Taking Care of our Help

Thanks for all the help!! It has truly been amazing that we have had so much help the past 8 weeks. Here are some pictures of the kids, their friends and the work that they have accomplished in the vineyard the last couple of months. If anyone says that young kids today don't want to work anymore, they have not met the young kids who are helping us every morning to prune, leaf pull, shoot thin and cluster thin our 5 acres of vines. With all the rain it was a lot of work to keep all the growth in check. Thanks to the last two weeks of dry, hot weather the vines have begun to slow their growth and we have actually gotten them under control. Here are our helpers and their jobs. Quentin is pulling excess leaves from the Cabernet Franc vines to improve air flow.

Cole is clipping off the excess clusters because the 4th year vines have produced 3 times more grapes than they can possibly ripen into quality fruit.

Blake aka "muck man" thins shoots in the fruiting zone to improve air flow and decrease the shading in the fruit zone.

Elliot looks through the canopy on the low wire where he is thinning the clusters.

Lee works to tuck the shoots under the upper catch wires, hedges the rogue shoots and shortens any of the long terminal shoots.

Avery pulls leaves in the fruit zone on the south side to improve light penetration.
Josh also pulls the leaves on the north side to improve light penetration and air flow.

Thank goodness we have such hard workers or our vineyard would be out of control. Thanks for all the hard work!!!