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.
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