Sunday, September 13, 2009

Vineyard buggy Mk2

Faithful readers of this blog will doubtless remember this post about the simple rolling seat I used last year for working on the vines. It worked a treat, mainly thanks to the smooth grassy band I was leaving between the rows of vines. Only trouble is, this year I wanted to change my ploughing scheme – eliminating the grass. A quick test showed that pushing a buggy through a ploughed vineyard was a non-starter so a new motorised version was born…

Once again my father is to be thanked for the meticulous construction, which even required learning to weld.

It’s a positive luxury compared to last year’s model with a steel chassis, twin electric motors, comfy seat and rear-wheel steering!

It was a godsend for the pink-harvest, not least because the temperature was in the mid-thirties Celsius, which is just about bearable under the shade of a parasol. However, as might be expected of our first motorized model, there are a few little bugs to iron out, so we are already dreaming up next year’s version (complete with solar panel!)