Forest Hills Farms, Oregon

Located in Cornelius, Oregon, Forest Hills Farms spans 1,500 acres and specializes in growing blueberries, wine grapes, and black raspberries. Their high-yielding white wine grape varieties put a lot of weight and tension on the trellis wires, and they try to get 6 to 7 tons of grapes per acre, whereas with some of the red varieties it’s only 3 or 4.

According to Nick Konen, Director of Operations, with so much weight and tension on the wires from the high-yielding varieties, Gripple was important because they really needed a product they could rely on to keep their trellis wires tensioned. They have two sets of catch wires on their trellises to guide the canopy as it grows up. As the grapes grow and the weight on the wires increases, it’s very easy to tension the wires via the Gripple joiner.

Forest Hills Farms has been using Gripple GP1s to terminate their trellis wires since 2014. Then in 2021 they began using Gripple’s DPAK tie-back kits to brace their end posts, which they found to be much more effective and easier than the traditional method of tying and twisting wires, making it so much easier on the workers. Forest Hills Farms is very happy with the results and will continue to use Gripple on their vineyards going forward.

I was skeptical because Gripple was more expensive, but in the short amount of time it took to install the Gripple product, we made that money back immediately. It was way quicker, the employees were way happier, and over time any tensioning adjustments will be a really easy fix.
– Nick Konen, Director of Operations, Forest Hills Farms