One of my first jobs as a young teenager was tying grapes.
Not harvesting them — that came later in the year — but tying them, when winter was still hanging around the hills of Keuka and spring was only a promise on the calendar.
Sometime between March and April, after the pruning crews had finished cutting the vines back and before bud break, word would spread that help was needed in the vineyards. There was no application, no paperwork, no training. Someone knew someone, a truck stopped in the driveway, or a neighbor passed the message along.
“Be ready in the morning.”
Morning came cold. The kind of cold that sat in the ground even when the sun tried to shine. Some rows still held patches of snow in the shadows, and the lake wind never asked permission before cutting through your jacket.
My job was simple in description and endless in practice.
Each vine had been pruned down to canes that now had to be bent carefully and secured to the trellis wires so they would grow properly once the warmth arrived. I carried twine — sometimes clips — and worked my way down the row: bend, wrap, twist, tie. Then step to the next one and do it again.
And again.
And again.
Thousands of times.
At first my fingers didn’t cooperate. The wood was stiff, my hands were stiff, and the wire felt colder than anything ought to feel. I learned quickly to breathe into my hands before the next tie. The older workers moved steadily, almost rhythmically, while I tried to keep up and not fall behind the row.
The vineyards were quiet that time of year. No leaves yet, just rows of bare vines against gray sky. You could hear boots crunching the soil, the creak of the wire, and occasionally a radio fighting to pull in a station across the lake. We didn’t talk much early on. The work warmed you slowly.
I didn’t realize then how important the job was. Those ties determined how the vine would grow all summer — where the grapes would hang and how good the harvest might be. I was just a kid earning a little money, but I was helping shape a season.
Payday came in cash. Not much, but enough to feel like independence.. More than the money, though, it was pride.
Weeks later, driving past the same fields when the first green shoots appeared, I could look across those rows and quietly think,
I tied those.
It was hard work, cold work, honest work — and without realizing it at the time, it tied me just as surely to Keuka Lake as the vines were tied to the wire.
Who else tied grapes in the 60s and 70s?
Around here, it seemed like nearly everyone had a season or two in the vineyards. Brothers and sisters working the same row, neighbors carpooling in the back of a pickup, classmates comparing sore backs the next morning at school. Some of us worked for a few weeks, others for years, but all of us carried home the same things — cold hands, the smell of vine wood on our coats, and a quiet sense that we’d done something real. If you grew up along Keuka, chances are you either tied grapes… or knew someone who did. Those rows raised more than vines — they raised a generation.
Stay Rooted. Stay Keuka.
