“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
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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.
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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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Dana
sent the following on the 23 rd. I hope
he’s wrong. J
Hey John,
I apologize for not giving you
any advanced notice, but I just found out myself. Today is September 23, 2017. Little did I know
that a rogue, phantom planet named Nibiru, or Planet X is supposed to
crash into the Earth today, and then, unfortunately, it's "lights
out," permanently.
At least that's what some
Christian numerologists (Is there such a thing? Isn't that like saying
Christian pornographers or Christian bank robbers?) and doomsday
forecasters are saying is going to happen today--I saw it on the internet
this morning, so it has to be right. Right?
If there's going to be a
rapture and a 2nd coming, then the Lord had better get a move on, because I'm
guessing that this could happen any time. By the way, I hate to rub it
in, but, uh...no millennium Brother...I mean, there will be no earth to have
one on...so when I meet you in Heaven, you're buying the coffee.
In light of that, I guess the
blog is Kaput! No sense in writing anything since everything is going
to (insert here whatever happens when two planets collide) and total
destruction of multiple worlds will probably mean no internet service, so you
won't be able to post it anyway. And the Braves were supposed to play the
Phillies today...rats!
Anyway, it's been nice knowing
you, and I've really enjoyed working on the blog with you. I am a little
perturbed that this couldn't have happened at the beginning of harvest, or at
least have been given some advanced warning, so I could have told the boss and
saved all the expense and time. Grrrrrrr.
See you in Heaven!
Dana
