APR 14 ON THE WIRE
14°· DRY· 30% SUN
0.0 MOF 8.0 M OF WIRE
- SITES
- 0 / 13
- VIGOUR
- 0.97
- CROP
- 0.00 KG
- MOISTURE
- 66%
- ACID
- 0.00%
- VERDICT
- CLIMB ON
HOLD SPACE TO PULL THE TIP
HOPFIELD
Eight metres of wire and four metres of sun. Every bine has to be pulled round the wire to make cone sites, and every pull it makes is leaf it does not have — so the plant you train is the crop you get. Clip each bine above its setting height before the tip runs over the top, then take six plants off the row at sixteen to twenty-six per cent moisture.
Season paused.
The bines, the weather and the contract are where you left them.
What the year is asking of you.
- A / D
- Walk the row. Training, clipping and picking only happen where you are standing, and the picking machine has to travel to the plant before it can work.
- SPACE
- Pull the tip round the wire. Before the plant is clipped this makes a cone site at the tip. After the clip it ties in a side shoot instead. Every pull costs leaf, and leaf is what fills the crop — the toll rises sharply once you pass the variety’s site count.
- E
- Clip. Above the variety’s setting height the bine will cone; below it, the whole plant stays vegetative and you get nothing. Leave it unclipped and the tip runs past the top wire and the plant is down.
- K
- Run the machine. Each pass takes a slice off the plant and grades it at the moisture of that moment. Inside the window it cures; above it you are picking green and it will mould; below it the cone shatters and the rest of the plant drops to the ground.
- SHIFT
- Run the season three times faster. The calendar does not stop for you.
- M / H / R
- Mute, these notes, start the three years over.
Acid rises as the seed fills and falls again once it goes over, so a plant that is left standing is worth less even when it is still wet enough to pick. Rain during ripening takes the acid off the leaf and holds the moisture up. A bine that has been stripped past ninety per cent leaves the crown weak, and the next year starts that plant poorer.