One of the dependable aspects of farming is its consistent annual cycles. Every year in late November or early December after the first frost, we begin pruning the grapevines. The vineyard crew heads out in the early morning hours to take on the daunting task of pruning 96 acres. This will take all seven guys roughly four months, perhaps longer if the weather is uncooperative. When pruning a vine, they have numerous decisions to make and a number of considerations to keep in mind. Pruning helps to determine the crop load for the coming Harvest. 

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"Meet the Team" is our blog series that introduces each of the Hafner Vineyard team members. We answer a series of questions about ourselves and our time at Hafner Vineyard. David Huebel is the Vineyard Manager. A Healdsburg native, he and his family live on the vineyard. Besides being a wealth of vineyard knowledge, he's quite the avid runner, logging between 30 to 42 miles per week and recently completed a 50K race. 

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When people ask me what it’s like to drive the machine harvester, it’s a bit hard to imagine, so we thought it might be fun to have you ride along with me. During the Chardonnay harvest, I wore a GoPro on my head so that you could see what it’s like to drive the harvester through my eyes. Warning! I tried to keep as steady as possible but I did have to move quite a bit.

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Our Chardonnay Harvest is a wrap! We started picking on Tuesday, September 6^th and finished just four days later. Each day at 4am, the vineyard team and I gathered at our shop, started the machine harvester and headed out to the block we planned to pick. At first, only our headlamps and the bright lights from the machinery light the way. It’s an incredible time of day. The cold brisk air, roaring engines, darkness all around us. I am anxious to start picking each season, but once we get going, I find that I’m calm. With each row, we have a sense of accomplishment. We’ve nurtured the vines over the entire year and now we see the bounty and results of our hard work.

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A vineyard is always a work in progress. Every block I have ever worked with has had a unique personality. Even two blocks of the same variety planted next to each other are often quite different. And each block has a lifetime. For some that can be 100+ years! Though about 30 or 35 years is more common. Sometimes disease can lead to a shorter life span. That is what happened to 13 acres of our Chardonnay.

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