A Vine With a View

Most of our vines are now in the 1-3 inch shoot stage in the Eichhorn-Lorenz grapevine growth classification. This is a view from our Chardonnay ENTAV clone 76, looking north at my husband hoeing rocks. By walking our vineyard, we were able to get a count of the vines that didn't make it. Fortunately, Mercier, CA is sending us all the required replacements. They have been a terrific group of people to work with.
In the meantime, we got a break from hoeing yesterday when the remnants of Tropical Storm Andrea provided us with some needed rain that fell steadily all day with some occasional downpours. Hopefully, all the tiling work that Jeff, Bill, Barry and my husband did, removed any excess water in the vineyard.
As farmers, we have become avid weather watchers. I have a link to the Stonington Extended Weather Forecast that I put under the tab called Online Resources so that I can check on what the day as well as the week will be like. So far, this spring has been very cool, with the exception of the mini-heat wave that we had from May 30-June 1. We feel that all of this has been working in our favor, but it is only a matter of time that the weeds as well as the vines will take off and we still have work to do.