Grounded for Good

Published August 30, 2025
Written by Joel

 

I almost had to pinch myself. I was flying a Cessna 182, the sun setting to my left. Behind my seat was a cooler full of soil samples I had picked up in Bakersfield, CA. I was headed back to my lab in Davis. My awesome techs would use our state-of-the-art equipment to run the tests overnight. Software I had developed would pull the report together in an instant, and at 7:55 am the next morning, I would sit at a screen at home with my cup of coffee and review the report. It would land in the client’s inbox at 8:00am. My job was the perfect combination of teamwork, database coding, and cool science toys.

 

But my flying days were coming to an end. Laurie and I were moving our family to Oregon. I was going to telecommute. It started as a vague pipe dream. Then we stumbled on eighty acres of oak-studded rolling hills near McMinnville, Oregon. It was being sold as vineyard land. The idea of a vineyard stirred memories of my youth, working the land under the Sonoma County summer skies. The smell of wineries during crush. The vibrant green of the grape foliage in spring. Once we moved to McMinnville, we ordered enough plants for a test vineyard.

 

In early March, 2005, the nursery delivery truck arrived on our hilltop. The driver handed me the first flat of baby grapevines. Twenty-five little plastic pots, each with a brown stick poking out of it. The corner stick had a red plastic ID: Duarte Nursery Pinot Noir 667/RG Joel Kiff. ‘Aww…welcome to your new home, little grapevines.’ The driver interrupted my cooing. ‘Uh… there are seventy-one more of these.’ ‘Sorry!’ Once they were all hastily placed under a nearby oak tree, I asked ‘How long before I should plant these?’ ‘Maybe within a couple weeks.’

 

By late May, we had moved a mobile home to the hilltop and were living in it. I could finally start the vineyard. I walked over to where we had stashed the baby grapevines. No flats were visible under a mass of lush green foliage. It was a mess. But I had to put the trellis in first. Which meant finding the trellis store.

 

Oregon Vineyard Supply was hard to miss. Dozens of bright orange tractors were lined up facing the highway. I pulled into the parking lot. It was all pickup trucks with winery names on the doors. I parked my little Ford station wagon at the end. At least it was dirty. Inside, everybody seemed to know everybody else. One of the clerks was a tall woman with a patient, tolerant expression. People were calling her Carla. I got in her line. When my turn came I asked as quietly as possible, ‘I’m from California. How do Oregonians make trellises?’

 

Carla patiently advised. ‘Bent-edge steel stakes for line posts are popular now, one every twenty feet. Fourteen gauge for the catch wires, twelve and a half gauge for the permanent wires. Pressure treated end posts and screw-in anchors are also popular. Some vineyards use two sets of catch wires, some use three.’ ‘Why skimp?’ I thought. ‘I’ll go with three. Can I get this delivered?’

 

Our eldest son Robin and I spent the weekend putting a little green flag every twenty feet for each steel stake location. Rows eight feet apart, according to Carla’s recommendation.

 

Three days later, a flatbed truck dumped our delivery of trellis materials at the hilltop. Four ninety-pound rolls of wire. A bundle of seven-foot long steel stakes. A bundle of nine-foot, five-inch diameter wooden end posts. I coerced the kids into carrying the stakes so there was one lying at every flag.

 

I bought a light post pounder at the local hardware store. It was basically a piece of metal pipe closed off at one end, with handles sticking out. At the first flag, I slid the pounder over the top end of a stake, then hoisted it to vertical. The moment of truth. I lifted the pounder high and pulled down hard. But I failed to notice I had lifted the pounder all the way off the top of the stake. The pounder came down crooked, bounced on top of the post, and hit me in the shoulder. Good thing I got a light one. On the second attempt, I paid more attention to the height of the pounder and gave the post a few good whacks. Forty whacks later and the line post still wasn’t far enough into the ground. I could feel the burn of blisters forming on my hands. ‘Wow! Zero down and four hundred fifty to go…’

 

I drove my little post pounder across town to Carla. She looked at it. ‘Hmm… follow me. There’s a bin of bigger ones in the yard and you can pick one out.’ She could have also added ‘In the summer, the ground is harder and it takes more work to put the line posts in,’ but she didn’t.

 

By the time the trellis was done, it was mid-June. I was not looking forward to un-tangling each flat of vines. I bent over to pick up a flat but I couldn’t lift it. I pried up one corner. The roots had escaped the pots and were heading into the earth. At that point I abandoned gentleness in favor of a giant yank and dragged the little delinquents to the first row.

 

Planting was simple. Dig hole, take roots out of pot, put roots in hole, cover with dirt. The trick was how to do it without wearing out my body. Digging a hole and walking to the next hole were upright activities. The rest of the process was close to the ground. It became painfully obvious that the most exhausting aspect was getting up and down. So I decided to dig all the holes for one row first. Then sit on the ground to plant each vine, and crawl five feet to get to the next hole. I didn’t care that it looked pathetic. Nobody was watching.
The first time I mowed the vineyard I discovered that, despite my confident knowledge of geometry, error theory, and quality control, I managed to make one vineyard row narrower at the bottom than the top. The mistake revealed itself when I drove the tractor down that row and got wedged in. I couldn’t get out. I had to remove some wheels from the tractor to extract it from the row.

 

By early July I was waking up multiple times at night with no feeling in my arms. I had to stand up next to the bed and shake my arms before feeling came back. Even with my undignified shortcuts, I was wearing myself out. What I couldn’t explain was how happy I was. I was starting to remember how much I liked working with plants. What it was like to work outdoors, in solitude.

 

At the end of July, Laurie’s folks came, and with our kids, we drank bubbly, took pictures, and toasted the planting of the last vine. It was done. I could finally rest my arms. But I was already scheming about placing an order for three thousand more vines for the next year.
For the rest of the summer, before reviewing lab reports, I took my morning coffee out to visit my baby vines. I loved strolling up and down the rows, checking their progress. I loved that Mother Nature and I were partners. I planted these vines, now she was doing her magic with the sun, rain and soil that they needed to thrive. I had learned that to thrive, I needed those things too.

 

The magic is still there, 20 years later.

 

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that most of the above photos are not from 2005.
Unfortunately, we were just not documenting those first years very well!

 

Adam helping in the vineyard, 2005.

 

 

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