I think a degree of predictability, routine even, in retirement, is a good thing. Demands on a person, even self-imposed ones, within reasonable limits, give a retired person a feeling of self-worth. And self-worth, as we age, which I’m definitely doing, can be hard to hang on to and should be highly valued. It’s one reason why I have set myself the challenge of writing this blog every two weeks posting on a Monday.
I tell you this and, at the same time, offer an apology for probably missing this week’s deadline. There are two good reasons why it is so. First, we are heading up to the vineyard today (Monday, my usual writing day) so writing time is limited. Second, the focus of this blog, see above, is about events that haven’t happened yet and it’s hard to write about events yet to take place.
The anticipated events are concerned with the vineyard. So the last blog was titled Vineyard 101 and this one could be headed Vineyard 102. What is it they say about buses – wait ages for one and two come along together. So it is with vineyard blogs and the reason for numbers one and two in close proximity is that tomorrow we pick our grapes. An event that only happens once a year and some years not even that.
Truth be told we’ve left it a bit late this year and we’ve lost a percentage of the crop from an unlikely combination of over-ripeness and, would you believe in October, frosts. Anyway we’re doing it now or at least tomorrow. We’re picking in tandem with my neighbour (he who has a slightly larger vineyard on the other side of the valley). Another reason we delayed is that we were waiting for his grapes to ripen and his are about 3 weeks behind mine on account of his vineyard being higher and slightly less South-facing than ours.
I hope it will be worth the delay to our picking because he (my neighbour) is instrumental in setting up both the picking system (providing the person power, male and female and the equipment) and the transport to the wine-maker in Shropshire (a four hour drive both ways) and even the finances. So, in theory, the delay should be worthwhile, only time will tell. We’ve never used this wine-maker before so it will be interesting to see what his wine is like compared to the two we have used in the past. So that’s all I can write at this point. I will finish the blog after the harvest on Tuesday and hopefully post it then.
OK. so now it’s Wednesday and the harvest is in, the grapes are picked. We have 9 barrels as you can just see in one of the photos of the vehicle (see below), picked by 4 people although not by me on account of my injuries. I even managed to add another injury – to my shoulder. So for me it was a fairly miserable day. It’s no fun watching others do your work because you’re too old/ infirm to do your bit. It took us / them over four hours to do the picking.
I’m not sure this twin vineyard picking really works well; too late for mine, too early for my neighbour’s so I’m not sure how that affects next year but then that’s a year away and who knows what might happen by then. A cheery retirement thought.
