E. Idaho man grows, sells fruit for extra income

POCATELLO, Idaho -- Bennett DeMoss holds a hose in his front yard, spraying water on dozens of grape vines and fruit trees loaded in the bed of his truck for transport to the Southeast Idaho Farmers Market.

While he douses the plants, he quizzes his business partner, his 8-year-old son, Brennen.

"Brennen, if they wanted a green seedless grape, what would they get," DeMoss asks.

"Interlaken," Brennen correctly replies. "And Dad, how old is our Interlaken vine?"

"Eleven years old," DeMoss says, though it's clear Brennen already knows the answer to his own question.

DeMoss, who runs Portneuf Valley Vineyards & Daylilies from the yard of his home on 11th Street in Pocatello and from a farm in Power County, makes a good supplemental income based on his green thumb and knowledge of fruit production. For Brennen, proceeds from selling a yearly flat of grape vines and commissions from sales at the Farmers Market are deposited into a college savings account.

"We sell almost everything: nectarines, plums, peaches, apples, pears," Brennen says proudly. The planter strip along DeMoss' front yard is packed with mature fruit trees and daylilies -- DeMoss breeds his own lily varieties. His backyard is a refuge for more fruit trees, vegetables and grape vines lots of grape vines. Vines cover fences, wires, trellises and arbors, and they abound with clusters of grapes.

DeMoss operates one of the area's few commercial vineyards.

"I don't know anybody else who has the varieties we have," he says.

Most summers, the vineyard brings in between $5,000 and $6,000, but DeMoss says the operation is about more than money. He's on a quest to educate locals that Southeast Idaho's climate is as ideal for grapes as it is for potatoes.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about grapes. A lot of people don't know you can grow grapes here," DeMoss says, adding grapes thrive because of the area's hot days and cool nights, lack of pests, freedom from bunch rot and diseases and low rainfall, which enables growers to control the moisture their vines receive. "Actually, our environment is perfect for grapes."

Grapes fitted for short growing seasons are preferable here, he says. Concord, for example, takes a long time to ripen and would be a poor choice.

Wine grapes do particularly well here, where alkaline soils and little rainfall work together to promote high sugar concentrations. The amount of dissolved sugar in water from a grape is measured in a unit called Brix, he explains. St. Croix, a wine variety he grows, has a Brix level of between 28 and 30 degrees. By contrast, Interlaken, a table grape, measures between 16 and 18 degrees.

Another common misconception, DeMoss says, is that grapes require heavy watering. Quite the contrary, he waters his new starts on just a weekly basis and his established plants once a month.

DeMoss, who works for the Farm Service Agency in the USDA's Power County office, planted his first vine, a Thompson seedless, on a south-facing wall of his parents