A successful first season for our fantastic volunteers

As the autumn draws in, we are taking a look back at a successful first volunteering season at Lokkelebery Vineyard.

It all started back in July as our first ever volunteers started shoot selection on the 2-month old vines. Shoot selection is not for the faint hearted, as it involves bending over and individually removing excess buds and shoots to leave space and energy for the dominant vine. After 2 months of hard work with our volunteers, the final vine (of c.25,000) was completed last Wednesday which was a huge victory for us all!

Few volunteers will forgot the additional weeding which we did alongside the shoot selection, as some of the weeds had rapidly grown to what appeared to be small trees! We also made a start on ‘tying on’ the vines to encourage their initial training, which will be completed after the pruning season early next year.

While there will be a few more volunteering sessions before the end of the year, the majority will kick start in 2023 with a host of new tasks to get stuck into. These will include pruning, tucking in, tying on and more.

We would like to thank our volunteers from across this season for their dedicated help and support with our new venture. We would also like to thank those future volunteers, many of whom may not yet have had the chance to try out tasks, but have signed up to hear about future opportunities. We hope to see you in the vineyard one day soon.

What happens next?

As autumn draws in, the volunteering season will start to draw to a close. This is because the vines become dormant during the colder months, and therefore do not require as much maintenance (that is until pruning).

As mentioned, general volunteering will fully restart again in Spring 2023 with a variety of tasks such as tucking in and pulling away the prunings. This will be advertised on our dedicated volunteer page and on Eventbrite as well as our social media and email updates.

Volunteering mornings are usually Wednesday 9-12. If any opportunities arise, we will post them a week prior to allow sign ups. Please note that in order to volunteer, you must sign up via Eventbrite so that we can follow official Health and Safety protocol (and make enough cakes!).

If you are worried about missing out on updates, the best way to keep in the loop is to sign up to our newsletter here and tick the volunteering opportunities box. Be sure to add hello@lokkelebery.co.uk to your trusted email list and check your spam box just in case! Additionally, social media is another way to stay up to date.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of our wonderful volunteers from across the season. We thank them all for their fantastic help and support which is so appreciated, and we look forward to welcoming them and new volunteers back with the new season!

A quick update as of November 2022

Volunteering has now officially finished for the year and we would like to thank all those involved once again for their hard work and support. We hope to see you and other new volunteers in Spring of 2023!