January usually represents one of the coldest winter months here along the Central Coast. This year, January teased us by providing some 80-degree days early on.

Those days were short-lived as temperatures outside my home north of Los Alamos dipped to 14 degrees a few days later. It has been a long time since I have seen temperatures that low along the Central Coast.

We had some grape vines beginning to push new buds during the warm early days of the month. The cold weather pushed those vines right back into dormancy, where they should be this time of year.

Our pruning crews, which number around 60 on the vineyards near Los Alamos, with an additional 60 working in Santa Maria, began pruning at 7 a.m. with the temperature right around 28 degrees. If the temperatures remained that cold, we would have moved our starting time to at least 8 a.m.

Even the equipment is sluggish on cold mornings. The hydraulic oil used to power much of our gear takes time to warm up and flow properly through the pumps and equipment. Our drivers appreciate the heater inside the cabs of our John Deere tractors. It was not that long ago that most of our tractors did not have cabs.

During the holiday break last month, I took a day off and took Kathleen and Clayton to the zoo in Santa Barbara for the day. We drove over the San Marcos Pass, passing several tractors working near Baseline Avenue. It reminded me of when Dana and I used to plant grain during this time of year.

As we approached the intersection of highways 154 and 246, I recalled Dana planting 200 acres of barley for Larry Becksted, who had leased the acreage from the San Lucas Ranch for one year.

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I think it was around 1975 when we bought our first new tractor, a Ford 2000 wheel tractor, from Larry Silva at Wallace Equipment in Santa Maria.

We also traded some alfalfa hay for a used John Deere grain drill from a Mrs. Borg, who lived on Refugio Road. It turned out to be the same drill that my grandfather borrowed from Ping Grossi when he lived and farmed on the ranch owned by Mrs. Borg.

This drill had rubber tires and was much easier to move around as we began to acquire more land to farm. We would also do custom work for other people on the side.

We knew Larry from his job as salesman and PCA for Western Farm Service in Lompoc. We were just getting started farming on our own then.

We had a couple of hundred acres of grain and 75 acres of alfalfa. We bought our seed and fertilizer from Larry; he was a great salesman, and he helped us as we were just getting started farming on our own.

Larry wanted to grow some grain on his own, so he talked Gene Mathews from the San Lucas Ranch into leasing him the 200 acres on the southwest corner of highways 154 and 246.

Larry used equipment from Western Farm Service to work the ground and get it ready for planting. He hired us to plant it for him.

We had planted several fields with our new John Deere drill we had gotten from Mrs. Borg.; in fact, we gave it a new paint job and it worked fine.

We hooked the drill up to our new Ford tractor and began to grease the drill and get it ready to go. While greasing it, I noticed the left-hand wheel was bent and the chain that drove the gears that turned the planting mechanism did not line up properly.

We moved the drill and, sure enough, the drive chain would roll off the sprocket, which stopped the flow of seed on that half of the drill. So we took the wheel off and began to fix the problem.

We had to take quite a bit of the drill apart to get to the problem. We had parts everywhere, working outside under our basketball hoop. We were scheduled to plant for Larry the next day, and about that time he came into the ranch to check in with us and make sure we were ready to go.

We did not want to lose that job, so we were pretty matter-of-fact about what we were doing to the drill. Pretty much routine servicing, we told him - we would have the drill ready to go as scheduled.

Larry said he was glad to see we were making sure everything was working well and he really appreciated us taking the extra time to service the drill.

We never could get the sprockets to line up properly without adding a bunch of shims we made up so the chains would line up correctly. We got the drill put back together the next day and headed for the field.

Dana planted the entire 200 acres, and the drill worked fine, complete with some extra shims that are probably still doing their job wherever that drill may be now.

Today, I still rely on my shade-tree mechanical skills on equipment we use in the vineyard. It is amazing what you can keep working with just the right amount of baling wire and persistence.

Kevin Merrill is a vineyard manager for Mesa Vineyard Management in Santa Maria. He is president of the Central Coast Wine Growers' Association and a board member for the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau. He can be reached at kmerrill@mesavineyard.com.

Jan. 28, 2007