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 This used to have a treatment option but they're withdrawn that (probably quite sensible as it was an arsenic derivative).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.