All things bean.

It has been a ridiculously long time since I posted anything, in fact I can say it's over 4 months as that's how old our daughter is. The Bean landed on her due date and our lives will neve be the same again, and that's no bad thing.

She is beautiful and good and perfect and no I'm not at all biased, but she does mean I get almost nothing done. P has done all the pruning by himself, except one small parcel across the road and I have managed to start the tying in. I have a new schedule which seems to involve getting up, pumping, feeding and changing etc and then TB sleeps for about 1hr, during which time I rush out and work like mad for that time before coming in for a shower and to do it all again. She's almost having a regular lunchtime nap so I might be able to do some then too... It's also still light after she's gone to bed so could try then too.

We have started to try and write a list of things that need to be done and the order they need to be done in and it's a long and complicated list. P is banging in posts by hand and sorting out wires so I can tie in. I'm as always frustrated by how long everything takes and by just how little help I am.

I naively thought when told that a baby feeds every three to four hours... (Try 2.5) that that meant I'd have three hours to do things in! No chance, I've just time to put yet another load of laundry on and that's it.

Beware clan R'ford... We have a monster list of jobs prepared!

Anyway, I've broken the blogging hiatus and hope to get back into it regularly soon.... But then I hope to be able to do lots of things so... Who knows.

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.