My day was spent wrestling with and then plucking the Shiraz vines. It seemed to me that nobody had gone near them in decades, which had caused them to grow in and out of the wires and wrap their tendrils around neighbouring vines. It was frustrating work trying to get them separated and I did end up snapping a fair few of the tops off. When Charlotte got home from the motel, she helped me round the days work off to 7 hours before we called it quits and continued our painful planning exercise. For dinner, we had our first piece of chicken in a considerable amount of time, having it with some chips and salad. Sorry that's such a short day but there only so much plucking I can write about without it getting incredibly boring.
Monday 19th December
Again, I spent the day snapping vines and plucking leaves off the Shiraz. Although the job was starting to become rather tedious, I was buoyed by the fact that we were well over halfway through our time on the vineyard and, more importantly, in the bus. The time had flown by and it didn't really seem as though I'd progressed anywhere with regards to the work. I just ploughed on though, keen to get another big week of hours done, with a 3 day weekend for some religious festival fast approaching. Charlotte was still cramming in the long days at the motel too, which was helping bump up the coffers significantly. She was still painting the decking, despite people's best efforts to sabotage them and walk on them before they had dried. This time, when Charlotte arrived home, she decided against giving me a hand and when I finished, I found her round by the house browsing the Internet. I joined her and in under an hour we finally covered the preparations for the next leg of the trip, which was a huge load of our shoulders. That meant we could prep dinner and have a relaxing evening for once. We had a bit of a mishmash of veg, rice, leftover salad, leftover passata and leftover wraps and boy were we full to the brim when we finished. We predicted that Charlotte wouldn't be required at the restaurant much this week, due to most of the Christmas parties having been and gone, so that would allow us to have dinner at a normal time for most of the week. We also receiver two more cards to add to our collection. These were from Rob and Hannah and Nanna Smith and Francis, so thank you very much for them both.
Tuesday 20th December
Whilst I was out plucking my vines in under the blazing summer sun, I was joined by John, who proceeded to show just how useless I was at plucking the vines. He flew along the row behind me and was half way down his second one by the time I'd reached the end of my first one. It made it worse that I had had a significant head start on him too. When I brought it up whilst we were receiving a delivery of 3 pallets of wine bottles, he put it down to his vast experience. Charlotte arrived home and we got in 25 minutes of plucking to round off the day at 8 hours ( and her 25 minutes) and called it quits so I could get out of the sun. As Charlotte had just covered herself in sun cream, she didn't want to waste it, so whilst I was cooling off in the bus, she was out sunning herself on the lawn. We nuked some jacket potatoes in the oven for dinner and had them with baked beans and veg. As we had no planning to do for he evening, Charlotte was tucked up and snoring by 9, which left me writing the blog sat on the sofa on my own, listening to a mosquito whine past my ear every 5 seconds.
Wednesday 21st December
I spent my day continuing the plucking of the Shiraz and watching the planes take off and land at the adjacent airport. Meanwhile, Charlotte spent her day cleaning the canopys above the room, using a drool and a hose. She also had an appraisal with the owner, to check up with how she was doing. As a thanks for all her hard work, she received a $30 gift card for the supermarket Countdown, which we both agreed was really kind and would be a huge help for us. We ate our dinner outside for the first time but quickly found out that it was a big mistake, as we had lentil meatballs and spaghetti and both succeeded in getting it in our clean clothes that we were going to attend the quiz in. The quiz was to be our last one in Kerikeri. Thanks to Christmas and the new year, they wouldn't be hosting another one until the 18th of January, by which time we would be long gone. All the teams had been asked to “dress up” their tables for the event and be in with a chance to win chocolates but we didn't really do that, instead just wearing a Christmas hat each. This was also supposed to be the opportunity to use our winnings from our victory a couple of weeks beforehand but the person who had taken it home had somehow managed to lose it. We were slightly annoyed but tried our best not to show it. She had asked at the bar if they could redeem it through a photo she had but they refused to do so. With the full team we did okay with the quiz but didn't win, didn't come third from bottom and didn't get the lucky loser prize, so left empty handed. We were just pleased to have won at least once whilst we were there.
We had a different job lined up for the day, which made a nice change for both Charlotte and me. We donned our new (but old and worn out) Ake Ake Vineyard t-shirts and rendezvoused with John in the winery at half past 7. We were bottling and Charlotte had managed to get out of work at the motel so that she could experience it too. The wine we were bottling was a red called Syrah and John told us that we had around 2300 bottle to do. We all had our own jobs along the production lines. John would fill 4 bottles at a time from a machine, they would get passed to me, I would stick a cap on them stick them in a machine that would secure the cap to the top and then I'd pass it on to Charlotte and she would label it using a hand powered machine. John did claim that it would be boring but we thoroughly enjoyed it as it was different to leaf plucking and cleaning motel rooms. The only problem is that we were subjected to John’s questionable music taste that included Wham! At various points throughout the day we both got to do all the jobs, so we were pretty pleased and by the time we'd finished all the bottle, 7 hours had flown by. Our afternoon was spent doing our Christmas food shop across both large supermarkets in town. We ended up buying a fair amount but who doesn't by an absolute tonne of food at Christmas? Despite all the food we had in though, it was a simple stir fry for dinner.
Friday 23rd December
I spent my day finishing off the Shiraz once and for all. I had hoped it would take me up until lunch but I was still going afterwards and 2 hours had passed by the time I finished the final row. I had planned to start the next job but as the weather had tired and dark clouds were rolling in, I thought I'd call it quits. Charlotte had got back from the motel and when I got back to the bus I found her sleeping on the sofa. We spent our afternoon coming up with a plan for our post New Zealand journey, before cooking up a delicious tuna pasta bake for dinner and getting a fairly early night.
Both Charlotte and I were bottling again today, although John did say that it would be considerably shorter than the first session two days earlier. The wine we were bottling this time round was a blend of Chambourcin, grown on Ake Ake vineyard and Merlot, grown elsewhere in Northland. We only had around 1100 bottle to do and were flying along. In fact, it was all going too well. I left for a 5 minute break and when I got back, Charlotte informed me that the capper had stopped working and that the bottles I had been capping in the past 20 minutes hadn't been capped properly. John had to solve the problem of the broken capper, so I did a bit of picking amongst the vines while Charlotte popped in to work at the motel for a few hours. John got the capper sorted pretty quickly and I was called back in to continue bottling, in the absence of Charlotte, John’s son Jaluka took over labelling. We filled the remaining bottles without a hitch and John rewarded our work with a couple of bottles to take back to the bus and add to our ever growing pile. John had given us 2 bottles from the first bottling too (which I forgot to write about), so we were starting to amass a bit of a collection of reds. He also told me he would drop of a bottle of white for us to have with our Christmas dinner, which was very nice of him. After lunch I did a little bit of work on the vines but gave up when Charlotte arrived home. That was me done for work until the 28th, because John would have had to pay me time and a half. Charlotte on the other hand didn't have the luxury of any days off but would be earning that extra money while she was. To celebrate Christmas Eve, we tucked in to one of our boxes of Maltesers that we had picked up and somehow managed to control ourselves and not scoff them all in one sitting, when Charlotte popped something to the freezer in the restaurant, she returned with 2 bottles of white wine that John had given her, so we were going to have one hell of a booze up. That made 7 bottles altogether, 4 reds from bottling, 2 whites from John and a white we had leftover from when we first arrived. For the Hosie family, having a curry on Christmas Eve had become somewhat of a tradition, so we stuck to that and cooked ourselves a chicken curry for dinner, having it with some pittas on the side. After dinner there wasn't much else to do but go to bed, so we called it a day, ready to wake on Christmas morning.
For the second year running there was no stocking, no family to greet us and no Christmas tree with presents underneath it. As we had nothing to get up for, we had a lie in before hauling ourselves out of bed and tucking in to our bacon sandwiches, that we had promised to ourselves for Christmas Day brekkie. We had them smothered in (unfortunately not Heinz) tomato sauce and then followed them up with the remaining Maltesers we hadn't eaten the day before. After breakfast, we cracked open a beer and wandered round to the house in order to pick up the wifi and Skype Charlotte's family, who were currently in the middle of their Christmas Eve tradition of a family get together. We spent around 20 minutes chatting to everyone and wishing them all a merry Christmas and were treated to a couple of tunes played on the piano. That was the highlight of our morning by far and afterwards, we spent the time up until midday reading and doing small bits of prep for our Christmas dinner, like cooking the stuffing. At 12, Charlotte had to head in to work but was only due in for around 4 hours, so wouldn't be long. I just carried on with the reading to pass the time. She arrived back earlier than anticipated and had let me know so I could get the salad ready. We made up some garlic potatoes and were then ready to lay the table for the Christmas feast. We had cheeses, crackers, pickled onions, crisps and dip, cooked chicken, stuffing, salami, salad, turkey and cranberry sausage rolls and the garlic potatoes. We washed it down with a local Speight’s ale and a glass of John’s very own Ake Ake wine. By the time we were done we almost had to roll back on to the bus and wash up. Once everything was tidied away we passed some time playing a game of cribbage and tucking in to a bit of Whittaker’s milk chocolate for pudding. Whilst we were still digesting about 3 hours later, John popped down and knocked on our door. He invited us up to the house to join their Christmas dinner. We politely declined as we were still stuffed to the brim from our feast. We said we would pop up once they were done though. We were really just killing time, waiting to Skype the Hosie family at 10pm.
That will probably be all I write for the day, so at this point we'd like to say Merry Christmas to both our families and to anyone who still reads this babble. We hope you all have a wonderful day and the weather, as usual, isn't too miserable!
James and Charlotte
No comments:
Post a Comment