The Winemaker’s Journal: In The Beginning (Wine Grape Grower’s Archives)

EASTER SUNDAY – APRIL 15, 2001 CLOUDY/MID 70’s

Instead of going to church with my children and my mother, I am in the vineyard. We have thousands of dollars in vines, posts, and labor and boy do I feel the weight of this responsibility. Gene bas gotten out his transit and said he was going to take a corner and start there and figure it out. We established four comers. We found one end of the vineyard and posts were correct but the other end was not. All those end posts have to come out again. It has started to rain and we have to stop.

MONDAY – APRIL 16, 2001 CLOUDY/MID-60’s

We measured the first and last rows and lagged the line posts for the second time. We drove these posts taking great pains to get correct measurements. Gene being the fence builder he is decided the only way to solve our problem was with high tensile wire. We did not want to take another chance on those posts being wrong so we pulled wire from one end of the vineyard to the other. Then we pulled wire across the vineyard from one set of line posts to the other and where the wire intersected that’s where a fine post was driven. We drove several rows of posts and carefuUy checked the diagonals. THANK YOU, GOD!

Tonight we went to Wal-Mart and purchased half a dozen hand cultivators, plastic watering cans, and two pull along gardening carts to use in planting. I’m so tired!