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