| Column on Mechanical Grape Picker at Old Stone Winery Darrell Blackwelder October 13, 2005 For eight months Mark Brown, of Old Stone Vineyard and Winery, has nurtured his muscadine grape crop with great optimism. Fall harvest is critical mainly because late summer storms and hurricanes often ruin crops. This year's crop like all other crops this season is about 2 weeks late. Gambling with the weather can be unnerving; however Brown increased his odds this year. Instead of using hand labor to harvest the majority of this season's crop, he opted to try a new type of mechanical harvester to save time. Brown contracted with George Barber, a grower and custom harvester from Clarkston, NC to harvest his crop this fall. Normally it takes about two weeks with more than 12 pickers to harvest Brown's 10 acre vineyard. However, the experimental picker harvested most of the crop in 2 days with only three laborers. The picker is actually a modified tobacco primer and blueberry harvester combination. It uses long fiberglass rods to flail the vines. These rods knock off mature grapes onto a conveyor system that dumps them into large plastic food-grade bins. Barber working was able to harvest up to 2 tons of grapes per hour. This type of machine only works for muscadine type grapes. Viniferous wine grapes still must be harvested by hand. Many of the harvested grapes are damaged during the mechanical harvest which is actually not a problem since the grapes are crushed and squeezed for juice only hours later. Brown expects to meet his harvest goal this year with 8500 gallons or about 40,000 bottles of wine. Mechanical harvesters are not perfect leaving some product in the field. Driving by a harvested corn or cotton field is testimony. Some grape varieties harvest easier than others. There are grapes are still left on the vine even after a couple of passes with the harvester. Brown is offering these grapes as Pick Your Own grapes for the public. Old Stone Winery and Vineyard is located on Highway 52 in Granite Quarry. Darrell Blackwelder is an agricultural agent in charge of horticulture with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service in Rowan County. For archived garden columns or other information, visit the Rowan County Master Gardener web site at www.rowanmastergardener.com , e-mail Darrell_Blackwelder@ncsu.edu |