July at 6,000 feet and my vineyard is exploding. New growth is coming in faster than we can manage it. We rushed to finish knocking back sucker vines and came up for air only to realize how far behind we were on canopy management. I did this to myself. After losing the entire vineyard to a freeze in 2020, I trained extra shoots on every vine to hedge against it happening again. Then 2025 took out a third of the vineyard and I doubled down on the same logic. Now the areas that survived 2025 are overbearing. The canopy needs airflow and sun exposure, but draping shoots over the trellis can only do so much when the growth is too thick. Going forward I'll prune harder with a modified goal. Instead of training for redundancy, I'll train each vine to be stronger. This is only my second season running the vineyard full-time after my dad, so I've got years of his management techniques to slowly work against.