Local contractor Don Hiebert sits in his small orange-and-white Bobcat in the vineyard of the Fort Berens Estate Winery in East Lillooet. A fearsome steel spike, several feet long, is attached to the Bobcat's hydraulic arm, where one would normally find a bucket.

After a few minutes‘ rest, Hiebert starts up the Bobcat and gets back to work. The machine hums and rattles, but the real shaking comes from the spike itself.

A worker outside the tractor uses a stick to point out the spike's target. Hiebert moves the arm into place and straightens it above the patch of dirt the stick is pointing to.

The hydraulic arm drives the spike into the ground like a toothpick into cheese. Unlike a toothpick into cheese, it vibrates in the ground and loosens the soil before pulling out.

A worker then pushes an eight-foot steel post into the hole and hammers it in by hand, 27 inches deep.

The grapevines at Fort Berens are still more shoots than anything else. However, workers were getting ready for their next stage of development last month.

The contractors planted 6,000 of the steel posts across over 20 acres of plants, every 18 feet along the rows of vines. As the plants mature and grow, they will be supported by wires hung on the posts.

Heleen Pannekoek, who owns Fort Berens with her husband, Rolf de Bruin, said they chose steel posts imported from China for environmental reasons. “We want to be as organic as we can be and treated wooden poles leak a lot of things into the ground.”

Using the spike to dig is more a matter of efficiency.

Pannekoek said having the machine loosen the soil beforehand reduces the time for planting the posts from three to four weeks to one week.

"If it's sandy rock, you can just push it right in, but here, it's impossible," she said, referring to a rocky portion of the vineyard.
Hiebert said the spike was custom-made by Bridge River Machine Shop. He added that he ordered the piece just so that he could perform this job.

The machine shop extended the spike, which is connected to a soil compactor on the Bobcat's hydraulic arm.

When the compactor plate vibrates, rather than compacting the soil, the buried spike opens up the ground.

When the wires are added to the posts, Pannekoek said, "Then it will really look like a vineyard."

Hiebert agreed.
"All that's missing is the grapes."