I know I know it's been a while!

Yes yes I'm sorry. I have had a slightly neurotic reason for not writing and that is my superstitious brain didn't want to go on about things until I'd heard from Agri-Mer with regards to our grant. I've had a very cross week about 6 weeks ago when we were told we couldn't replant the part we arrached last year, next year due to various antiquated reasons involving the poor beleaguered ugni-blanc grape and decided I was too cross to write about it. There would have been a lot of language.

You can see where this is going now, can't you! This afternoon we received the news that our grant is being paid into our account.

I'm now doing the dance of someone who has accomplished round 1 against the powers-that-be.

What else has happened? P has put nearly all the beams in. I have started pruning (I refuse to have to spend endless days doing it in the pissing rain). I've brought some goldfish, which currently have no names.....no-name fish are a bit sad really!

P's marathon training is going well, he ran his first accidental half-marathon last week. How one runs an accidental half marathon is beyond me! The cat had yet more urinary problems. The girls and I had our last swim in the lake on the 5th of this month.... I say swim, it really was more of an in and out.

I'm sure more things have occurred but I cant remember them, blinded as I am by my success in the grant department!

Here are a few random pictures from the last couple of months....

Tired.

It's been a long couple of days. I've been helping out at a friends harvest in Pussiguin. He makes his wine on site so its a lot more complicated.

Over two days I've hand harvested several patches which were either too old or too difficult for the machine to reach and then spent time on the sorting table. The sorting table involves sitting hunched over a conveyor belt fishing out leaves, lizards, snails and anything else that one wouldn't want to find in ones cuve! The important thing with the table is not to stand up too fast at the end or you'll fall over or vomit or both, which is pretty much frowned upon.

The first day went on pretty late and culminated in a vendage party.... which included singing, rocking around the table and as the evening went on, some people even got up and danced on said table.

One of the songs appeared to be about a pig and some potatoes... and someone else told a story that seemed to involve going into the woods with some women, that no-one seemed to find at all inappropriate... it was all thoroughly surreal and I have to say I loved every minute of it.

I do wish I spoke better French though!

I've been slack I know...

What can I say, I'm sorry. We've been busy and we are busy. The new vines are in the ground and watered and treated and one parcel is even weeded. The other two still need weeding but we are finding we can only do a row or so before our backs give in.

Round two of paperwork complications started this morning with the people who give us the grant finding yet more problems with our paperwork!

We've also discovered today that we have cicadelle in some or our vines which we have always thought as being fairly catastrophic but JL says he has it also and he barely batted an eyelid. Hmm confused, very!

We've just spent two hours or so standing around admiring our new harvest machine whilst the boys give it a test drive. What can I say, it's big and yellow and seems to work!

Here are a few random September pictures:

P trying to persuade sheepy visitors away.

Misty early morning treating.

Big yellow machine.

Headless poultry.

Well to say we've been busy would be an understatement. I naively thought getting the things in the ground would be the majority of the battle. How wrong I was.

The paperwork and related bureaucracy have very nearly finished me off. Having carefully completed all our paperwork correctly as we went along and doing all the forms so they all concurred we got to the final stage and were told by the Duanes that we had put too many vines in the ground. Alot of driving round the countryside later and we seem to have it sorted only to get the offending clearance form from said Duanes, on which NOWHERE does it mention quantities of vines, only surface areas. I swear I'm going to kill someone soon.

Anyway, ding ding round one finished, rounds 2-100 no-doubt still to come.

After the vines went in the ground we then commenced the watering marathon which at one point saw us finishing at 1.30am only to start again at 5am, with torches and a lot of caffeine. P has constructed a very Heath-Robinson contraption which does mean we can both do a row at the same time, thus speeding up the entire process and hopefully there won't be many more times that we need to do it for.... but then again, seeing as its stupid-hot here now...

Anyway, I've now started the new marathon event of weeding the little darlings. Needless to say my back hurts and as it's currently 39 degrees and is not set to drop below 35 for the rest of the week, the weeding happens very early in the morning, ditto the hand treating.

All in all I'll be glad when spring comes around and they're all still alive!

Fingers crossed.

We managed to watch a little of the Olympics, which I love beyond reason, except the football and possibly the tennis and hockey. We've also had a non-stop stream of visitors which has been alternately, something to be endured (thankfully, mercifully short) and a pleasure.

I'm not sure exactly where this year has gone but it does seem to be rocketing past and I suspect I might have to think about getting the heating fixed soon.....

Malbec

Well here are the first lot of vines and it's made a day that started off pretty horrendously improve no-end!

What kind of a day has it been then. Well P got out of bed determined to get a treatment in and then promptly reversed the tractor into the outside tap, breaking it and sending water pissing everywhere! Cursing loudly he went in search of a stopcock which he couldn't find. About 4 mins later and a couple of hundred litres of water later I found said tap and stopped the flow!

Oh well we thought we'll use the pump to fill the sprayer which after about 15 mins of wrestling we managed at the EXACT same time as the tractor started misfiring.

P, it has to be said lost what passed for his sense of humour at this point.

The mechanic is on holiday. We need to treat and to have the tractor ready for tomorrows onslaught of planting. At this stage it was all pretty catastrophic and P had a face like a slapped arse!

After a long of confusion I rang the guy we brought the place from and asked for the name and number of his friend who is a "sometimes mechanic".

Phone calls made, JM turns up plays with the tractor, does a lot of revving and announces that we need a new "Pompe alimentation de gazoil" which I have to write down after twice asking and twice forgetting... also a new oil filter.

Without much hope we trundle of to the fantastic chaps at Chansaulme who pick both items off the shelf and say that'll €86 please.

I then call lovely mechanic bloke back, who says alot of things very fast that I don't understand and says goodbye.

I dither, the vines arrive delivered by a very lovely chap and then I pluck up the courage to phone M. Le mechanic back who says (very slowly) he'll be here tomorrow at 8.30am..... HURRAH.

I shouldn't be counting my eggs or chickens or uncrossing anything yet.

BUT our vines are hear and arn't they lovely?

Planting and other things.

Well they're here, busy inserting marquants into our rotovated, fertilised and now-dry-enough-to-not-sink soil. The plants are due to arrive Thurs am and hopefully by the weekend all 7000 of them will be in!

We've been so stressed about the whole thing and everything has been conspiring against us... well mostly the weather so I'll be massively relieved when its over.

The rest of the vineyard, it has to be said, is looking amazing at the moment and I'd say that we've finally got it looking like it should as a matter of course, not like it was looking when Dominique had put several years of concerted neglect into it.

P has cut the grass, I've strimmed, he's rongered (not sure how it's spelt but pronounced Ron-yeah-ed) it all. We've still to treat again this week and I've still got a couple of parcelles to de-pampe (de-shoot) and then we'll put more weed-killer down and it'll look perfect again.

Except (there's always an except!) for the cabernet sauvignon that is riddled with Esca (black measles). This used to have a treatment option but they're withdrawn that (probably quite sensible as it was an arsenic derivative). So unless we want to spend a ruddy fortune (€9 per plant) for an injection that might or might not work, we'll be ripping them out soon. Pity that's where we mostly put the new piquets.

What else has happened? Well I had a very curious conversation with a frenchman in his tractor... yes yes lesson number one, but I wanted our verges cut properly...that proved that old cliché, that frenchman are indeed obsessed with sex.

Amongst talking about his kids, how long we'd lived here, how our neighbour was doing post surgery, he informed me that, whilst my French was very good, the only way to learn French well was to go to bed with a Frenchman. He followed this with informing me that it wasn't necessary to be faithful to ones wife, as life was too long and it all got too boring. Good then, well that's my vocabulary expanded into areas I wish it wasn't. But then again we do have beautifully cut verges.

Stress

We are now battling with the weather again. This year for the opposite reason to last year. We have too much rain. We now have to cross anything and everything that it dries out a lot so that we can re-rotovate to get rid of the proliferation of weeds that have grown in the three weeks since we last did it! And that it's stays dry enough that the replanting tractor doesn't sink.

On the plus side my french must be improving, four phone calls today and one face to face. Mind you not sure it's what might be called accurate french!

Preparation for planting.

We're feeling slightly up against it and it's now 10.20pm and P is out rotovating still. We've spent the day loading the hopper of the spreader full of lime and fertiliser. Spreading said stuff, which I'm guessing I shouldn't have inhaled so much of as my lungs are not happy, and periodically pulling P out of which ever part of overly boggy vineyard he's got stuck in.

We're feeling however like we have accomplished things. We just need to finish rotovating,preferably before it rains (2am tomorrow morning!) and although that's clearly not going to happen at least some of it will be done.

I've made 3 phone calls all in French and all apparently (although there's still room for that not to be true) understood and so we've sorted (almost) some of the bigger things on this months list.

Everyone now needs to think positive thoughts for the start of July... the 9th to be precise when we may or may not be replanting!

We've also been doing my second favourite job, the lifting! It makes the vineyard look all tidy and like a proper vineyard not lots of rows of hairy plants!

Before:

 And after:

Tired but feeling like we're getting there.

And my head is going to explode...

If we can't get this (insert several non printable words) replanting forms/ customs/ INAO mess sorted out soon my head is actually going to self-detonate.

We've just noticed another problem (or six) with various bits of paperwork, and I can feel my blood pressure ascending like some kind of natty pressure cooker.

I really really hope that once and for all we can go to see the cave and get everyone singing from the same song-sheet.

I've been out hitting things with a machete in an effort to calm down, our vignes are being de-shoot-ed perhaps a little too vehemently.

And to top it off we have some sort of unspecified unidentifiable maladie which chemical D is coming to look at tomorrow..... excellent way to start the weekend! Please God can it be nothing serious, I'm not sure my arteries can take much more.

Frustration and the levels thereof...

P got up to an email this morning from our Cave saying there is a problem with our replanting this year and can we please call them urgently.

After a very frustrating meeting, in which I'm sure I babbled incomprehensibly in very poor angry, tired french we are frankly non- the wiser. We do however have a meeting on wednesday am with the Duanes.

Basically it seems that back in the dark-ages when some of our vines were planted they were registered as being on a bit of land, when in reality they were on three. No-body corrected it and when we did our pulling out forms and things were looked at on the satellite it became clear. Now it seems that we have another problem because our Ugni-blanc is only a table wine, or rather, was, as we've pulled it out. They now say we can't replace it with AOC without filling in a form, paying some money and waiting. The most important part of this is, we can't replant all the parcels we've arrached, because, wait for it, you can only apply for the AOC when there are no vines in the ground. One lot of bureaucrats won't talk to another and P is loosing his sense of humour!

My frustration at not being able to speak good enough French is building, sadly not at the same rate as my french is improving.

Everyone think nice calming positive thoughts for Weds and lets hope it's one of those occasions where it does all get sorted out, as opposed to those where, we leave with more problems than we arrived with.

Beams and big bits of wood.

Well James has been here this past week and we now have the main beam up! All 1 ton of it. James and P spent all week doing complicated joints (James) and making pegs and big holes (P). We then managed some how ( I say "we", I kept safely out of the way) to get in in place with some strategically placed acro poles and a block and tackle... 3 englishmen and a passing frenchman. Xavier bowled up at the crucial point, lit up and watched! Apparently we and our green oak, carpenter with whom he wouldn't pick a fight and apparently thought was canadian (it's the socks James)  and traditional methods was just too fascinating!

 Getting the beams into the building was the first major undertaking...

 I made those trestles.... and that was the extent of my help!

Three Englishmen and a Frenchmen...

P making the hole a bit bigger.

Ta Da!

The tenacity of vines.

You have to admire and love a plant that gets mullered by frost and is not defeated. The second (rather blurry) photo shows the new growth appearing behind the damaged shoot. We all just need to keep our fingers crossed that there is no more frost and that the reds recover like these whites.

Right then we are off to try and manoeuvre a beam weighing over 500kg into the gite. Our wood has arrived and our carpenter arrives this afternoon... about the same time I need to be collecting the cat from the vets and that's an entirely different story, involving a lot of vocabulary that never in my life did I think it would be necessary to learn.

On fending off shepherds and the kindness of neighbours.

Our lovely neighbour, David, who is largely incomprehensible to me 90 % of the time, turned up on the doorstep this morning, asking (I think) if we had given permission to the shepherd currently erecting his fencing on our field.

I stumbled through several poorly constructed sentences (he has that effect on me, I can't understand him and therefore I can't understand myself) the result of which was David striding towards them and suggesting, at full volume, that they leave now.

All good except that the shepherd then came towards me wanting to know if I really meant it. I managed better with him, explaining that because of the vines and also that, whilst I didn't know if it was him, the last time we had sheep on the field no-one had asked and it was a little impolite. I did also say that I knew it was difficult to find places for them to put their sheep but I was sorry... and I may even have shrugged!

What he probably understood though was a lot of random words, not put together in any kind of sentence, and that is why I'm especially grateful for David's torrent of abuse which meant he had the general meaning before he got anywhere near me... and why also the sheep are back under next-doors trees, which frankly is probably, where they'd rather be given the current inclement weather conditions.

Rain.

It's been raining now for about 3 weeks non-stop. After a while you start, or rather that's a bit presumptive, I, start to feel like I'm stuck in the end of the world and I'm going crazy.

Our gardening barn has flooded, but not from anywhere obvious or easily reachable but from under the concrete at the back of it. The drive and front garden is under about 1-2 inchs of water. Everything is wet. Even the chickens are morose.

I look at the weather forecast daily and start to feel like I'm loosing my mind.... there is no end in sight and it's showing 95% chance of rain for the next 10 days.

Then again I've just seen on the TV somewhere in northern India where it rains over 2m a year ! They also mentioned a period where it rained there non-stop for 2 years.... so maybe I need to stop complaining and get a bit of perspective.

Right then I'm off to bed and maybe, just maybe, it won't be raining in the morning.

Frost damage and other things.

About a week ago we had a frost overnight and now our vines are either sulking or dead! As an non-agricultural person it's hard to comprehend just how reliant on the weather and therefore, things definitely beyond my control, we are.

The vines that had leaves out and are in the parcel next to the house got hit really hard and all the other parcels except the smallest (hmm I'm not feeling got at) have patches of it.

Having talked to some other vignerons in the area because a lot of the buds were not out, its still possible it'll be ok. Also because I was a little over generous when pruning, we have a few to spare. It'll probably push the harvest back, but on the plus side, our bunches might be bigger!

Everyone needs to keep all their lucky digits crossed for us.

The weather here keeps remorselessly plodding on being dreary and wet. Yesterday for the first day since my aunt, uncle and cousins were here (sorry guys) it held off raining (at least in a torrential fashion) for most of the day, which meant that I now have the stakes in for the tomatoes, bean poles up (although for how long, they're more than a bit wafty) and I've started the war on mystery yellow plants. I have no idea what these things are but they have roots that could invade most of Europe from here.

Today, it being Monday, is admin day. Sigh. I need to speak to Cyril the wood man  and then, I'm off to Bergerac for fun with the TVA form, Orange (take a deep breath now) and the Dr's for form filling. I'll either come back feeling like I've accomplished things or I'll be wound up and fractious, at this point it could go either way.

I have my lucky socks on.

Tractors

Well we have been busy. P had been banging in the posts by hand and then he ordered a post driver from amazon and started with that. Then Robin and his tractor came to the rescue!

We've also had the lovely L and J here this week which was particularly useful as Laurent came and ploughed with his monster tractor and we all spent two days clambering about in the mud!

We worked like stink and tidied the vineyard at the same time, J was mad enough to go in the lake (nutter) and we consumed a fair bit of wine.

The ploughing was all going well until 3 rows from the end before M had a small problem with the tractor... he laughed when I asked if it was the first time and counted off the times on his fingers. Laurent's second tractor came and rescued him and we all decided we could do without the last 2 foot!

Post banging in...

P has been replacing all the dodgy rotten posts this week with shiny new ones. We finally hit on a method that involved my driving the tractor and him positioning them with a small mallet before awaiting the arrival of a post driver. Understandably, after 250 of the things, he's a wee bit knackered.