Julian's February Vineyard Report

We got more rain and flooding. The water came up really high. There were some big branches and logs and tires that got stuck in the wires in the vineyard. I wonder where the rest of the car is? I put on my rain boots and played in the puddles in the vineyard roads. They are all messed up from the flooding.

Dad keeps working in the barn. He's getting all the equipment ready. He says that we have a lot of work to do as soon as it stops raining and dries up a little bit.

It's still too wet in the vineyards to do any work. But the ground around the fruit trees is dry. We started pruning them by cutting back some of the branches that would put shade on the vineyard. Leonella, Jose, Rafael and Juan came back to help us clear branches from the creek so it won't clog the creek so much. We cleared some of the grass and bushes around the creek near the vineyard. That's where the Sharp Shooters live during the winter. Dad told me that our neighbor lost half of their grape harvest last summer to the bugs called Sharp Shooters.

When the ground in the vineyards dried out some, we got really busy. The workers came back again and helped us put in new stakes and end posts for the new vines to replace the ones Dad took out last fall. We took the rootstock that they made last year from the cellar and clip their roots and little branches. We dug holes for each vine, and packed the dirt around them. We put milk cartons around them so that the rabbits and deer wouldn't eat the new branches. Then we put more dirt around the milk cartons so that they wouldn't fall over. It's a lot of hard work and I got really tired. But I liked how the new vineyard looked when we get finished, with lots and lots of milk cartons with little grape vines growing inside of them.

Just today, we started to prune the vines. We're trying to keep the right amount of buds. Some buds turn into branches and some turn into grapes. I can cut the vines if my Dad is there to watch me. We leave the mustard plants because they have pretty yellow flowers. Besides, it's so muddy between the rows that you can't till the grasses yet.

Come back each month for a Julian's Vineyard Report.