Still Netting

We are in a rush to put up netting on our grapes ever since we saw a flock of starlings when we arrived at the vineyard on September 6. Half of our vineyard is already netted, but the netting had to be dropped and cinched. We still had to put up the moveable wire for the netting on the other half of the vineyard.
It's a good thing that we have such dedicated friends who come and help us in the vineyard. After putting up the moveable wire, they came to help us put up the anchor clips (check out the blog How Long Does it Take to Net, to see what an anchor clip and a vin clip look like).

They also came to help us close up the netting that we already have in the vineyard with our newly acquired netting closures, clothes pins. My husband sourced these clothes pins from China. Last year, he got an assortment of possible styles of clothes pins and we selected this one because it felt durable and had a strong grip.
Last year, when we used the vin clips, we found it to be difficult to put on and even more difficult to take off. This hampered us during Brix sampling and especially during harvest when it was imperative to remove the vin clips and move the netting out of the way of harvesting grapes.
Our new solution, goes on quickly and comes off quickly and is no impediment to getting in and out of the netting making sampling of Brix easy to do.

We put the clothes pin on either side of the grape vine and on either side of the line post. For one person to do one row (756 feet) takes one hour. There are approximately 460 clothes pins holding the netting shut. We ordered 15,000 clothes pins to do the entire vineyard. Amazingly, the shipping cost more than the clothes pins. The cost of the clothes pins when shipping is factored in is about $0.08 (eight cents) per pin.