Luxury Condo Addition in the Vineyard

We are members of the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and since 2022 have participated in the Conservation Stewardship Program. As part of this program we were asked to put up bat houses in our vineyard in 2023. My husband sourced the parts and purchased two bat houses in April. He also had a plan for the construction of the bat houses. Time passed and the next opportunity he had to actually put his plan to practice was in September, a few weeks before the NRCS would come to inspect the bat houses.
If you are familiar with vineyard work, September is when we ramp up for harvest, so it was a busy time for us. My husband built a scaffold for the bat houses. He began digging a hole for the bat house with a post hole digger and he soon realized that this was a task for his backhoe. Unfortunately, the backhoe was enveloped in invasives which he had to manually remove with loppers. Having done that, he attached it to the tractor and crossed his fingers that the hydraulics were all working. Yes! Back to the bat house. The backhoe did the trick and in a few days huge boulders were removed from the hole and it was time to put the bat house up.
The first thing was to fix the post into the ground with concrete. This was done on day 1 and allowed to cure for 2 days. The next step involved our friend Barry. My husband designed the scaffold so that it could pivot from an upright position to a position near the ground to allow for easy access to cleaning. The scaffold that the bat houses were on was remarkably heavy. Barry suggested using the tractor and bucket.

Barry's extensive experience with ESPN cameras in high places came in handy as he balanced the bat houses on the tractor bucket and had ropes to steady the scaffold as the bucket lifted it to a more and more upright position. My job was to bang in the bolt and secure it with the nut so that once the scaffold was upright it wouldn't fall over.

Amazingly, this operation didn't take too long and the bat luxury condominum was ready for inspection.
A few days later, Courtney, Annabelle and Mike from the NRCS came to inspect the bat houses and said that it was the best constructed bat house that they had ever seen!
Now all we need are the occupants!