it has been brought to my attention...

That once again I have been more than a little slack with this.

There are several reasons, none of which are worth using as excuses and as I suspect it'll be a while before I'm able to resume full service, thought I'd just get a quick post in.

It's been an interesting year and we've learnt many things about adverse weather that we wish we didn't need to be familiar with. We've also accomplished massive things.

The Bean is due on Sunday (where did those 9 months go) which is another sort of exciting. I suspect I'm unprepared for just how much our lives are going to change but it's still pretty amazing. Still quietly hope I can get some pruning done though! Pruning has always been MY job and I'm reluctant to relinquish it completely!

P and I are are ridiculously excited about xmas this year, with L, R & K. I've brought new lights for the tree. Not sure about the kitten/ xmas tree/ baby combination but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Right then, I know its not much, sorry Tigs, Kate & L but better than complete dirth of posts that has been the last 3 months!

On that note off to see the midwife to see what words of wisdom she has to impart!

Where's the time gone?

Firstly. Lorna, Happy Birthday!

Secondly I apologise for not having written anything since April! Not sure how that happened.

We finished banging posts in, which is up there with my least favourite jobs of all time and pushed my tractor driving and P's patience with said driving to the limit. But its done, wires are attached and the powers that be are happy.

What next....

Well this I guess, The Bean is due in November and has meant that I've not been as much use in the Vineyard as I could have been.

Which is a pity as we have planted, by ourselves, of which we are quite proud, another 1/2 hectare or Malbec. It took us 19 days of 5.30am starts and P's patience was pushed to the limits as was mine. But we did it and we watered it and then this happened:

The worst hail storm in 80 years. We've all but lost this years harvest, last years plantation has been put back a year and this years got beaten to a pulp but fingers crossed should be ok.

It's been pretty horrible but by comparison to the local village, we've been lucky. There are people who have lost everything for the next 2-3 yrs. Who have lost their arable crops too.

I hope I never see anything like it again. 

That's a pretty speedy precis of what's been happening but I'll put up some more pictures and waffle soon.

It's the little things....

This week has been a week of post distribution and sorting things out. P has more or less single handedly distributed the piquets, of which I think we'll find, I ordered not quite enough. Pah.

We now need to sort out the borrowing of the post-banger-in-er, which is proving more complicated than you might think, largely due to it, being a beast, not capable of fitting on the back of our tractor and possibly needing to go on the back of something altogether smaller, because of our new rows being only 2m 50 wide.

L and his big plough are due "pendant la semaine," ie: who knows, but hopefully before all the wet weather which we are forecast arrives.

Our fosse septique had got whiffy and Madame informed me that she thought that D had never had it emptied/ rinsed in the 20 odd years he lived here. Urgh. So they came, they emptied, they rinsed and now I'm refilling the thing. Which brings me to this mornings accomplishment. A while ago I brought a pump from lidl of a submersible nature. This morning, all by myself, I got the thing to work, which might not sound like a lot, but when it involves hefting a huge lump of concrete on top of the well, enough to lower said pump into it. If you were familiar with our old pump and the palaver involved in getting the sodding thing to work, you'd understand what an absolute joy it is to plug the thing in and for it to merrily pump 1000 litres of un-metered water & turn itself off if it gets too low. Also means that this summer we'll be able to water our new vines off-meter as well. All for the princely sum of €27. Admittedly all I went into Lidl for was a pot of greek yogurt, but money well spent I say.

Last night, more simple pleasures, J and I took ourselves up to the Salle de Fete to help make flowers for the Fete de Canton. We were a little nervous but actually had a really good evening, everyone was incredibly welcoming and we constructed some, it has be said, frankly sub standard flowers whilst partaking in a free french lesson. We're due to go again on the 15th for more paper craft fun!

Spring is here.

Tiny new vines, doing their thing, fingers crossed for no frost!

Piquets

Fuzzy green growth.

The rellys have been.

The rellys have just left after a week filled with work, wine, markets and more work and more wine.

They came bearing gin, chocolate,tea bags and anchovies and left bearing pineau, sausage, pasta !!!???,  and more sausage.

They wrestled piquets out of the ground, tied in all the vines, did a spot of pruning, moved plastic sleeves from A to B to C and moved new piquets. Z even joined the running group. I suspect they're knackered and never want to see another piquet again.

We also did "ski-sock" wine tasting which has evolved since the first time to involve 6 different wines in six different coloured ski-socks (how sophisticated are we?) and a table of information and guided tasting. I think people enjoyed themselves and my aunt in particular excelled herself. It came out spectacularly in our co-ops favour with maximum points being scored by our own wine. Not a fix at all! Maximum points go to R though who decided that not only was our home brew the most expensive but also the strongest!

P... is it finished yet?

Z refusing to be beaten by a piquet.

Plastic sleeve shuffling

Ski sock tasting.

Nonchalant tractor riding.

Just a few piquets.

Less nonchalant riding.

Hefting new piquets.

B doing a spot of relaxed tractor driving.

Bottling.

We went over to R and S's today to help with the bottling. I had no idea what it involved but found it astonishing. A man-and-his-bottling-van turned up and plugged himself in and bottles were loaded at one end, filled, corked and spat out the other end where we loaded them into crates.

I have sausage fingers and bruises between my first and second fingers of each hand but between 8 of us we loaded 10,000 bottles before lunchtime with just a couple of breakages.

P and I then came back, after a very lovely lunch in the sunshine, and finished winding up our wires in the parcel we are arraching this year.

I'm knackered and my hands are protesting. A lovely day though. 

Running

We're just back from Barcelona, where P ran and completed his first marathon. So proud of him, he trained so hard and did so well.

An almost-week with J and T.

Our lovely friends J and T came to visit at the end of their 5 week tour round places like Morocco and Marrakech by camper van. They are some of my favourite visitors and I've had such a lovely time.

We did good productive things like sorting out a fallen tree and having a monster bonfire to burn up all the vine roots from the last lot of arraching.

We also did less productive, but fun, things like digging up some clay from our land (its mostly all clay!) and making some "pots" or in P's case a small head of a man. We then tried "firing" them in the huge fire we'd built to burn the roots. We also tried to glaze them with glass in said fire but that was much less successful. Somehow J also persuaded me to go for a swim in our own lake. Whilst not cold it was altogether too squashy underfoot but has made me consider more research into converting one of the lakes into a natural swimming pool.

We cooked over our fire again (this time indoors as it is currently a bit cold) but this time in the lovely tagine brought fresh from Tagire by J and T. It was delicious and so easy to do.  P and I are planning another one soon.

I love these sort of weeks and love J and T's enthusiasm for everything. I hope they come back soon.

Gite work.

Well, it's progressing, albeit slowly. We're spending days planing and sanding the beams to get rid of finger marks and cement stains. Dreary and dusty is mostly what it is but I think it'll look good when it's done.

Pruning and general crossness.

Well the regular, electric secateurs, pruning is done! Also the "tailler a mort"(which is an expression I approve of, it does what it says on the tin) pruning of the bit we are pulling out this year.

I'm feeling antsy this morning due largely to having to call Agri-Mer in an effort to find out if we can go and get the paperwork we need in order to start this years round of jumping through hoops. This makes me cross before the day is even begun and consequently anyone who comes across me shortly after gets the short end of the stick and I feel I need to apologise! Sorry T!

I plan to spend the afternoon planing and sanding my frustration away! Then I might start mullering my back with a spot of weeding! I've got my dungarees on specially.

And breathe.

"Only one this year.'"

I know I've been more than a bit slack with the blog this year and my lovely Mother-in-law informed me yesterday that there has been only one post this year. Morning L!

What has happened since the last post?

Well the main pruning has been plodding along, aided by a succession of audio-books. The Bell by Iris Murdoch being particularly good. I now have the new vines from last year to do, all of which are at ankle height and my back is protesting at the thought. Also we are pulling out another bit of dodgy-old-vine so that needs to be given its complete haircut. I have to confess at my heart sinking at the prospect of going through last years' palaver all over again. The palaver has already commenced at step one with the fact our CVI is again wrong and we've had one wasted trip to the Duanes already. Sigh.

We've ordered our new piquets for the new plantations which means quite soon we'll be spending our time banging in 1650 new posts into the ground.... more protestations from my back.

The new plantations are giving us a quandary as well with regard to weed-killer. Hmm to weed-killer or not to weed-killer, that is indeed the question. Weedkillering is expensive, requires over 7000 plastic sleeves at further cost and is obviously nasty stuff. On the plus side it does make it all look lovely and it means we don't have to WEED, which is what will need to happen if we don't weedkiller. It's cheaper and altogether more environmentally friendly but again with my back.

Either way we need to make a decision and soon.

I have been mixing the boredom of pruning with the pleasing tasks of re-affixing wires to posts with d-rings and tightening said wires to stop them being all baggy. Madame reliably informs me that my husband should be doing the later, as it's, not a job for women!

The weather is trying to break into spring with the flowers out and sunny days but it's still inclined to be  damned (the french word for which, is vachement, and yes it does relate to cows, quite how is anyones guess) cold in the mornings. We could really do without a repeat of last years frost in April.

Oh and we've been skiing.

And it's over.

Well whoo hoo the second day of the dreaded spraying course is over. I can't remember the last time I wanted to something less, but its done. I'm still not 100% certain that I'll get the permit without further issues but the actual 16hrs of French instructional course is over.

We spent Christmas in the UK, which whilst lovely and fun was mostly spent in the car, driving, and after a particularly rough crossing back, I'm glad to be home and back in the pruning. The weather here has been pretty mild until this week and I'm praying that we're not about to have a repeat of last years sudden dump of snow, followed by a month of under zero! Especially as I took the executive decision to prune my roses this week as they were all bursting into bud. Typical!

The pruning is plodding along and I still hope to have the majority done by the start of Feb!! Hmm we'll see.

The other thing that's plodding along is that the girls and I are still running 3 times a week and they're now up to running 1-1.5 miles three times a week!

So that's about it for a bit and I hope everyone is well, happy and enjoying life!