Our first harvest, Auxerrois occurred on Sunday, October 21, 2025. Looking back at my spreadsheet, this is the second earliest Auxerrois harvest, the earliest being in 2020. We had a group of our motivated friends come and help us with the harvest.
We began at 7:30 with raising the nets on the five rows of Auxerrois. Harvest began at 9.
We harvest two rows at a time. We try not to put the lugs on the ground because when we begin the harvest the ground can be wet with dew. To accomplish this, my husband is on his tractor in the adjacent alley with the yellow lugs. We have one person, the "swapper", Ted, helping with the swapping of the full lugs with empty lugs.
We work in pairs. One person holds the lug while the other person harvests the grapes. This way there is minimal bending or throwing the grapes into the lugs on the ground. A few of our friends were able to find the milk carton towers that enabled them to put the lug on the tower and harvest.
There is a designated "runner" who is in charge of watching if the lugs are getting full and working with the "swapper" to get empty lugs.
The "swapper's" job is to make sure that each lug is appropriately filled with grapes so that they can be stacked. Once we reached the end of the alley, my husband and Ted put the full lugs into the Penske truck that he rented for transport to Stonington Vineyard on Monday.
We were finished harvesting the 5 rows of Auxerrois at 11:15! This allowed us have lunch and enjoy the beautiful day!
We want to thank our friends who came to help us for the Auxerrois harvest! Your help was much appreciated!
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