Planting the vineyard...

After resembling a chalk quarry for a few months, the deep-ploughed fields of Luddesdown valley have now been planted with a complement of vines...

In the pictures above you can just make out the metre-high steel rods that the growing vines will be sleeved to once they grow a bit more.

One welcome bonus is that the act of planting seems to have smoothed down the ploughed-up public footpaths across the fields to the extent that you can actually walk comfortably on them once more.

This work has been achieved remarkably quickly. Although the process was mechanised, the French workforce must still have worked extremely hard to get something like 400 acres done in the past couple of weeks.  

As far as I can tell though, nothing more has been added to the soil. The ground still looks like a quarry and many of the vine stems look like they have been planted in pure chalk. I cannot see them growing too well, somehow.  

It all seems very odd. I guess time will tell.