so much wine

too much wine! so much wine!

in india people would frequently mix up "so" and "too." this meant they were often saying things like "we are having too much fun here" instead of "so much fun. Madeline, the 5 year old i live with, has this same problem. it brings back great memories and makes me think of Mallory on a daily, often 10-minute basis (!)

anyway, the point is that we are making too much wine! as in so much. the fermenting process, and the punchdowns 4 times a day are winding down. the wine has been sitting, we've been adding yeast food, punching away at it each day, and a few days ago we started taking some it to barrels! this means draining the fermenter of "free-run" wine at the bottom directly into a barrel. the rest of the grapes and skins and seeds which have been resting on the top as a "cap" of sorts, still has good juice in it, so we put on all-natural rubber boots (first we clean them off, make 'em smarkle. just a little.) then hop into the fermenter and hoist buckets of soggy grape-seeds-skins into the press. then we turn it on and a rubber bladder inflates and presses the grapes and whatenot against the sides and out pours "pressed" wine. which pump into another barrel. in the winery room downstairs, a sort of 2nd level down the hill, we have so far filled about 20 barrels with this years vintage. each barrel holds 60 gallons so...as i say, that's a LOT of wine. and we've only done the Pinot Noir so far! we still have about 9 fermenters to go of the other kinds of grapes.

so, we are busy. every day is still the same really. in a good way. wake up in the cold cold, convince ourselves it's really necessary to get out of warm sleeeping bags and into the cold jeans hung on my rafter beam, walk to the house for coffee and breakfast. we start still with punchdowns, and then get to pressing.

Lately, tho, other jobs have cropped up as well. for instance a few days ago Felix rented a wood splitter. an electric one, which i quickly learned how to use. I chopped SO so so so too much wood. ear plugs and the whole shebang. felt like such a lumber jack. i have no idea how people measure wood chopping, but i chopped for about 4 hours and its a lot of wood.

Or, even better was yesterday. Right before Ryan and I arrived here one of Felix's ewe's got out and was roaming the area. yesterday we got news that she was in the neighbor's property so we dropped our pressing work and went on a ewe-hunt. basically we had to try to corner her, but forgot to close the gate to another pasture so she got away, then it turned into this poor creature trying to escape between us and damn was she fast. finally, felix managed to tackle her and so we carried her home on our shoulders. that was quite the adventure.

anyway, life is great. busy and long days. tons of work, but great wine and great fun. we've been working sometimes late into the evenings which has been rough, but still somehow manageable because it's all really fun and i enjoy what I'm doing.

and being a farmer, well it takes a bit to get used to it, but it definitely is a comfortable place for me. spending more time dirty than clean, never getting the dirt or grape residue off your hands, wearing the same dirty jeans you wore yesterday, all of it--it's different from living in New York City, or Boston (not to mention India and Kenya..) and that takes getting used to at first, but now that I'm in it, and living it, I really am loving it and I'm so excited that I'm staying for another month and a half.

and im also excited that we are putting our wood stove into our shack today and tomorrow because it is getting really really cold.