Hedging at Broken Stone

This time of year the vines are in their prime.  They grow over the top of the trellis and need to be trimmed back.

Most vineyard operators will use tractor-mounted equipment to trim back acres of vines at a time, to result in picturesque perfect hedges.   At Broken Stone we are in startup mode, so our equipment is pretty basic.  I use a set of garden shears and clip away all day. The sun shines, the bird sing, and I clip.

I’ve been told that in Okanagan they use machetes to hedge their vines.  So last weekend I went to Canadian Tire and bought a cheap machete.  It was fun pretending to be a vVneyard Samurai for a few minutes, but after a while I returned to my trusty garden shears.The machete was just too hard on the vines.

In the picture, the row on the right needs to be hedged, and I just finished the row on the left.