August 12, 2020:

One of the biggest jobs we had to tackle last year was to lay down drain tile on our 15 Acres.

This has become a ritual to prepare land for vine grape growing in Nova Scotia.

The saying goes: “grapes don’t like wet feet”. This essentially means that once established, vine grapes thrive in almost desert, drought-like conditions; and the soil in most parts of Nova Scotia retains a bit too much water for their liking.

We therefore had to bring in some heavy machinery to set up drainage on the land to draw the water away.

The day the crew arrived, seeing the sheer size of the machine and the amount of drain tile to be laid down was jaw dropping. To give everyone some perspective of the size and girth of the machinery, we took some comparison shots of each other.

The trenches that were left behind after all the tile was laid left our land looking literally like a war zone. Looking at the aftermath we almost broke into a panic – thinking that we had destroyed our land!

All was however not lost! Henry from Biggs Farms was back to our rescue.

He brought in a bulldozer and a tractor to level all the the trenches out and disc harrow the land to make it look pristine again. It took a few runs but Henry got the job done for us!