AND WINE MAKING. 181 



years, yet there is no reason why every farmer should not 

 have a small vineyard, grow his own grapes, and make 

 his barrel or two of wine, or why every owner of a garden 

 should be without enough grapes for the use of the 

 family. 



Grape-vines of the more common varieties are very cheap 

 now, and an outlay of $5 to $10 will buy one hundred to 

 two hundred vines enough to make a start with. Plant 

 these, at any rate, if you cannot do more, and grow your 

 own vines hereafter to enlarge your vineyard. Wire for 

 trellis is also very cheap now, and it is not needed the 

 first year or two. A few hundred vines can be easily 

 kept in order before breakfast ; let the children help you, 

 they can do a great deal of the lighter work, and will 

 learn to take a delight in it. And when your first crop 

 of grapes ripens, and you can make a few barrels of wine, 

 if you have no press or commodious collar, you can find a 

 cider press somewhere, and room in the cellar of one of your 

 neighbors to store it. One of our most successful wine- 

 growers commenced his operations with a simple hole in 

 the ground, dug under his house, and his first wine-press 

 was merely a large beam, let into a tree, which acted as a 

 lever upon the grapes, with a press bed, also of his own 

 making. His vineyard and wine cellars are now among 

 the best in the county, and although he no longer lives 

 to enjoy it, his family are left in affluent circumstances, 

 and grape growing alone has made them wealthy. Be- 

 sides, we have got down to the lowest prices, and as the 

 prospects for the grape-growers of the Old World, and 

 even of California, darken on account of the Phylloxera, 

 our own begin to brighten. We know that we have 

 something we can depend upon, and feel that better 

 days will come again for the grape-growers and wine- 

 makers of the country. 



Of course it is not advisable to keep the wine over 

 summer in an indifferent cellar, but if it is good, as it 



