— New local vineyard to produce grapes for Cedar Creek Estate Winery —
By Julie TurnerrnOsoyoos Times
(OSOYOOS TIMES — October 4, 2006) —
It's a mean machine, says grinder operator Aaron Kilby of the monster he and Colt Wilson are operating “ one loading stumps and branches into the machine while the other feeds the mulch into a waiting truck to be delivered to the landfill.
The equipment, from B&B Wood Grinding, was on site at some former orchard land on 25th Street in east Osoyoos last Thursday morning, grinding 30 acres of former apple trees to make way for a new planting of grapes for Kelowna's Cedar Creek Estate Winery.
The winery purchased the property from former owners Jim and Edgar Liebel and Brian and Lani Image a few months ago.
Planting will be done next year and the first small crop will be harvested in 2009, says Brian Dorosz, who manages vineyards for Cedar Creek.
It'll be a nice vineyard; it's a beautiful location, and one of the last big pieces of land available in the South Okanagan.rnAt a cost of approximately $16,000 an acre to plant the grapes, Dorosz says, conservatively, the yield will be about four tonnes of grapes/acre, roughly 120 tonnes at full production.
It's definitely the better way to go, says Dorosz of grinding the orchard waste rather than burning it.
In addition to its affect on air quality, burning the wood piles actually destroys the nutrients in the soil below, so any plantings in those areas are always difficult to grow, he adds.
But by mulching the wood, the end product can be used as ground cover, returning the nutrients, conserving moisture and helping to limit erosion.
Although grinding wood waste is costlier initially, in the long run it's actually more cost-effective for all the above reasons, he says.
