New Grape Growers and the NRCS

It has been two years since we met with Javier Cruz from the NRCS. We followed the steps in order to become eligible for assistance from the National Resources Conservation Services. We formed a Limited Liability Company in July 2012, and in July 2013, we were awarded a grant to help us with the irrigation of our vineyard. My husband did much of the "leg work" by mapping out the output of the wells in our area. He retrieved this information available online via the ftp server at the Connecticut State Department of Consumer Protection under "well drilling records". He also learned what types of materials and construction was involved in well drilling and then we interviewed well drillers in our area this past spring. All of this prior work was enough to allow us an extension on our grant and Garrett Timmons from our local NRCS, scheduled a meeting with Civil Engineer, Dan Pietro on our property. So, on July 24th, Garrett, Dan and Eric came to visit us at our vineyard. My husband is showing them the grape hoe that will help us weed in the vine row.

Dan and Eric walked parts of the vineyard with us and looked at places where the well could be located. Of course, the well will be where there is water, but the records that my husband retrieved indicated that there is a source of good water in our area, exactly where that would be on our land is still to be determined.
Eric took some GPS coordinates around our property. Later in the day, my husband sent Dan a diagram of where our tiling lines were in the vineyard. We will need to contact one of the well drillers that we interviewed to set up a date for the well drilling.
One of our takeaway learnings from our first year with vines is that the young vines really need a reliable source of water. When we planted last May, we did have a bolus of water that came with tropical storm Andrea on June 6th, but the rest of the summer was very dry. We hope that we are now on track for having the well and irrigation system in place for planting our vineyard "take two".