Harvest has begun.
It’s our second year at this grape farming thing. It’s harvest again. It’s a busy thing, this farming, and making
your own product, and having a store, and selling and being successful at a
business. It’s already been a winding
road to get to where we have from where we began, and plenty of people have no
idea what goes into our days and love to hear the stories when they visit. More often than not, we hear “I had no idea
it was so much work!”. I know,
right??
So here I sit, as the juice press runs and we wait a bit for
the next round, taking the time to tell you the story of a day of harvest
here.
Day One: Siegerrebe
We started our day at 6am.
It’s 10 degrees outside, so we put on some layers that will come off
later, when the day warms , or should I say if it stops raining. We’ve taken today because the rain has slowed
from a down pour to a drizzle and we can work in a drizzle. It’s a day earlier than we had planned, so we
have to call in some extra hands and hope they can come a day early too.
But before the grapes - the chickens. Oh yes, chickens. We haul out food and water for chickens, tidy
coops, feed the growers and collect eggs from the layers. Let the dogs out, let them run, feed them
too. So while I tend to animals, Kevin’s
already at the winery prepping bins, and cleaning buckets. He’s setting tanks and fermenting bins and
testing equipment.
I whipped up a fast but filling breakfast and make sure we
have full bellies for the day. There’s a
good chance it will be a while before lunch.
I eat quickly, tidy the kitchen, and take Kevin his breakfast outside to
the winery. And so it begins... eight
of us at eight in the morning, hand
picking rows and rows and rows of Siegerrebe grapes. I’ve put out coffee and water, but no one
breaks. We slurp water tossed between us
down the rows, dropping grapes into buckets, and full buckets into bins at the
end of the rows. We combat wasps, we
hide from the sun, we sit on overturned buckets to save aching backs, but now
we have aching asses. We chat amongst
ourselves, only rows apart, laughing and telling stories. Kevin and I smile, and are so grateful for
our friends that have come out to help.
There’s a honking at the winery. Customers.
I zip over from picking grapes, clean up best I can, and yes, pop open the
store for customers passing through. I
beg forgiveness for the mud and my appearance.
I promise I don’t normally look like this in the tasting room. We laugh and lovely customers taste their way
through wine and leave smiling and happy.
I wave goodbye and head back out.
Lather, rinse, repeat throughout the day.
By three in the afternoon, we are done one varietal of grape
on the vineyard. We have six varietals
here to get through before we are done. Our production has nearly tripled since our first
year. The hard work is apparent. We gather our crew and share in a crock pot
lunch of chilli and buns and salad and toast each other in satisfaction.
Did you think we were done?
Hahahahhaaaa... No. It’s four in
the afternoon now, and the grapes need to be processed. Every bin of grapes is shovelled into a
de-stemmer where they are separated stems from grapes. The grapes move down a hose into a press
where the juice is pressed out from the seeds and skins. We have a dozen bins to get through and it’s
already five pm. By 8:30 that evening,
we’ve combated a failed press, taking us down to one. We still have seven bins of unprocessed
grapes. We are sticky, covered in grape
juice and defeated. It’s time to call it
a day and carry on tomorrow.
Done? No. You can’t
just leave sticky, grape juice filled equipment out in bear country. Cleaning is necessary. We start with pressure washers and hoses and
clean buckets and bins, and haul waste and garbage, wash crush pads and stack
bins of unprocessed grapes. The moon is
filling the night with light, which is nice.
It’s warm enough that we aren’t freezing despite being soaked in grape
juice, and now water.
Nine thirty. I’ve succumbed
to a hot shower and three advil.
Supper? Nah. I’ll eat tomorrow.
It’s been a sixteen hour day before we pull the covers over
our head. Tomorrow we start again.
Day Two: Ortega
We allow ourselves an extra hour of sleep and lay till
7am. Breakfast, chickens, eggs, dogs.
Coffee...
My desk, office and admin work from this and my other job is
severely neglected. Oh, did you think I
just worked in the vineyard? Hahhahaahaa!
No. I answer a handful of emails. I print off some orders to go out.
Fill orders, package orders, label and prep paperwork for
the delivery company, arrange pickup.
Check.
By nine am, I am picking grapes with four others, making
five of us, up and down rows of Ortega, hand picking bunches, dropping them
into buckets, and hauling filled buckets to bins. Too busy to stop, we order pizza. In another twenty five minutes at 12:30, I am
given reprieve from the grapes and drive into town to pick up the food. I swing by and pick up mail and packages to
spare another trip, and head back to my crew that has taken shelter in the
winery from a bit of a rain shower. We
eat. We are all exhausted. Back to the grind, and by four o’clock we are
spent. There are two more rows to get
through, and we trudge another couple hours to see them finished. Haul full buckets, cover bins. Kevin moves the bins into the shop, we wash buckets
and prep equipment for processing tomorrow.
By seven, I’ve retreated to the house while Kevin finishes at the
winery. I grill chicken, and make pasta, throw together a casserole,
eat out the dish and hand Kevin a fork as he walks into the house at
eight. He too, eats out of the dish, too tired to grab a plate.
Shower, comfortable warm clothes, lots of water to
rehydrate, feet up. It’s 9pm. We stare blankly at a tv till ten, but our
eyes are both closed. We concede and go
to bed.
Day three: Processing.
With fourteen bins of grapes to be processed and more to
come, there’s no time to rest. 7am.
Breakfast, chickens, dogs.
Emails. New label proofs have to be reviewed and
signed and sent back to the printers.
Done. More emails and spreadsheets
and invoices. More statements and
orders.
Bins are shovelled and de-stemmed, and pressed. Wasps are abundant. There’s a pump running constantly moving
juice into a fermenting tank. Three
people can smoothly run this process. I
have done what I can to help this morning and returned to my office - where,
truthfully I am supposed to be catching up on accounting and admin for two full
time businesses, but here I sit, clacking away so I can post on our website for
all of customers. You’re welcome.
Update website, update social media. The rest of my day will be prepping for a market
this weekend. The store will be open,
and the wine rack needs refilling. Kevin
and two workers will continue processing grapes. Somewhere before the weekend I need to fit in
grocery shopping. I haven’t been to the
gym but once in two weeks. There’s a
project outback that sits unfinished. I
need to get out to the garden and bring in the herbs for drying.
And four more varietals of grapes to go. The store closes September 30 for the season,
but we’ve already got special bookings and events planned. Oktoberfest
and autumn markets fill most of October, with pruning, vineyard cleanup
and the continued harvest until the end.
Christmas Markets start Mid November with a cheese festival as filler
because we didn’t have enough to do.
Vines and Spines will carry us all through winter. There will be equipment to repair or tweak to be better. There will be tanks and wine and pressures and tests. There is marketing and festivals and reporting and liquor store sales. There is licensing and accounting. There is pruning and pruning, and did I mention the pruning?
Is that all we have to do?
No. That’s just what’s on our
plates today. Many of you ask - how much
staff do you have? Well, normally, it’s
just Kevin and I. We are lucky to have a
couple here this summer staying and working with us. We have friends and family that help with
harvest, and some bottling. Our parents
are gems and their visits here are filled with help. We are a small boutique winery. We are family owned and operated. We work all the days, usually even on the one
day off we give ourselves from the store.
We try to schedule our lives the best we can around business, and
harvest, and customers and markets. It
is, alas, just us, doing the best we can.
I think we’ve done a pretty great job so far, and you loving our wine
the way you do, tells us we’re right.
To our amazing customers that visit us, and love our wine,
and hold us up, we can’t thank you enough.
To our customers that understand when our door is locked and life
happens, and promise to come back tomorrow, you are the reason we do what we
do. For the love of the customers, for
the love of the community, for your love of our wine, thank you, all of you, for
supporting us in this journey.
