Do not worry, nobody was harmed in the making of this photograph - especially me! However, these poor, old vines definitely took a beating.
I spotted these vines being pulled out last night on the way home from work. This morning, camera in hand, I was fortunate enough to actually get a photograph of the bulldozer operator pushing the old vines into huge piles. By the time I left work this afternoon all the vines were piled high into 6 or 7 gigantic, tangled mountains of vegetation and steel vineyard trellising stakes - which will ultimately become funeral pyres.
With harvest 2011 well and truly over (and believe me, there has been a resounding, collective sigh of relief heard throughout the entire valley), it is now time to plan for future harvests and replanting old vineyards is often on the agenda.
In with the new.
4 comments:
What about the eco nazi clean air days...will the burn happen?
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District condescends, a few times each winter, to allow farmers to have burn days.
What vines were they??
As a lay person grubbing up always strikes me a as a senseless waste of old vines... Do they do it for other reasons than to plant more fashionalbe/better yielding varieies?
Cesar: I don't know what variety these grapevines were, I drive by so many different vineyards everyday I don't always pay attention. I am pretty sure that they were a red variety.
I'm guessing these vines were old AND virused, so it's probably about time that they were replanted.
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