Laser Planting Our Vines in Rockopolis

On Monday morning, the crew from Mudd Vineyards arrived promptly and got down to business. They decided to begin from row 6, the start of the block of Chenin blanc. When they went to plant this row, they ran into so many rocks, it jostled their planter and the vines ended up not being 4 feet apart. They tried this for a few more rows, some rows with more success than others. They don't call this Stonington for nothing! If the Greeks had discovered this land first, they would have named it Rockopolis. We felt really bad, even though we knew that we had done all the land preparation we could by turning over the top soil down to three feet and sifting out all of the large rocks. Our friend reminded us that rocks are the number one perennial crop in Connecticut.

We had a few visitors including our friend Mary's 90 year old mother, Margie. Margie is visiting from Santa Rosa, California, wine country. Margie and Barry brought a Passionfruit mousse cake when they came to visit and we had it with the morning coffee break which was much appreciated. The crew consisting of John, the tractor driver, Oscar and Herman, the planters and Phil who checked to make sure that all the plants were ending up straight, persevered. In the end, what worked was if John went through the row first and turned up the rocks. Oscar and Herman would pick up the rocks. My husband, friend Frost and I would occasionally lend a hand and then the crew went back through the row to plant. This is what they had to do and in two and a half days, all of the 6800+ vines where planted! We could never have planted the vineyard without everyone's hard work!