End of Harvest and Costume Party with the Frenchies Part 1

Hej alla vänner och släktingar där hemma!
Enligt rykten på Facebook så har våren äntligen kommit till de Svenska breddgraderna. Detta låter som skön musik i mina öron, då ja snart återvänder hem. Här i Nya Zeeland börjar hösten bli allt mer påtaglig med lövträd i sprakande färger, samt bitande morgon kyla. Med andra ord det är dags att dra! dessutom börjar snuset sina :-)

Phuu! That took me about 15 min to write and allot of copy and paste to get the å, ä and ö in the right places. But as I've already stated in Swedish my Kiwi time is running up, and I have to say it gives me mixed feelings. Part of me will miss this place for ever but at the same time I'm relieved to be going home and I really look forward to meet everybody at home, I do miss you all! Some of you, not so much.

After having a very nice day off on Sunday we started work again on Monday morning at Elms Vineyard. The night had been clear so morning temperatures was Swedish as all other Nationalities was keen to remind me " Hey, Viking you like the cold don't you?". But the Swede as I'm called was cunning and smart enough to put on gloves early in the morning so the low temperatures didn't bother me much :-) And as the sun was rising higher on the horizon I picked Riesling together with my shivering, schnipping friends. The best thing with these cold mornings is the so called Smoko (smoke break) though no one smokes we get freshly made coffee and delicious scones with jam that thaws the frozen limbs and gives new energy.

Having filled the press with Riesling grapes we moved on to Pinot Noir as the sun eagerly warmed the air to more summer like Swedish temperatures. After picking Pinot for approx. one hour it was time for Lunch which this Monday was provided by Nigel Greening the owner of Felton Road. We had delicious Mediterranean chicken stew with tomato, red peppers and black olives, to this Nigel had made a magical polenta filled with corn and there was of course a few glasses of Felton Pinot and Riesling to go with the food. After that the afternoon seemed to swoosh by as I tried to keep up with the "Human harvesting machine" Marion from France. Foolishly Sir James of England tried to do the same and immediately schnipped himself deeply in his finger, and I laughed Hi, hi Ha, ha!

Tuesday started just like Monday morning except that we where in Cornish Point and picked Pinot instead of Riesling but it was maybe even a little bit colder. I worked in between Manu and Antoine both had foolishly no gloves and where shivering and blowing warm breaths into there hands trying to thaw there cold french fingers. After a few hours of picking really cold Pinot grapes Smoko finally came as a blessing and with it the Sun. It becomes quite obvious why people use to worship the sun in basically all old pagan religions :-)
After Smoko I had the great privilege to have some time to take some photos of all of us picking grapes. So I spent about 40 min running around between the rows and snapping photos of everybody.
After lunch we continued on and sometime around four we had picked all of the Pinot Noir at Cornish Point, which also meant that we had picked all of the Pinot grown by Felton Road.

Wednesday we had a very relaxed last day of picking, as we started at ten in the morning and only had two blocks of Riesling to pick. It was a nice end to my harvest experience to pick these gorgeous looking bunches, some with shriveled botrytis grapes on them. I also got permission to continue to take some photos of the last day of picking, which was really nice sins we had beautiful sunlight and the girls had made funny looking hats to wear sins there was a competition going on.
Then me and David (Aussie) the two chefs had to fill in for Nigel who had to attend to other matters, to cook the lunch. We grilled Beef fillet and made salad of really nice organic tomatoes that was served with baked potatoes. I can assure you that this final Lunch was appreciated by everyone the meat was juicy and tender and the tomatoes where out of this world!

After dinner followed the men's beard growing competition,I had foolishly trimmed my beard during harvest and had no chance of winning the sought after "best coverage award". On the other hand though I easily avoided the "Wants to be a MAN award" as my beard was thick enough to look allot manlier then ze two young Germans.

The women's hat competition where divided into two classes, the "best in show" and the "best creativity". Andrea which probably spent a good hour twirling hear hair into a sort of Dionysus meets the Rastafarian version of Princess Leia, won the creativity award fair and square.

All the winners got a different bottle of wine, and all of us got a really nice black harvest T-Shirt.


After posing for numerous group photo's we where finally heading for ze Pub to trinken some Bier Ja! For some reason the American Andrew talked some of us into walking to ze Pub, basically non of us was sober enough to drive after numerous glasses of Felton wine. Anne our cute German Londoner was in particularly bad shape (she will hate me for writing this obvious truth, but let's face it you where PISSED!)


After about 30 min of walking we came upon our first major challenge "the electric fence". Here is where I made a total fool of my self by fist touching the wire with my hands thinking it was safe to cross, then Loudly declaring "Ze Swede is going to fry his balls", and then with one hand on the fence (completing the circuit) I touched the wire with my inner thigh and got some 5000 volts shot through my jolting body :-) The rest of the group of course reacted with stomach cramping laughter as they thought I'd actually gone ahead and fried my balls. About an hour later we finally reached the Pub and could get our hands on the first pints, Oh Joy!

To be continued....