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| Roger Gehrning’s commercial vineyard in Amargosa, NV, the first in southern Nevada (2005) |
It is really kind of funny. I have noticed that as long as horticulture is not very important economically it stays as horticulture but as soon as it gains momentum it is then referred to as agriculture.
Come join us for the first commercial harvest of olives in Nevada for making local olive oil. The olives will be harvested around December 19th at commercial vineyard in Nevada about 90 minutes from Las Vegas. We will be harvesting the olives by hand. This reduces damage to the fruits and makes a higher quality olive oil.
There are no processing facilities in Nevada for olive oil so the olives will be taken to Paso Robles, CA, for processing and bottling.
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| Roger’s first commercial harvest of wine grapes using volunteers that I organized for this historic event (2009) |
Arrangements are underway for the processed and bottled oil to be sold in Nevada.
The vineyard is owned and operated by Roger Gehring, a local Las Vegas resident. Roger also owns and operatest the first commercial vineyard in southern Nevada which is selling the grapes to Pahrump Valley Winery, Pahrump, Nevada.
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| Me with Roger just after the first planting of wine grapes |
The wine grapes came from Duarte Nursery out of California, a nursery like Dave Wilson, which has been very kind in their donations of wine grapes for evaluation at the University Orchard in North Las Vegas.
His irrigation line, drip irrigation, is attached to a trellis wire about 24 inches off the ground (where Roger’s hands are) with the emitter coming directly off of his poly tubing lateral line.
The wine grapes are each staked and protected with a rabbit guard. Lots of jackrabbits and desert cottontails out there looking for food in the winter and they will take anything they will devour anything they can including immature pine trees Roger was using for establishing a windbreak.
Is the irrigation line attached to the trellis wire set up with misters? Is that in lieu of a ground emitter or in addition to?
In this case and in most commercial cases these are not misters but "drippers". At our orchard I lay the poly pipe on the ground and put the drip emitters (in our case two per plant about one foot on either side of the vine)directly into the pe pipe. In this case they do the same but put it on a wire. This might be to get it out of the way and also so you can see plugged emitters easier at a glance. I prefer to orient them on the top of the pe pipe to help reduce plugging. Some like to put it on the bottom of the pipe.
Just an update on the olive oil harvest. There is not enough fruit on the 1000 trees to warrant a "first harvest" event so we will postpone this to next December, 2012. Let me know if you want to be a part of this event. The olives will be harvested by hand and pressed as individual varietals and not combined so that some flavor profiles can be established. I would like to find some small scale equipment for processing the oil in Nevada rather than taking it to California. If you know of some please let me know at [email protected]. Thanks.