I'm not sure that this counts as a industry event. I'm not exactly an industry, so I'll stick it here.

On or about Saturday March 20th (depending on fair weather), I'll be planting @ 250 vines on the San Francisco Penninsula at Woodside / Portola Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

I'll provide training in planting and a short summary on clone and rootstock selection for those interested. Planting should take about 2-3 hours (we're figuring on 20 or so people) and will be followed by a BBQ and tasting of Santa Cruz Mountain Wines.

Bring gloves, and a shovel and wear something you can get covered with SCM clay and dirt.

For those of you who've followed this little drama over the past 2 years, this is not the hot tub vineyard. It is in fact the 'real' vineyard of @ 2 acres that I recently took on this winter. We'll be planting Cab, Cab Franc, Syrah, Viognier and a little Zinfandel.

email me at paul@hockeyguy.com if you are interested or would like more details.

PS I'm also doing pruning, plowing and lots of other less fun tasks over the next 6 weeks or so, but if you've ever really wanted to learn 'from the ground up' Stef and I could use the help, and we open a good bottle on our lunch break

I'll volunteer to supervise. Maybe pour a little (or a lot of) wine.

Not so good at getting down to the ground any more. Actually it is easy to get down. It is really getting up that I'm not so good at.

is this mostly a weekend undertaking? i nearly always work on the weekends. i might could take the 20th of march off though.

David, I actually need some "map masters" to guide people to the right plots with the right plants, so I've got a perfect task for you.

Gus, It will be a Saturday, that damn day job of mine

Paul: Why don't you take a cue from Harlan and charge $100,000 to the folks who come for the privilege of working your fields for you!

The idea had come up of asking for $10,000 and marketing it as a bargin

I used to work on the farm so I know that this is hard work, but it can be fun if you don't have to do it for a living. Don't know my schedule that far out, but I'd like to come.

We have our first official corporate sponser. VitisVinifera from Vino Con Brio has graciously donated grow tubes for the effort.

As there are a number of people who have expressed interest in attending from out of the area I'm thinking of putting together a dinner in downtown San Jose on Friday night to kick things off.

I grew up in that area and would love to see what it looks like now. I'll check my schedule.

We finished up all the post and trellis repair this weekend and have about 2/3 of the pruning done. Looks like we're on schedule for 3/21. A friday night dinner is looking like it's about 90% right now. Probably at Arcadia or AP Stumps, I'll keep all informed.

i could probably make the friday night dinner .