What a job! We are almost done having the end posts installed. We had originally planned on having 88 diagonal rows but as it came out we have 84. The others would have been to small for the expense. There is a little tractor that basically pounds the end posts into the ground. I swear you can hear the pounding all the way to downtown Sebastopol. We are hoping we did not get them to close to the fence. 10 feet to turn around on the diagonal and around 15 feet when the row is vertical to a fence or a tree. It will not make much difference in the first few years, but if we decide to have a small tractor, it might be a problem.

Last week we decided to count all of the knives in the ground and see how many plants we will need for the vineyard. Joey and I went up and down every row and found out we had 3138 vines before the end posts went in, hundreds more than we had planned. When the end posts went in we lost a few so I think we will have more than 3100 vines. Anything over 2916 (again, our lucky numbers) will be planted in Chardonnay for our own consumption. With only 200-250 vines we will probably have to go in with one of our neighbors to get a barrel…but it should be enough for 20 cases of good Chardonnay. I just met a couple who are recommending Clones 76 and 96, so have to do more drinking, I mean research, to see what to order.