Harvesting Wine Grapes in Walpole, NH

What a fun day I had picking grapes with Ting and Gail in Walpole, NH! We had the perfect day, sunny, cool and the best views anywhere. Virginia Carter, owner of Barnett Hill Vineyard in Walpole offers volunteers the opportunity to harvest the grapes she grows and offers lunch for your troubles. Only it's no trouble at all, the pleasure was all mine.

If you are interested in participating in the grape picking you can email her and sign up for a morning or afternoon harvest, Ginny provides all the supplies and instruction, no experience necessary. Her email is vineyard@sover.net. Unfortunately, you will have to wait until next Fall...

The Vineyard is on top of a hill overlooking the river valley between NH and Vermont, gorgeous!

Partial view of the extensive rows of grapes Ginny has planted.

Winery headquarters, recently built, open on Saturdays to the public.

In the winery where the magic of turning grapes into wine happens.

Dolores, Ting and Ginny.

Gail and Dolores are punching down the must cap in the tank.

We lifted the nets off of the rows where Ginny told us to pick.

Beautiful, healthy grapes!

The special tools we were given to cut the grapes off of the vines. Way better than clippers.

The bins we put the grapes in, keeping like grapes together. Ginny has many, many varieties.

Ting and Ginny. When picking low it's good to sit, or you can stand if picking at the top of the vine.

The 4 of us volunteer harvesters really going at it.

I'm easily distracted by all the beauty around me.

Gail.

Our picking time is over, it went by quickly, and we're tidying up before we go in for lunch.

Everyone had a great time!

Fine wine.

We picked all of this.

Ginny's Mom cleaning up after the very good lunch she made us. And for me the best vegan tomato mushroom soup ever!

The grape crusher.

Walpole is located about 15 miles north of Keene, in NH across the river from Vermont.

200 Meetup Member Milestone!!

Plymouth Digital Photographers Club, the meetup I started on June 15th, just hit the 200 member mark yesterday! We were in the October issue of South Shore Living Magazine, a very nice glossy MA publication, a beautifully written half page article on our club. Apparently photography is alive and well as a hobby, Plymouth has many more interested photographers than I ever would have imagined. I am honored to have met so many of them in the last few months, I have thoroughly enjoyed going on our 30+ outings together!

Here are a few of the many places we've been to over the last month, we have between 15 to 28 people show up for our meetups, some working during the week, other's retired or otherwise free during the day. I've kept everything free and pay the website and other fees with donations, which have been generous enough to cover the costs.

I have been very happy with the people at meetup.com, they've been responsive when problems arise from the website, and it's a great way to create community. I highly recommend it if you want to meet people with similar interests, have just moved to a new area, first time parents, retired, or just want to learn something new. Whatever your interest, from petunias to old cars, there's a meetup nearby. And if there isn't, just start one like I did! Meetup makes it very easy to do so.

For some unfound reason, blogspot will not let me write between the photos, in the time I've tried to make it so I could have finished this post, argghhh!!! So the copy will be placed in random places or not at all. These photos are of all the wonderful sunrises, sunsets and beautiful places in Plymouth along with the photographers I hang out with.

Late in the day we all met at the beach to learn about portraiture. Glenn Bacci, a member who has his own photography studio on the Cape, was wonderful about sharing his techniques. We practiced on each other, some people brought their families, the light was wonderful.

This body builder was on the beach and offered to pose for us, one of our members, Arnie, knew her from his gym. An unusual subject for us to photograph...

Sometimes we meet indoors and a member will teach us all something interesting. Doug here gave a class on matting.

Greg knew of this lovely farm in Middleboro and invited us all there, we had a large turnout for this on a beautiful evening.

People run into others they know at the meetups, Jim, above, was very surprised to see his nephew's fiance, April, at the farm.

Jim and Mary hold hands a lot, very sweet.

Ian's Mallard was accepted into the Plymouth Art Guild's Annual Show, so we all went to admire it. It was a lovely show and our photo club had a good time appreciating the wide variety of art.

Beach photos are of Plymouth Beach at sunset, a 2 hour walk out to the point. We are the only ones out there, one of my favorite places to walk this summer.

At another meetup we got permission to go to the Plymouth Boat Yard, private property, at 6am and watch the sunrise, spectacular! Afterward we headed to Cordage Park, the area with very old buildings that used to make rope, the main employer for Plymouth a long time ago.