After 8 weeks of plucking leaves and cleaning motel rooms, the end was finally coming into view as we rounded the final bend. Having said that, I still had plenty of Pinot Gris to get through before we could even think about finishing and Charlotte had made the upcoming Saturday her final day, so there would be no respite for her. After 2 short weeks on the bounce, it was nice to be back to work on a Sunday and safe in the knowledge that I could rack up a fairly decent weeks total without too much struggle. When Charlotte arrived home and I'd done 7 hours for the day, we retired to the bus in order to have a bit of a play with the present we'd received from Michael and Lianna. There were 2 pots of fake snow that we had to add water too in order to make it more sticky, like snow is. Rather than do it separate, we pooled our pots together, although Charlotte didn't really get the idea and made a huge snowman, which left me with a dinky little one. We scavenged some accessories like vine leaf stems for arms and a pipe, a broccoli leaf for eyes a small plastic comb that we'd found in one of our crackers. We left them sitting on the table whilst we had dinner, which was chicken, mash and veg and was really delicious.
As I was progressing along the seemingly endless Pinot Gris rows the vines were starting to become slightly smaller and thinner, from where I'd not long plucked them. It helped that we had hardly had a drop of rain over the previous 6 weeks, so they've had nothing to cause them to grow. The smaller and thinner vines meant I was getting through them quicker and quicker and would easily have them wrapped up within a few days. Charlotte was still ticking over the hours at the motel, which was good for our bank balance, although we couldn't wait to finally leave and put as many miles between herself and miserable Michelle as possible.
Tuesday 10th January
For the whole day I was unconvinced about my ability to get the Pinot Gris finished off. That was until Charlotte arrived back with far too much enthusiasm to work in such a heat. By the time we were done I was just short of 9 hours for the day and even Charlotte had clocked up 2 hours 40 minutes. It was incredibly satisfying to finally leave them behind once and for all. In the other hand, we were slightly disappointed not to be staying the whole way through to putting on the nets. In a bid to save room we were ploughing through all the food we had stocked in our larder and were making a good go of it, even if it was still slightly repetitive. We had pasta and passata for dinner, which we'd had only a few days previously but it did mean we were only likely to leave with a bottle of ketchup and a mostly empty bottle of sweet chilli sauce.
Wednesday 11th January
The week just seemed to be flying by and Charlotte always says, “once we hit Wednesday, the week just goes”. We were happy for it though. Our only slight worry was if I could maintain good hours for the rest of the week with the biggest job over and done with. John had me doing a tiny bit of plucking on the Chambourcin before I had to wrestle with some wires on all of the Chambourcin rows in preparation for us doing the nets on the weekend coming. It wasn't a full day's work but it kept me busy for some time. I did however have to take an extended lunch break as “the sub tropical north” was finally starting to live up to its name. The day was steamy and you'd have been forgiven for thinking you were in South East Asia. Rather than venture back out in to the sweatbox, we decided to head in to Kerikeri, so I could get a haircut whilst we had a chance. We paid a quick visit to a small market in the way back out of town but there wasn't much to see, so we returned to the bus and did our best to keep cool for the rest of the day. We cooked up some potato wedges to go with our flavoured chicken for dinner and with nothing much to do, got an early night.
It was slightly cooler than the day before, which made for a pleasant days work. The majority of the plucking had been done so my job was to continue walking round all the vines and pull out the wires in preparation for the nets. Once I was done with the Chambourcin, I moved on to the Pinot Gris, with John asking me to do another small task of hammering in nails to the boards that weren't particularly steady. Charlotte arrived home and helped me briefly in the afternoon before I got too hot and gave up for the day. It really did feel like we were winding down now. I was on holiday mode and Charlotte couldn't wait to escape the motel. As we still had leftovers from Christmas, we had cheese, crackers and various other bits and bobs for dinner, including the Paxo stuffing we had received in the parcel from Donna and Paul. It turns out that Paxo is infinitely better than the tripe they sell out here!
Friday 13th January
As we were getting up, my mum and dad were just embarking on their epic journey to come and visit us. They left snowy Gatwick behind and were headed for their first connecting flight in Dubai. Meanwhile, I kept myself entertained with a new job. We'd done bottling before, this time round I had to “unbottle”. Thanks to a mix up and John missing it, he'd bottled 300 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc that had a pretty nasty sulphuric smell to it. So it was my job to open the bottle, pour it into a large vat, cut the aluminium lid off with a knife, wash out the bottle and box the empties ready for when John had done his magic and made the wine smell acceptable. The job suited me, as it got me out of the forecast rain that never materialised, so got me out of the heat instead. The 300 bottles took me 5 hours and I finished just as Charlotte arrived home, so we could have lunch together. Just before I started, John told me that I was lucky to only be doing 300 bottles, as once he'd had to unbottle 1500 bottles. Charlotte arrived home from work pretty chuffed, as she had received a wonderful and thoughtful present from one of her coworkers that she had got on really well with, Marion. It was a necklace with a Pounamu whale tail on it. Pounamu is New Zealand greenstone, or jade and is big business down on the west coast of the South Island, which is the only place in the world it is found. We'd eyed up pieces before when we'd been in shops but never seriously thought about getting any, so Charlotte's present was a lovely surprise. The rain did eventually materialise in the afternoon but it wasn't heavy and it was nice to be out working in the cooling drizzle. All we had to do was finish off the Pinot Gris wires before we took cover in the bus. With a couple of hours to spare before dinner, we decided to start packing, so as not to leave it all for our final afternoon on Sunday. With all our camping gear sold we had considerably less stuff than when we arrived. Having said that, we still had loads of stuff and were looking forward to my Mum and Dad (hopefully) being able to take a lot of it back home with them. We finished just in time for dinner and wolfed down our rice, beans and chicken with tortilla wraps before Charlotte thrashed me at a game of Cribbage. During all this Mum and Dad had just about made their connecting flight and, as we were going to sleep, we just flying over India on their way to Hong Kong, where they were staying for a few days.
Saturday 14th January
We awoke to confirmation that they had arrived and had probably promptly crashed out, having lost almost all of their Friday 13th (not the worst day to lose!). By now, I'd completely lost all my enthusiasm and couldn't wait to finally escape from the vineyard. Charlotte had agreed to do a short day and was confident she would be home by lunchtime. I forced 4 hours work out of myself, which involved nailing more of the boards steady and doing a small amount of plucking on the Shiraz. Charlotte arrived home and almost the same time I finished and after lunch, we slobbed about for the rest of the day, as John said there wasn't anymore work to do until the nets the following day. For our penultimate dinner, we had that all time classic, pasta and beans, together with a half rotten carrot that we had leftover in the fridge. We were also trying our best to get through a bottle of Syrah red wine that we had opened but it was a bit of a challenge, as we weren't particularly enjoying it.
(Chambourcin)
(Shiraz)
(Wasps nests)
Sunday 15th January
Our final day started at 9 o'clock and we met John round by an old shipping container where he stored his nets. We hopped on the back of the tractor and were shuttled to the first row of Chambourcin that we would be netting. It was a lone row between the Pinot Gris and the Chardonnay. It seemed like an easy job. Charlotte was driving the antique tractor, whilst John and I stood either side of the row and pulled the net down from the crossbar it was being dragged over. Overall we ended up doing about 15 rows, some longer than others and got it finished in 3 and a half hours. There were a couple of incidents that slowed down, such as Charlotte catching a wire with the tractor but other than that, we got it done quicker than John expected. Once we were done, we got a shake of the hand from John and that was our lot. All we had left to do was clean the bus from top to bottom, have lunch and dinner and then one more sleep and we'd be hurtling down State Highway 1 towards Auckland. After a few hours of procrastination that involved napping and a card game, we finally plucked up the enthusiasm to start the packing/cleaning. We filled the car with what we wouldn't need overnight, emptied the bins that we'd hardly used, Charlotte cleaned the car quickly, I shaved, we vacuumed and that was all we could do until either later, or the next morning. As this blog needs to be published before we leave the vineyard, there might be a slight gap now. All I can put (and this is looking in to the future) is that we had our final tub of leftover chilli for dinner, with some rice and leftover wraps too. We'd had a lovely time on the vineyard and were incredibly pleased with the amount of money we'd managed to accumulate over the 9 weeks. Charlotte had been incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time for a job that, she might have detested, but turned into a nice little earner. And whilst Charlotte was at the motel, I was plugging away in the sunshine at the vineyard, trying to trudge through the tedium of plucking leaves of vines. As much as we'd enjoyed it, we were rather excited about meeting up with a couple of familiar faces and going on a jaunt around New Zealand with them. Fingers crossed their plane isn't delayed too long!
James and Charlotte
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