Blog 4, The Grapevines Are
Awake! or The Vinedresser
“Part of my job as a
vine-dresser is to set the vine up for this year's production, while at the
same time setting up the vine for enhanced production down the road. The
goal is fruitfulness; to produce the most and the highest quality fruit of
which the vine is capable. Pruning is necessary and mandatory.... and
the vine often bleeds sap when pruned.”
Dana Acker
The email conversation for this blog initially took place back in 2010. It dealt with Dana’s work at a North Carolina winery. After searching the servers and memories, we can’t find what I wrote to initiate this. Apparently, I asked Dana how things were going in the vineyard where he works. He is a vinedresser. While it may sound romantic and Hallmark-y, it is also hard work.
But first this from a more recent letter, back in January 2016: “Sorry for the silence, but I have been under the weather for a bit. This year's harvest was like wrestling one of the beasts from Revelation. Four months of 7 days a week work. Most of the days were over 10 hours, some even getting to 16 hours. On top of that, my arthritis flared up right after harvest began in August (of 2015), and has not let up even though the harvest has been over since some time in November. So I have been limping along and getting behinder and behinder, as the pain has been constant and mostly severe--I have good days and bad weeks. :)”
Just last week in an email from Dana, after an especially long and grueling day of 17.5 hours that began at 6 AM and ended at 10:30 PM, he asked for prayer for “the winemaker,” just before he fell asleep.
Based on the above short sections from various emails, thank God He was willing to send His son to work on us so that we will, hopefully, not just bear fruit, but much fruit.
Jesus Is the Vine—Followers Are Branches (John 15:1-17 NASB)
15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He [a]prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already [b]clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit [c]of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so [d]prove to be My disciples. 9 Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. 10 If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. 11 These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. 17 This I command you, that you love one another.
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Dana’s Reply:
Well, it’s springtime, and the grapevines are awake! We've got shoots that have grown about a foot long with leaves and blooms, which will soon turn into baby grape clusters—that is if the Lord wills and the weather holds out. Grapevines of the European wine grape variety are self-pollinating for the most part. Last year (in May) when the vines were at full bloom, we got 23 inches of rain in one month, and as you can imagine, to get that much rain in such a short time it had to come down HARD. The rain damaged many of the blooms, and removed most of the pollen for the rest of them. Consequently we had little to no fruit from any of our white grape varieties. We fared a little better with our red grapes, as they tend to develop later than the whites, and managed to escape the damage from the rain. The whites are generally harvested first, in August and early September, then the reds come due in mid to late September and on through October.
We lost our vineyard manager this year, and as my assistant and I are trained in Viticultural practices, we ended up doing a lot of the winter pruning that normally falls to the vineyard manager--in fact, we just finished. Being in the vineyard on a daily and weekly basis, while hard physical work, has been quite an enlightening experience. Once I saw a documentary on the grape and wine industry, and part of it was shot at a monastery in France. One of the brothers commented that to work with the vines was to “work with the things of God.” I must admit I fall in that camp.
As I was out in the vineyard, getting up close and very personal with the individual vines, the Holy Spirit brought many passages of the Scriptures dealing with vines and vineyards to mind. When I read the section where Jesus spoke of Himself as the vine-dresser, the applications began to become apparent.
Part of my job as a vine-dresser is to set the vine up for this year's production, while at the same time setting up the vine for enhanced production down the road. The goal is fruitfulness; to produce the most and the highest quality fruit of which the vine is capable. Pruning is necessary and mandatory, otherwise the oncoming growth is profuse and unwieldy, and while an abundance of fruit may be produced, what is produced will be of poor quality, fit only for pests and predators, and not up to the standards of the vineyard owner. Indeed, it is as they say, difficult to make a silk purse from a pig’s ear.
Pruning, by nature, is painful. It is cutting; violent amputation, if you will, and the vine often bleeds sap when pruned. Sometimes due to any number of problems, entire arms have to be cut off, discarded, and new ones laid down from last year’s growth. Picture this, we have two trunks originating from the ground, and rising up about three feet to the first support wire of the trellis. The trunks are sometimes intertwined once (to increase strength) and at the wires, one arm is laid down and stretched out to the left, and one to the right (like the letter “T”), with both being tied to the wire.
Along these two arms, buds will begin to pop out in the spring, and from them, shoots will begin to grow upwards, which we will have to train in between two sets of catch wires, so as to keep them standing erect. If left out of the wires, they would become so top heavy, they would drape over and block the fruit from getting air and sunlight.
Our job as vinedressers is to make sure we have the correct number of shoots per both arms, and the overall vine. From the area where the two arms meet the support wire, and go off in their respective directions, we want shoots growing roughly a fist's width apart out to the end of the arm. For the most part, the individual arms are kept about three feet in length from the crotch to the tip. Many, many buds will pop, and many, many shoots will grow from them, each producing many, many leaves and blooms which will potentially become clusters of fruit. In our warm, humid climate they grow like a jungle.
In fact, the vines will produce so many buds, and shoots, etc., that there are not enough carbohydrates and nutrients in the vine to ripen that much fruit. Hence left to its own, the vine will, in a sense, mass produce to the point where, in the end, you get nothing of value. So we go in and remove all extraneous shoots, and clusters, thus limiting the vine's production so that we will get the most and best fruit we possibly can. Sometimes this means just giving the vine a "haircut," and sometimes it means major surgery. But no matter how extreme the cutting, the vine is being prepared to bear fruit, and excellent quality fruit at that! So getting rough with the vine isn't abuse or punishment, it is making the vine healthy and productive--fruitful.
As Jesus is the Master vine-dresser, He removes all the extraneous stuff from our lives that we don't need, and that which will hinder productivity. He does what is necessary, even if painful at the time, to insure maximum, high quality fruitfulness. Some of that work is for fruitfulness in the short term, and some of it, while perhaps even limiting the crop for this season, is building into us that which we need so as to produce an even a better crop farther on down the trail.
The lessons and illustrations I received in the vineyard this season were profound, and while they didn't make the Lord's pruning in my life any less painful, it did help me to see in very clear ways that it was for my good, and more importantly, for His Kingdom's good. As we are God's vines, so to speak, the most and the best quality fruit is expected, and the vine-dressing is to facilitate that very thing in all of God's vines' lives.
When we go through things that are unpleasant, it's often hard to see the purpose, or the attending outcome at that time. However, I can see it now, more clearly than I ever have, and that, like the monk in the documentary said, is to be “working with the things of God.”
Will continuing praying for Carol's situation, and remembering y'all as always.
Love you Brother,
Dana
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