Tackling Post Pounding

After an atypical rainy, cold, and even snowy October, this first weekend in November greeted us with sunshine and 65 degree t-shirt weather, reminiscent of a typical Minnesota September weekend.  This bout of warm, dry weather did not come without strings attached, however, as Aaron reminded me that it meant  getting some vineyard chores done that we couldn't get done in that disgrace of an October.  Just when I thought I was off the hook for hard labor for at least 5 months, I had to break out the rubber boots and gloves yet again and trudge out into the field.  Remember those 500 8 ft posts I referred to a while back?  You didn't think those went in the ground themselves, did you?  We've learned that recruiting free manual laborers on a regular basis is harder than we thought, so my poor husband has to rely on his petite wife, whom he plucked right out of uptown and could benefit from lifting a few weights, to help pound posts in the ground to build the trellis system for the vines we planted this last spring. 

I don't mind helping at all.  Really, I don't.  I am excited to be making progress and getting things done.  And I believe I have made great strides in acclimating to this farm life and learning the art of grapegrowing, which has been evolving over thousands of years across the world.  But I do sometimes have a hard time completely escaping from all the modern world distractions in order to devote my entire day to vineyard work, which now without daylight savings, is quite a bit shorter.  And there is no rooster crowing at this farm!

And so, even though we decided to sleep in until 9:30am, and even though out in the field I was periodically pulling my smartphone out of my pocket to text some friends about our plans for that night, or to take a quick glance to see what was going on on Facebook...and even though I had to stop and snap a few blog-worthy photos with my digital camera to document our vineyard in the changing seasons...

And even though my cute little size 6 green rubber boots took twice as long to stomp in the mud around the posts than Aaron's size 12 steel toe work boots...and even though the weight of my body jumping on the shovel to dig up dirt made minimal impact in the ground...and even though Aaron is still getting over a head cold and I am fighting one coming on...

...and even though we had to take some breaks to throw around the frisbee with the dogs to

burn of some of their puppy energy...

...and lost daylight by 4:30pm, we were STILL able to get close to 100 posts in the ground.

Only 400 more to go.

So, yes, while I did help, I'll give most of the credit to my diligently working husband, who is much less distracted than me.  And now that I spent a day doing that, I can now totally rationalize him purchasing the post digger tractor implement he worked so hard to convince me we needed just for this purpose. Money well spent, honey!  The rest of the trellis posts will have to wait until spring, unless of course, this warm spell continues, which is unlikely.  This is Minnesota afterall.

Oh, AND I think it worth mentioning we did find some time to powerwash our cars.  After driving on wet gravel road for the month of October and still getting embarrassing comments from people, we figured it was time.  Don't you?  I told you we do wash them...occassionally.

Gotta run.  Gonna sweet talk my husband into giving me a shoulder massage.  All that post hole digging made me sore!