April Activities in the Vineyard: Pencil Rod Removal

In an effort to remove approximately 6,000 dead vines, we thought that it would be easier to remove the pencil rods first and then remove the dead vines so, April finds us in the vineyard, removing pencil rods that were holding up our vines. Removing pencil rods is infinitely easier than putting in pencil rods, we can go down the middle of 2 rows and remove approximately 400 rods in 45 minutes. That's the easy part, the difficult part was that during the first hour that we did this, we got some horrible blisters on our hands. (I'll spare you the visual). My friend mentioned that there are specific Bandaids made for blisters and they actually work. So, after 2 days, we have done about 2/3rds of the vineyard. Every other day, we are busy bundling the pencil rods in an effort to save them for use in 2016 when we replant the vineyard. This reminded me of the first time we bundled pencil rods and I blogged about it in May 2013 calling the blogpost: Pencil Rods and The $64 Tomato.
I guess this time around, we are more efficient, I think:

When we are working down the vineyard rows, we occasionally check on the plants and they are still dormant, but putting on a little heft. It's amazing that this year, we are still getting low temperatures that are approaching the mid 30's, in other words, it is still cold.