What's Hard Work?

bynetworkceo

538 followers

8 years ago

I'm setting here at my desk, with a back massager in my chair, thinking to myself how hard I have been working. Trying to figure out why my back is aching.

My full-time day job, is working as a Data Scientist for a Fortune 500 corporation. Although it is hard work, mentally, I know it has nothing to do with the current back pain I am suffering from. It's an interesting job, and at times it can be quite frustrating and mentally challenging. But, I have never suffered any physical pain from the work.

I started WA just a little less than a month ago. I dedicate a couple hours a day to WA, taking training, completing the tasks assigned, and staying involved with the WA community. And all the hard work is paying off...

Is it stressful, no... Could it cause my back pain, probably not.

So what is causing my pain

It could be the fact that, about a year ago I decided to buy 20 acres of farm land in Kansas and plant a vineyard... Yes Dorothy, there are vineyards in Kansas!

In fact, if you check the records for vineyards & wineries in history, you will find that Kansas was the third biggest producer of wine prior to prohibition in the United States.

Starting a vineyard has been a lot of fun. But the work, let me tell you, there is no glamour in the work that has to be done to run a vineyard.

If you would like to follow our progress we have a website where you can see all the details about our experiences.

http://www.thevines.com

We lucked out getting this domain name... More on that in a later blog post.

Vineyard Planning

Our work started with the planning of the vineyard. We wanted to be certain that our "Test" vineyard looked nice, since the location was close to our house. Therefore, we chose to layout the vineyard to accommodate the slope of the ground and so that it provided an aesthetically appealing view from our front porch.

Looking out across the vines, it looks good now, we must have done something right during the planning phase.

Work Begins

If the planning was easy, then the planting was equally as hard!

It took us a little over 3 weeks to plant 300 vines. We started planting on April 18th, 2016... I remember the day vividly, it was a beautiful spring day. We were able drill 300 holes in the ground, enough for all the plants, and plant 150 vines that day...

Then it started raining!

It rained hard for the next 2 weeks. I think we had some record rainfalls during that period with a total of over 14" of rain during the 2 week period.

Once the rains stopped, we had to hurry to get the remaining 150 vines in the ground. When you order vines, they come as dormant plants with roots and all, shipped in a box wrapped in damp newspaper. Therefore, it's really important that you get them planted as quickly as possible to ensure their survival rate.

We went out to plant the remaining 150 plants and soon discovered that our work was really about to start. The heavy rainfall from the prior 2 weeks had back filled all of the remaining 150 holes with a mucky mixture of clay, silt, and whatever else you could imagine, requiring each hole to be emptied out with a bucket before planting the vine. Our 20 acres, originally used as a pig farm, just made the mucky mess even that much more mucky... I'll let your imagination ponder that for a minute.

Eventually, one week later, we completed the planting work. But those last 150 vines caused more work that it probably would have been to plant 1000 vines!

Summer Lull

Once summer arrived, the work in the vineyard slowed down... These were the calm months, during which time you just control the weeds and insects, leaving the plants to grow and mature.

We had some challenges during the summer. Like young children, the plants seem to be susceptible to all sorts of ailments and diseases. Keeping them under control requires work.

But, not the type of back breaking work, that my back is reminding me of at the moment.

Back Breaking Work

It's the 4th day of October, the vines had all summer to mature and have outgrown the bamboo canes we put in place for them to attach to. The canes did there job, they supported the vines during their early months of growth. But now they need a trellis system to support their vigorous growth through the coming years.

This past weekend we started putting in our grape vines Trellising System. A trellis system, has to be built to ensure that it can support the weight of mature grape vines for the next 25 years (the life expectancy of a grape vine).

This is back breaking work.

For our trellis system we are using 6" x 10' treated post, for the end posts. Along with 4" x 8' posts for the line posts. We are cementing all of the end posts with 4 bags of concrete and just back filling the line posts with dirt. It's hard work, but it is starting to look more and more like a vineyard!

Yes Dorothy, there are vineyards in Kansas! And ours will add one more.

It's been a lot of hard work... But it's about to get harder. We planted just 300 vines this past year and we are planning for an additional 1000 vines for next year!

Wish us luck!