David and Paul Klodd created the Nettergetter to apply and remove bird netting more easily.

Des Moines, Iowa -- Grape growers and winemakers are often inventors, usually out of necessity. Something breaks or a job needs to be done, and they look around to see what’s available that could be used to solve the problem. The arrival of a flock of birds in a vineyard can be the sort of stimulus that forces invention.

“Our worst problem is robins, up to 1,000 at a time,” Keith Mckinney, owner of Clear Creek Vineyard in Colo, Iowa, recently told Wines & Vines. “The only thing that works is netting, and that’s difficult to get on and off the vines.”

Mckinney has three acres of grapes but, like many farmers in Iowa, also grows corn and soybeans. His solution to the bird problem was to turn to another piece of farm equipment: a corn detassling machine that was built to straddle cornstalks. “Our trellis is 6 feet high, so we took an old corn detassler which is a tall machine, and made it even taller.” Soybean reels hold the 14 foot-wide netting, and a hydraulic motor rolls the netting back onto the reel.

“We have to have two people on either side of the row when we reroll the net,” Mckinney explained. “That’s harder to do than to apply it.” It takes him a couple of hours per acre to apply the netting, a task that happens just after veraison.

Another netting machine was invented in Iowa by two brothers, David and Paul Klodd. David Klodd is the winemaker at Summerset Winery in Indianola, Iowa, and has a 12-acre vineyard with his wife Heidi. Paul Klodd is a dentist who also owns a metal fabrication company. Three years ago, David Klodd designed the “Nettergetter” machine in an act of desperation. He reported to Wines & Vines that “Never in my life has anything made me so angry. Even Mother Theresa would get angry if she had to remove black plastic netting off of grapevines.”

He told Ron Marks, owner of Summerset Winery, that he and his brother would make a machine to apply and remove bird netting more easily. The deal was, if it worked, Marks had to buy one for his vineyard. “I had an idea to make the reel work like a fishing reel – the problem was in getting the ratios right for the gears.” Klodd’s brother helped with the engineering and production of the machine.

“The first time we took it into the vineyard at Summerset, it was raining,” Klodd remembered. “That turned out not to be a problem. The machine was mounted on a skid loader, and it worked so well I had to slow the loader down it went so fast. Ron watched, then went back into the winery and wrote me a check.”

The Nettergetter works quickly and efficiently, and allows Klodd to apply netting when and where it is needed. “You don’t want to put netting on too early, or too late. This machine is both time and money saving, because we can apply the netting to an early ripening grape, then remove the netting and put it onto a later varietal.”

The Klodd brothers now manufacture three versions of the Nettergetter: manual, semi-automatic, and fully automatic. All three are built on the same jig and, as a result, it is possible for a grower to purchase a manual version and several years later return it to be upgraded to an automatic machine. It can be mounted on a skid loader or a tractor, and requires one person to drive and two others to walk behind the machine to check for centering and proper draping of the netting material. The machine will apply or remove both the black plastic extruded netting and woven netting.

According to Klodd, netting can last for years, depending on the quality of the net and how well the grower takes care of it. In winter, he stores his miles of netting on spools stacked in a barn. When the robins, blackbirds and starlings start to show up, he’s ready for them. In the meantime, the Klodd brothers have sold Nettergetters in Iowa and many surrounding states and even as far away as Oregon.

More information about the Nettergetter is available at www.nettergetter.com. The Klodd brothers also market a vineyard weed sprayer they invented called the “Nukeaweed,” and most recently designed a vineyard row, or tote, cart.