Today we put in the main body of the highway stakes for the vineyard. Because we put the vineyard at an angle, we have to adjust where to put the posts near the edge of the vineyard to get the support the vines need. I have found out that normally the posts are put 18 to 21 feet apart, so in our case with 3.33’ spacing, we put the highway stakes every 6 vines. In the old days you had a large metal can with handles and pounded them in the ground. Now as you can see there is a small tractor that pushes them in and all we have to do is hold them straight and then adjust them later. It took us about 4.5 hours this morning to put in about 500 stakes. The remaining 160 I will put in by hand. Probably a lot more work than the 500 today. Yes, we bent a few. The they guys knew how to straighten most of them out. Oh, the funny picture below was a little adjustment needed on the tractor.

I’ll put a picture in this weekend with all of the posts in the ground. The amazing thing is they all line up in any direction……so cool.

I forgot to mention…as you can see below we took them from the pile near our garage and arranged them in the vineyard. Imagine trying to carry them (10 pounds each, doing 6 at a time) from one end of the land and fill in 1.3 acres and then line them up so the tractor does not run them over, no need to go to the gym.

Friday I’m going to lay out the rest of the highway stakes and start on the 2200 rebar stakes….can’t wait!