Back and Forth

Welly to Blenheim
My trip on the ferry back ‘home’ was great again, although cold. When I finally arrived back in Blenheim after my ‘holiday’ in Wellington, luckily I had some nice ‘events’ to look forward to.

Blenheim
The same evening I played indoor soccer with the classmates (most of them half my age), but fortunately I scored a goal, yes, grandma is still a little bit in shape. But I did not play a lot during the game, because I thought it would be better to leave most of the time to the youngsters.

I had a nice meeting with a journalist from The Netherlands and his girlfriend who are having a trip of half a year around New Zealand while they try to work a bit at the same time as well. They met me in the school winery and from there we went into town and out to a winery to do some wine tasting. After some pictures they headed back to their hostel at the end of the afternoon. It was a very pleasant – nearly day long - meeting and I will let you know about the details of the publication as soon as I know this myself.

The next Sunday I decided to go to the gym in the early morning. So, at 8 am I was not even the first one in, but later we were with 10 enthusiasts – all of us women – is that a coincidence, or does this mean something? Whoever knows, please tell me.

On Monday it was back into the classroom again and it was easy to get back into the ‘routine’. We will have a few busy weeks ahead of us with a lot of assignments – an exam week and after that some time out in the field to do pruning. This seems to be one of the most physically hard jobs in the vineyard and not at the least because the work needs to be done in the middle of winter. We have to be prepared and started to do exercises (we are supposed to do the exercises).

Bio-dynamic vineyard

I also went to Seresin again, this time to spray one of the Bio Dynamic preparations on the vineyard. First of all the BD Preparation 500 (this preparation – horn manure – is made from cow manure (fermented in a cow horn that is buried in the soil for six months through autumn and winter) and is used as a soil spray to stimulate root growth and humus formation) needed to be dynamised, which mainly means stirring. After that I went with Wendy, the bio-dynamic ‘guru’ on the vineyard, on the ‘mule’ to spray the diluted BD 500 on a few hectares of the vineyard. So, I got the opportunity to see the different vines, pruning systems and layout of the vineyard. All in all again very educational and the knowledge I gain here I could not gain during the course. The course only focuses on the conservative way of grape growing, being the use of chemical fertilizers and herbicides etc.

Wellington
Since the Hurricanes (the Wellington region Rugby team) had an important game to play in the competition I treated myself on a surprise trip to Wellington again to cheer them to a victory!! Marco and I did that together with John & Mickey (the journalists) with great result. Go the Canes!! They won with 21 – 10 and are still in the race for the final, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLYdIknFGQ., time for a few beers in the pub to celebrate this victory together with Marco’s flatmates. The next Hurricanes’ game is in Auckland – very tempting, but since I am a poor student, I have to stay in Blenheim this time.

Apart from the great rugby match, I could help ‘warm’ a friends’ house where we had another few beers and wines. With regards to the alcohol consumption I start to get integrated very well(?).

Blenheim
The wind and rain in Wellington was a great experience as well! So good to be back in sunny Blenheim! On the Monday it was a day of assignment writing again and I finished three of these. Now we are really gearing up for the last ‘full on’ weeks before we are going to play outside in the vineyard.

Cheers,
Anita

Cow's poo and Wellington

I still need to tell you about my experience at the vineyard before I left for Wellington. I had been on a bio-dynamic farm to look at some of the great work that they are doing and to share in this fun. So, I hopped in the car and took my gumboots with me, since the only thing I knew was that we were going to ‘stir cow’s poo’. I did not exactly know what to expect. When you want to have a look there is a nice explanation with pictures on the weblog of the vineyard where I have been: Seresin's Fourth Estate and you just scroll to 20 January 2008. We did exactly what is mentioned and showed there.

After a short introduction by Wendy, the Biodynamic Practitioner we started with preparing the cow’s dung for the cow pat pit, also called the manure concentrate or barrel compost. There was a trailer with cow dung – coming from cows from an organic farm in the neighbourhood. The task was to shovel the dung from one side of the trailer to the other, so to keep it in movement and add our energy into this manure and to aerate it at the same time. This needed to be done for an hour, but at least until the moment that the right texture was achieved. Halfway the texture became more evenly/balanced and at the end it was like it really wanted to stay together – didn’t want to be broken up. And this happened after around an hour.

Another task was the stirring in a bucket of water with valerian concentrate. The task was to stir it with a stick in one direction from the outside to the inside and thus to create a hole in the water and so to ‘dynamise’ it. This was nearly as physical a job as the stirring of the cow dung.

We had to fill three cow pad pits this afternoon and with a wheelbarrow the three pits were filled until 1.5 brick height. The pits are made of bricks and measure 90 x 60 cm. With our hands we made 5 holes in the dung where the preparations 502 to 506 will be put. These preparations are each made by adding the preparation to a bit of the earlier and ready prepared manure. This is then put in one of the holes in the cow pad pit and covered up again. When all the five holes are filled, the valerian mixture (preparation 207) is sprinkled over the manure and the bricks. The manure is then covered with a sack filled with wool (this can also be straw) and sprinkled with valerian again.

After this very interesting afternoon we got a taste of the biodynamic wine. The Chardonnay made by Seresin is really a good quality wine that is distinctive from other Marlborough Chardonnays. I left smelling of cow’s poo but with a great experience and promises to repeat these visits in future. Unfortunately, because I went to Wellington I missed two other experiences at this vineyard – but you can’t always have it all in life!

My short break in Wellington became a rather long break after all. When I planned the trip, I thought about staying for three days, but it has been more than a week before I returned to Blenheim. And yes, what about the wines then? Luckily one ‘colleague’ was back in Blenheim, but only for a short time and we decided that the wines could look after themselves. Hopefully, they didn’t have a party.

What have I been doing in Wellington? Not a lot apart from catching up with several people, which is always really great; I have been hanging around in the house, making walks, doing some gardening, writing assignments, having some drinks and some more. It was great to have a longer stay home, especially because it can take a long time before I will have this opportunity again. Maybe at the end of this year during the summer break.

Luckily I was able to attend the Queen’s Birthday in the city – so well organised every year by the Dutch Embassy. It is the same thing every year, with the beer, wine, jenever, cheese, herring and bitterballen, but a great way to meet a few ‘Dutchies’ again, some of them I had not seen since a while. Of course when everything is free…… you can imagine (or when you are not Dutch you might not). We had a nice evening and after that we spent some more time in the pub in town with Marco’s flatmates. He is renting out two rooms in our house at the moment, so I am able to live in Blenheim. For me that was about the end of my stay and I decided to head back on the ferry where I had a lot of time to write this blog. Now, I really want to get back in touch with my wines – I also have an indoor soccer game to play with my classmates – a Dutch journalist is in town who wants to meet me – and on Monday classes start again. So, I will be busy!

Catch you all later,
Anita