From Jan. 22 to Feb. 10, we have received just less than 9 inches of rain at the vineyard in Los Alamos. Our pruning crews continue to work in between the welcome storms.

Every day, the hills look greener and greener, along with the oaks that dot the gently rolling landscape of our beautiful Central Coast.

On a recent Saturday morning, I was up early batting a case of bronchitis as I looked out of the window and noticed a colorful red sky in anticipation of the sun coming up over the hills to the east.

I thought of the old saying “Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” meaning a storm could be on the way.

Sure enough, the storm arrived late Saturday night, leaving 1.6 inches of rain in the gauge by noon Sunday.

After driving around the vineyard to check for any rain-related problems, I was taken back watching the water seep from the side hills.

There were small streams running in many areas. There was no damage from erosion, as the water ran over the green grasses already growing and through the cover crop of the existing vineyard.

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I remembered the hills behind our house on Alamo Pintado would reach the saturation point, and water would begin running.

After the rains would stop and the sun would make its way out between billowing white and gray clouds, Mom would find our red rain boots, along with yellow raincoats, and off we would go into a playground that was limited only by our imaginations.

The rain was over for a while, but Mom always made us wear those raincoats just in case. We would usually take them off, because you just could not get any work done with them on.

My brother, Dana, always made sure we took one or two red wagons along that carried a wide variety of digging tools - Dad's new shovels, hoes and rakes. Whatever would aid in the construction of a new dam.

No wonder Dad could never find any of his tools - they were scattered all over the ranch.

Sometimes, one of our forts would have to be sacrificed to provide material for a new dam or repair an old one in jeopardy. Galvanized metal from an old roof and broken fence posts were great dam-building materials.

We would walk up the small streams behind our house and look for water flowing out of gopher holes near the small stream beds. After deciding which ones had more water coming out, we would begin to dig them out, so that even more water would flow out into the small ditch.

There were many areas along the streams that had waterfalls cascading down into small catch basins. We would then scout for the best natural catch basin and begin construction on a dam that would hold much more water.

Thinking back on that now, we put in a lot of work constructing those projects in the early 1960s, but then we always had extra crew members from around the neighborhood. Greg Duer and the Sarandrias helped out as well.

I remember years later, in 1974, when I was senior in high school, we must have gotten some pretty good rains. Our dam construction days were over, but there was still one of our structures in place about midway up the drainage from our house.

It had rained hard enough that my friend Ed Pena and I got permission to leave school to get home and put the sheep into the barn and try to divert some water flowing toward our house.

We got the sheep, along with their lambs, into the warm, dry barn, and then went to look at the water. There was quite a bit running down the hills right into our yard, making Mom nervous and a mess out of the yard.

Ed and I decided to hook up my grandfather's three-shared one-way plow to our TD-6 and make a diversion ditch for the water. Our scheme worked, and by some miracle, we did not get stuck.

The old dam we constructed 12 years earlier had finally washed out, leaving things the way they were in 1962.

I hope the rain has not caused you any problems and you were able to enjoy it. We in agriculture are thankful and will take every drop the good Lord sends us.

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

February 17, 2008