Harvest at Redbud Ridge Winery & Vineyard

Every year, my boss, Jann and her husband, Tom, invite all their friends and customers to come and participate in the grape harvest at their vineyard, Redbud Ridge. You go out about 8:30 in the morning and pick grapes, then you eat breakfast and you get to take some free wine home with you. It's not hard work, but it's a lot of fun. You get to meet lots of people, some students from OU, even some international students from other countries. Depending on how many pickers you have it takes 2-3 hours. I haven't been able to participate the last couple of years because I worked at Kohl's but I was glad to be able to go again. I got there around 8:30 this morning. This is what the vineyard looks like from the driveway.

The netting has to be removed first before the picking can begin. Some of the grapes at the lower part of the leaves (the picking zone) were already eaten by all the turkeys that come up to Jann's property from the surrounding woods. The bags are there so we can go down the rows first and remove the netting, stuffing it into the bags.
The workers are arriving and starting to take down the netting.

This area was set up for people to get coffee, muffins, sausage biscuits, and rest in the shade.

Here's two people taking the netting off.

The lady I was working with is a member in the University Women's Association, of which Jann is the president this year. We stopped every now and then to take pictures of the luscious grapes on the vines.
The next door property has an old dilapidated barn on it. It thought this was neat with the flowers in the growth around it.
Tom (in the red shirt) is giving the pickers instructions on how to properly use the cutters, etc.

Jann (in the white t-shirt and black pants) is bring more food out and pouring coffee for some of the workers.

More vine pictures with grapes.

Looking down the row I'm working on.
My bucket is almost full. They fill up quickly.

Men on 4-wheelers with trailers behind them pull down the rows so you can empty your buckets into them. Then they take the grapes to the winery to the crusher/stemmer machine.

Here's a picture of the front of Jann's house. It faces the vineyard and sits way off the highway.

Here's the side of the house. This is a wing and deck they had built on after they purchased the old farm house.

This is down in front of the winery building. Tom is talking about the process of crushing and stemming the grapes.

They have this table set up showing the 5 kinds of wine they produce at the winery.

The tag on the front of Tom's truck.

The stems that are left over from the grapes.

This is looking into the wine-tasting room.

Time to go home. We all got 2 free bottles of wine from their inventory to take home with us. Here's looking down the drive way where all the workers parked their cars. Vines are on both sides of the road.