What a crazy few days we had here 1.5 weeks ago. We essentially did everything you should NOT do when preparing your vineyard. Somehow we got it done. We were out late at night and early in the morning, but we got it done. The vines are in the ground and we can officially say we have a vineyard now.
Still lots more to do but here is a collection of photos and a few videos of what's happened so far.
Unpacking 100 vines.
Breaking first ground!!! VERY hard ground.
VERY hard.
Tried using a pretty beefy tiller, which wasn't going anywhere fast in our dirt. Even with some very skilled assistance.
Tried jury-rigging some antique farm equipment to help us till but that didn't help much either. We started losing our light so we decided to forget the tilling for the time being.
Measured twice (possibly 3x), and then marked where the holes would be dug.
My vineyard angel. This poor guy had to jump on the auger for every, single, hole. We found that not any one slice of ground is alike. We're looking at clay, decomposed limestone, limestone, sandstone and a sandy loam mix.
We dug till all hours of the morning, but finally finished.
Beautiful. Rainy day 1 of planting.
Planting helpers on planting day 2.
This folks, is not cement, it is decomposed limestone. It's a beast to work in but we'll have very happy vines.
On our last vine!
Done planting. It is SO gorgeous!
After adding the rebar stakes, we started laying the drip line irrigation.
We are SO excited. We went ahead and purchased 100 (2ish year old) Brilliant variety grapevines from east Texas earlier this week.
They arrived this morning so we took the day to clean up the planting field a bit more.
EJ took out some big, old, half-dead mesquite trees as well as some young ones.
It was a beautiful, 78 degree, January day in the Texas Hill Country today! Perfect for getting outside and doing a little measuring in the field where we are planning to plant 100+ vines this spring!!! Wheeeeee!!!! Step one - complete. Will keep updating as we progress along.
