.C. Berkeley in '63, so he supervises Adam, Jim, Aaron, Tony, and Mike while they cut & stack it! The wood has to season a bit before it is used - it will be better to use next winter. But this cold snap -- in the middle of an energy crisis, no less -- means we have to conserve a little bit during a hard time. Instead of burning extra firewood, we're reinsulating and bundling up.

NATURE

\There's a little nature area below our winery. There are brush piles there for the quail and other critters, but through the years, the brush dries and is very flammable. When the white oaks were cut down, we threw half the branches on top of those brush piles and torched them on a designated "burn day." The remaining branches formed a couple of new piles. Wood duck boxes, enormous berry bushes, little ponds, roses, red hot pokers, daffodils, butterfly bushes, cattails, oaks, pines, brush piles, and even poison oak make the nature area beautiful.