We have harvest

We have harvest!

In the wee hours of our first harvest day, there was a sprinkling of rain. 7 am, the sky was overcast. I could hear strains of Latin inspired music from car radios of the picking crew as they pulled in next to the barn. Fred, the wonder dog, peered nervously out the RV window (the lap of luxury or LOL, pun intended). I pulled on my hat and gulped down my coffee. Harvest had begun.

This year’s crew is mostly familiar faces. Many have been working harvest here since we bought the vineyard in 1999. The crew members are nearly all related by blood or marriage to each other. Most live here year round. As a group, they are fast, efficient and experienced pickers. Their friendly chatter is soon drowned out by tractor engines.

Fifteen pickers, two tractors and about seventy five buckets head toward the east end of the vineyard. I drive my little red tractor. Behind which I tow a short trailer with two fruit bins. It’s loud; Yanmars are nicknamed “Yanmar Hammer” because the 25 horse power diesel engines sound like jackhammers. Dennis drives his big green and yellow John Deere. It has front forks which carry one fruit bin.

The pickers start out ahead of us. Four or five to a vine row, they space the 5 gallon buckets under the vines so they can fill a bucket and keep right on picking into the next bucket. The tractors troll up and down the rows to collect grapes into the wooden fruit bins. As soon as a bucket is emptied into the bin, it is whisked off to another vine to be refilled. The picker receives a ticket for each bucket picked. The going rate this year is 90 cents a bucket. We harvest until about 11am. By then it’s getting hot. Fifteen pickers, two tractors and the buckets return to the barn. Once in the barn, everyone sets off by themselves to count their tickets and drink a coke.

Since we will pick more fruit, the grapes are shuttled into the barn. We want to keep the sun off the grapes until tomorrow when all the fruit will travel to the wineries. On day one, we have filled 22 fruit bins. Each bin holds in the range of 1000 -1200 lbs. of grapes. That works out to approximately 11 tons of Chardonnay.

I wake to Mexican music. Ice on my window tells me that dawn would reveal frost in the vineyard. It’s quite a bit colder than the previous morning. Fourteen pickers, two tractors and about seventy buckets troop back to the vineyard. When we finish about 3 ½ hours later, 22 more bins are full.

The grapes are going to three different wineries. Grapes for LongSword wine are loaded onto the smaller flatbed truck. They are first to leave. The balance of the grapes is headed up north on a 40 foot flatbed trailer. Stacking these fruit bins is a tricky business in itself. Further complicating the task is the fact that this flatbed is taller than the other. The tractor’s forks can only lift one bin at a time. The bins must be stacked two high in order to get them all on the truck. Fully extended the forks lift the top bin about 6 inches short of clearing the bottom bin. So several frantic phone calls later, a taller forklift is on its way.

All and all, harvest went smoothly. I’ve stopped shooting at the birds but they are singing the blues anyway. No more free lunch.