Our first harvest for Vintage 2024 occurred on Sunday, September 29. The call went out and 30 of our stalwart friends answered. A few of our friends came at 7:30 to help us raise the nets in 5 rows of Auxerrois and 8 rows of Chardonnay. The nets were raised by 9:45 and by 9:50 the harvesting commenced.
This year, we tried a new strategy. We divided our friends into two teams working two rows at a time. We had one of our friends in each of the rows with yellow lugs working as "runners". Our friends paired up with one person holding the lug and the other person cutting the grapes. This worked because truth be told, our crop was quite dismal.
We began in the Chardonnay with friends harvesting in rows 1 and 2 and in rows 3 and 4. My husband drove the tractor pulling the trailer in the alley between rows 2 and 3, with Barry collecting the full lugs.
Kim and Bob were the runners, ensuring that the lugs never got too full so that we could not hold them. The beauty of this method was many-fold. The lugs were never on the ground getting wet. We never had to bend up and down, putting the grapes in the lugs. The lugs were never left in the alley but immediately loaded on the trailer. By the timestamp on the pictures that my husband took, we began at 9:50 and finished at 11:00. That is 12 rows in a little over an hour!
Our friends took a mini-food break and were anxious to work on the 5 rows of Auxerrois. We employed the same method and the entire 13 rows of grapes were harvested by 12:15!
What did we do with the yellow lugs full of Chardonnay and Auxerrois? They were put into a U-haul that my husband rented.
No more stacking the yellow lugs on a pallet and wrapping the pallet with shrink wrap! We celebrated with a lunch of homemade butternut squash soup, foccacia, and salad as well as a sampling of our Auxerrois and Chardonnay wines. We want to thank all of our friends for helping us! Aloha!
No comments:
Post a Comment