Friday, April 09, 2010

59 pillars, newly mown grass, baby branches and chomper's bbq in Italy

9 Aprile
We celebrated the day after Easter, Pasquetta, with an outdoor bbq replete with a few snowflakes.  Now we are right back at 70 degrees, but for one day, mother nature slowed our outdoor cooking a bit.  Our friend Camillo has won the right to don my brother's bbq squad cap, Chompers for the day as you see.
We finished the tying of the 30,000 vines, but not before I returned to row no. 1 and re-tied about 1500 to bring some order and symmetry to the whole thing.  The next job is to strip the trunks of each vine of all the  new buds which want to erupt from below, but this should be an easy task in comparison.  I have now mowed the newly sown grass twice in the vineyard and it is looking pretty good.  I just hope it serves its purpose to choke out the weeds as well as it has served to prevent the tractor from slipping while ascending.
The construction crew has 3 more days to finish up the digging and pouring of the 59 pilons sunk 16 meters deep to protect us from any of the major natural disasters including "end of the world" level events.   After that, maybe we will see walls going up.
We have been truly blessed with great spring weather for working in the vineyard!  Rain is forecast for next week on Monday and Tuesday and with the tying behind us, I say, "Bring it on"!
dds

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