2021 Vineyard Year in Review

 **Coming soon**

A recap of our 2021 growing season.  

Thank you for your interest in our vineyard operation.

2021 Pruning

Welcome to Ripple Brook Vineyard

Established in 2015, our small family owned vineyard boasts nearly 5 acres of grapes grown on the foothills of the north mountain in Cumberland County, PA

March is a busy time in the vineyard pruning last years growth away to allow for healthy new growth.  The Concord plants are always the first varietal we prune as they are the most winter hearty.  This year we spur trained the Concords, and renewed cordons as opportunities presented in the vineyard.  

Since last year was the first year our Chambourcin vines reached the top wire, we have decided to attempt a VSP style training.  Due to the deer pressure we have in our vineyard, we are placing the 2 cordons about 4 & 1/2 feet off the ground in hopes that the deer will find the growth less intriguing.  The bulk of this patch is on its fourth year of growth, as so, we are hopefully that they will bear a nice partial harvest here in 2021.  Our little helpers helped removed the tree tubes that helped them concentrate their growth upward.  Luckily, we had a mild winter since it would have been better for the plants cold hardiness to take the tubes off by September last fall.  Time will tell if leaving the tubes on until late winter has resulted in any winter damage.  

Tree Tubes from last growing season being removed from the Chambourcin vines

High-Mid wire VSP trained and pruned Chambourcin grape vine

Pruning Sheers held up to Concord grape cane with the beautiful blue March sky in the background.

Ripple Brook in 2021 - New Tractor and Grapes

 Welcome to Ripple Brook Vineyard

Established in 2015, our small family owned vineyard boasts nearly 5 acres of grapes grown on the foothills of the north mountain in Cumberland County, PA.  

Case International 895 XL

We're excited to see the positive growth that 2021 will bring.  We proudly bought a 'new-to-us' tractor!  This April we will be planting two new varietals, Cabernet Franc and Pinot Gris!  These will be our first vinifera varietals grown on the vineyard.  Currently, we grow native Concords, and two hybrid varietals, Vidal blanc and Chambourcin.  

Review of 2020 in Photos

2020 around Ripple Brook 🍇🍇🍇

Upper Chambourcin grape patch in tree tubes this year grew to the top wire!

Vidal Blanc grapes hanging from one of our 6 rows of VB grapes in August.  

Beautiful long, healthy Vidal Blanc cluster hangs before being harvested in mid-September this year.

Concord grape cluster held during harvest Labor Day Weekend

Our little helper, Adelaide holding a nice Concord grape cluster during harvest

Our small International tractor placing bird netting down our grape rows to protect the 2020 harvest.

The family walking behind the tractor and bird netting to 'clip' the netting on the trellis system in the Concord rows.

Springtime Views 2020

WELCOME TO RIPPLE BROOK VINEYARD

Ripple Brook under Snow: Welcome 2020

We welcomed the new year (and decade) here at Ripple Brook with these beautiful views.

The 2020 winter pruning will be in full swing shortly.  We are looking forward to all the fun and beauty this year will offer!

Anticipating a GREAT Concord Harvest at Ripple Brook

We are anticipating a nice Concord harvest late August into early September this year.  Please get you orders in for jam, jellies or even your own at home wine batches.  

Pre-orders can be placed (by the half bushel) by emailing us at:  orders@ripplebrookvineyard.com

Get your order in before we sell out!  We look forward to serving you!

Asparagus for Sale at Ripple Brook

Welcome back to Ripple Brook in the Springtime! 

Asparagus is now available for purchase!  The growing season is short so please get your orders in quickly!

Adelaide will gladly help us harvest Asparagus for your order!

Please reach out and email: 

orders@ripplebrookvineyard.com to place your order before May 4th.  





















Spring is in full Swing here at Ripple Brook Vineyard!

How do we know?  Just look around.  The grass and flowers and asparagus are growing, yes!

We just celebrated Easter here on the farm with our annual family egg hunt in the vineyard.  Look how much our little Adelaide has grown as well!  

Happy Easter everyone and Happy Springtime!

Welcome Spring 2019!!!

Welcome to Ripple Brook Farm and Vineyard!

We continue to stay busy on the vineyard as we finish up our Winter pruning.   Please check back soon to stay informed on all the happenings here at the farm!

Winter at Ripplebrook

Welcome to Ripple Brook Farm and Vineyard!  

Although it is winter, we are still keeping busy preparing ourselves for the coming growing season!  We recently attended the 2019 Mid Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Convention at the Hershey Lodge in Hershey, PA. We sat in on grape sessions about Fruit Zone Leaf Removal, Integrated Weed Management Strategies, using NEWA with our IPM, the Spotted Lantern Fly, and grape disease management.  

As most vignerons will tell you, the winter trimming season can be brutal at time.  Here at Ripple Brook, we try and wait for the nicest weather possible and get outside. Pictured below, we show Adelaide and Rachel trimming in the Concord rows during the February heat wave.  It was 64 degree that day!

We are currently only about 20 percent done with our winter trimming.  Let's keep our fingers crossed that the ground hog was correct earlier this month so we have some nice weather as we finish up our winter work in the vineyard.  Our goal is to have the entire vineyards first trimming done by mid-April.  

Bird Netting for Concord Grapes

Welcome to our page!  

Orders can be requested for Concord grapes by emailing us directly at:  orders@ripplebrookvineyard.com

(But once the grapes are gone, they're gone!)

Our vineyard will be full of change this month and next.  This past weekend we've noticed a large population of birds beginning to spend time above our ripening Concord grapes.  Pictured above you can see our Concord clusters turning a nice shade of purple.  

We were able to borrow the 4-wheeler from our sister vineyard at The Long Shot Farm and Vineyard to run our bird netting down each side of the 12 Concord rows.  Behind the 4-wheeler we pulled a small wagon with baling wrap netting.  Toben was there to cut the net at the end of each row.  We use paperclips to secure the net to the high and low wire.  Here's to hoping we have a nice sized harvest despite the bit of bird and possibly raccoon loss we've experienced mostly on the upper rows.

Zucchini Bread

With very little effort this year, and despite a relatively dry first half of July, our garden did give us a small harvest of zucchinis.  We love to grill zucchini slices throughout the summer.  But our second favorite way to use our zucchinis is to make bread!(cake)

  Pictured above you see our 7th and 8th zucchini breads of the season along with a few smaller zucchinis that we will slice and grill up.  For our bread we use the simple recipe found in our 'Joy of Cooking' cookbook.  Comment below with your favorite zucchini bread recipe!

Garden Week #1

Welcome Back to Ripple Brook!

At the end of May, we finally planted a bit of a small garden.  Zach rototilled some of the mushroom mulch we purchased into the garden area a couple of weeks back.  Rachel followed-up with one last tilling before the planting.  

We planted:  

• red peppers 
• tomatoes
• cherry tomatoes
• cucumber seeds
• green bean seeds
• beets (because we had some seeds)
• zucchini seeds
• pumpkin seeds.  

Fiona and Adel pose at the edge of the garden and then quickly
came into the shade to cool off on this very HOT sunny day

Fiona was such a big help planting the garden this year!

Here is what our garden looks like today at just over a week later!  Germination and some nice growth has occurred for all the varieties we planted!

Week #1

Fiona is here gesturing at the beans near her feet.  Down the back side of the bean row you can see our cucumbers coming up nicely.  Behind Fiona you are sort of able to see the zucchini and then pumpkin row emerging also.

We planted our extra 25 Chambourcin plants, from our Chambourcin mini-expansion last week, in between row 1 and row 2 of our garden for safe keeping.(To the far right)  If we are to have any loss in our large Chambourcin patch we will easily be able to locate its replacement next spring.

Stay tuned-in to see how well (or not so well) we maintain our garden, as well as see what kind of yield we receive.