We're currently in a drought in the Bluegrass. As someone who just moved here, I never expected a drought. I assumed that being known for luscious grass meant that there would be more than enough water for everything. Maybe there will be in the future, but the past few weeks have been really dry. Too dry for our vines. Lack of water creates all kinds of problems in a vineyard, as well as all kinds of colors.
This past week, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We're not large enough to have any sort of industrial watering system. I'm not even sure we have water pressure for anything like that, even if we could rent one. So, instead, we built something that we could fill with water, pull behind one of our tractors, and distribute some water to our plants. Here's what that ended up looking like.
Our tank holds roughly 300 gallons of water. Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with a contraption small enough to fit through all of our rows. So, we had to skip approximately 16 of the rows. Hopefully it will rain soon to help those rows, in particular. We made sure to concentrate our efforts on new/young plants, since they seem to be struggling the most. It takes almost an hour to fill this tank with water. So, The Wizard had the idea of driving it to a nearby water utility service and filling it up for about a dollar in what seemed like seconds. Here's what he looked like alongside Old Richmond Road in his trek back to the vineyard.
I swear to you, I thought he was going to get pulled over for dragging that rickety, old trailer full of water down the highway. As he was leaving, he told me to get on the back and ride with. No thank you. I opted to time him, instead. He pulled off the whole trip in 20 minutes. I think we decided that it wasn't worth paying to save 30 minutes of time, when we could take the time between full tanks to do things around the winery.
So, if you're an advocate of Kentucky Wine. Do a little rain dance for us!
The Winemaker's Apprentice
This past week, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We're not large enough to have any sort of industrial watering system. I'm not even sure we have water pressure for anything like that, even if we could rent one. So, instead, we built something that we could fill with water, pull behind one of our tractors, and distribute some water to our plants. Here's what that ended up looking like.
Our tank holds roughly 300 gallons of water. Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with a contraption small enough to fit through all of our rows. So, we had to skip approximately 16 of the rows. Hopefully it will rain soon to help those rows, in particular. We made sure to concentrate our efforts on new/young plants, since they seem to be struggling the most. It takes almost an hour to fill this tank with water. So, The Wizard had the idea of driving it to a nearby water utility service and filling it up for about a dollar in what seemed like seconds. Here's what he looked like alongside Old Richmond Road in his trek back to the vineyard.
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| He'll be comin' 'round the mountain... |
So, if you're an advocate of Kentucky Wine. Do a little rain dance for us!
The Winemaker's Apprentice
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