This week has been wild, with harvest coming up there’s been a lot to do. On top of that a lot of crazy things have happened this week. On Tuesday Joey, Ricky and I went out to Redlands like normal, we took SWP measurements as well as shade board and paso panel measurements. When we first got that we began tagging the vines that we will be harvesting from, since we don’t want to have to harvest every single one. As we were going down the first row, we got near the end and I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye, lo and behold there’s a little skunk! It didn’t look like a full grown one but we weren’t taking any chances, we did all the shade measurements and sort of just worked around it. Then when it came to doing the SWP there wasn’t really a way around because we have to push the cart down the row so Ricky went ahead and started throwing some dirt clumps near the little guy and eventually got it to move a couple rows over so we could get back to work. At the time it was a little scary because I really wasn’t looking forward to getting sprayed but once we got the situation all handled its pretty funny looking back on it now.
On Wednesday we (Cody and I) went out to Belle Fiore to collect some berry samples and take some LICOR measurements.
While I was walking around collecting the berry samples I noticed this little bee with its head completely in one of the grapes!
On our way heading out from Belle Fiore we also noticed a family of Turkeys roaming through the vineyard, there looked to be about 8 or 9 of them just eating some of the berries off the ground.
On Thursday we went out to Grestoni to collect some berry samples from there, but on our way into the vineyard site, we saw what looked to be a falcon (I’m not entirely sure?) hopping through the vineyard carrying a squirrel about the same size as itself. I think it was too big for it to fly away with it. On Friday we went back to Grestoni and took some shade measurements and some SWP measurements. Overall it was a pretty crazy week, although with all the wildlife we saw I think it may have been one of the most interesting weeks yet.
