More Planting Preparations

The vines are here! On Thursday, after we received our 2 pallets of vines, we uncrated them and put them into the refrigerated truck that we are borrowing from our neighbors. The boxes that the vines came in were a little crushed and not in the best condition. We needed to prepare the Auxerrois because we intended to plant these vines on Friday. This planting would tell us how feasible our plan of kick soil into the hole, tamp, tamp, tamp, more soil, tamp, tamp, tamp, and move on would be. We were able to cut the roots of our 160 Auxerrois clone 2 and 30 Auxerrois clone 1 and then called it a day.
On Friday morning, we went to the land at 7:00. We had an ambitious schedule. My husband wanted to mow all the alleys so the weeds would be tamed, I had 2 more rows of pencil rods to fasten and the staging area to "mow" with our push line trimmer. Our friend Mary arrived at 9 and we began preparing the Cabernet franc and Cabernet sauvignon for planting.

Mary and I got into a good system. We were humming along. She did the cutting of the roots while I held it taut. If you saw the process, you would think that I would be getting my fingers chopped. Mary did tell me a story about the Vikings and head chopping while we were doing this. Not exactly reassuring.
When noon came around, we switched to planting mode. My husband believed that we were able to plant 160 vines in 1 hour and 30 minutes. So, our plan of kick soil into the hole, tamp, tamp, tamp, more soil, tamp, tamp, tamp, and move on seems to work. We ended the work day by preparing our Chardonnay ENTAV clones 96 and 76 in the pouring rain. We were able to get everything done that we wanted to do on Friday, which was really exceeding all expectations. Hope all goes well today. I'll let you know.