Training and Weeding

Today is the 5th day of 5 hours per day of weeding and training. I have been manually removing the weeds close to the vines, and pruning and pulling the vines up to the first wire. I'm the one who gets to do this for two reasons. The first one is I like doing non-machinery type work, the other is I'm more anal about details than Kenny. So here I am on row 20 out of 29 digging my hands into the soil and pulling up all the morning glories, alfalfa, and ironweed. Kenny's out here with the 4-stroke weed wacker and a metal blade ripping up everything in between the vines.



My day normally begins around 6:15 am, by 6:30 I'm out in the vineyard. I really should be out there earlier, but I refuse to get up before 6, if I can help it, and I can help it. To get ready for the morning, I don my light colored, long sleeved shirt, and my full length light material pants. I put my hair back in a ponytail, and bury my head in a baseball cap with Palisade stitched on the front. And I dare to wear open Tevas. The reason I wear this hot clothing is not because I'm normally freezing in August, but because I'm burying myself in the vines with thousands of crawling, biting insects. Last year I didn't do that and I looked like I was continuously covered in chicken pox. This year I sweat, but don't itch.



This time in the morning is incredible. The sun is just starting to rise over the Grand Mesa in its pinks and golds, and there is always a breeze from the east. No one else is up, except the other foolish vinters, and the air is cool. This is my favorite time to be out here. I look around at all the growing things, take a deep breath, bury myself in a vine, and start pulling, pruning, tieing, and training.



It's really rewarding until about the 50th one, which is about the end of one row, then I'm over it. The thrill is gone. Although one great thing about this work is the free health spa workout. We should advertise this to all the fat ass ladies as "a great workout in a beautiful setting. Only 30 bucks a week." I basically do a million squats with weights everyday. Here's how it goes....I bend down, I pull (the weed doesn't come out), I pull harder (increased resistance), the weed gives...repeat. My ass is killing me and I can barely sit down, but it looks good for a woman my age...and did I mention it was free...sort of.



The vine training is the interesting part of the vineyard work. You basically become the god of the vine and you alone decide which vines (only 2 out of many) are chosen to be trained up to the wire. There is no scientific method to this, you just guess. I normally pick the biggest, the closest to the bamboo pole leading up to the wire, and the healthiest looking. Last year I did this same training and almost all the vines died down to the ground, so my method of choosing is obviously flawed. This year I hope it takes for next season because that initial training work is a bitch. I've mentally told myself that if they all die all over again that's fine, because if I didn't, and I had to train these all over again, I'd kill myself.



It's really cool to watch the vines after you've trained them because they start to go into the "wooding" stage. The trunks of the vines go from a flexible, light fluorescent green color, to a sickly pale yellow, to a pretty eggplant purple. From the eggplant purple, they morph with wood-like strings amid the purple and then the wood kinda oozes around until it is now a mature hard vine. Now they are ready to become those gnarled vines you see in the ancient vineyards of France. I hope.