Vineyard Expansion Drip Irrigation

It is time to work on expanding the vineyard drip irrigation system.

We will be planting five more acres of grapes in April, 3 acres of Montepulciano and 2 acres of Aglianico. Although there is plenty of time, we want to finish the preparation and be ready to plant before pruning begins.

John and the children have already laid the underground drip irrigation tape and dug the trenches for the water pipe to connect these to the existing irrigation system. You can see more details about that in preparing for grapevine planting. The next step was to extend the main filtered water line (4 inch pipe) and branch off for the new watering zones (2 inch pipe).

Glueing It Together

Below, you can see the purple primer and glue used to connect the PVC pipes and fittings as they go into the trench. The glue is swabbed onto the inside of one pipe and the outside of the other. One pipe is slightly larger than the other so they can be pushed together – these are called PVC glued fittings. They were making great progress when…

…. this happened!

It Snowed!

By the time it was over, we had accumulations of almost two inches of snow (only ~0.4 inches of melted water though).

It was beautiful but soooo cold – it stayed below freezing for several days! It was a time to work inside except for periodic snowball fights of course!

Even our Pyrenees, Snowball, enjoyed playing in the snow and took time from her play to pose for a picture. You can see how well she blends in!

We used the time to make popcorn balls and a gingerbread house. Both are traditions in our family for the holidays but in our push to get the basement expansion finished, we never took the time to make them. So, real food diet out the window, hello sugar high – the quality of a gingerbread house is directly related to the amount of candy on it!

So, it is a new week, the snow and popcorn balls are gone (the gingerbread house destruction is well underway), John is back to work on finishing the vineyard irrigation expansion and I am cleaning up our diet…again!