Irrigation is Vital

On Wednesday, we took the afternoon off to take a road trip to New Hampshire to visit Trevor at Brookdale Farm. Trevor worked as an engineer and now spends his retirement as the 7th generation farmer at his family's Brookdale Farm.
We were there to see the irrigation equipment that Trevor sells and to see how he uses the equipment to irrigate his vasts plantings of blueberries, raspberries, apples, etc. Trevor took us to his blueberry patch and showed us how the polyethylene pipe was laid on the surface for irrigation. We were by a pond that Trevor mentioned can be drained in 2 days. He showed us the filtration system and the quick disconnects that will allow for easy winter storage.
Trevor mentioned that he has worked with several wineries on Long Island and confirmed that vines really need a reliable source of water during the first few years after planting. Trevor did a quick back of the envelop calculation for how much irrigation line we will need based on our row length and how many rows of vines that we have. He came up with a figure of 30 gallons per minute that our well will need to produce. All of this is predicated on the amount of water that our well driller can find. Time for me to revisit Lesson 7 from the U.C. Davis Online Course, Viticulture for Winemakers, which is all about irrigation.