Plans Interrupted

Yesterday, we arrived at the land, as we usually do, with plans for the day. The plan for the day included my husband testing the grape hoe to clear the weeds but as we turned toward the vineyard, my husband said, "Look at the turkeys!" I said, "Where?" and began fumbling for my camera. The turkeys were at the south end of the vineyard with their heads pointed in the direction of our grapes and what big, fat turkeys they were!

We both jumped out of our truck and my husband was flapping his arms and running in the direction of the turkey flock. They did not really go scattering, but went sauntering down the vineyard row as if to get yet another nibble of grape goodness before leaving.

After driving the turkeys out of the vineyard, we both surveyed the damage. The turkeys had just begun their breakfast of grapes from the south end of our vineyard and were on their meticulous and leisurely eatfest down the row. The grapes are at the perfect height for nibbling and they did a good job of pecking and eating each individual grape. The damage had just begun and if we had arrived any later, we would probably have seen a total annihilation of our little crop and not really known what caused the damage.
So, an abrupt change of plan was in order. It is not like we were unaware of bird problems, because we have been putting up netting on our Auxerrois that is already at 16 ^oBrix and getting sweeter. We were more focussed on smaller bird problems, such as starling getting to our grapes and didn't think that the flock of turkeys would partake of grapes. Wrong.
So, we devised a way of using our trailer to unroll the netting that we purchased and went down each row to net the surviving grapes.

So, another lesson learned the hard way....turkeys love grapes.