Well it's been a busy time with the grape harvest with Rob clocking up 195 hours in two weeks once.
We've been all over the Coonawarra, Wrattonbully, Padthaway and Bordertown regions harvesting and bin chasing. Before this Liz had never even been in a tractor and luckily her first week was in the little Oompa Loompa tractor.
Here she is chasing the harvester down the vineyards - don't let any grapes drop on the ground now!!!
Two bin chasers (tractors) follow a harvester and when one bin is full of grapes they dash back to the compound to unload their bin and grab another one - then it's back to finding your harvester before the next bin is full - here's Rob chasing and me following hot on his tail
And here's Rob under instruction learning how to drive the big harvesters
Some vineyards seem to go on forever - here's a harvesters view (Jon our supervisor watching on)
We've seen many sunrises and sunsets - sometimes all in a days work
Our first week was spent at Penfolds in Bordertown doing nightshift - wasn't as hard to stay awake as I thought - nightshift was harder due to the fact that you had to find the exact row you were in and your harvester, as sometimes there are six going at once. You don't want to come up behind the harvester - it's a long reverse back to the end of the row - and for someone like me (who can't reverse the tractor and the trailer) that's a disaster and glad we didn't have to - but others did!!!!!!
Here's a pic back at the compound
The forklift driver lifts your bin off your trailer and loads it straight onto the truck
yes that's my tractor and no I didn't put all those dings in it
Some of the tractors we drove were pigs
Some had no air conditioning, no lights, no cb radio to communicate with your harvester
The John Deere's (owned by the farmers) were good - air con, lights, kenwood stereo systems, power steering, very popular and had people fighting over them
This is Botrytis and is caused by too much moisture, humidity etc and has badly afflicted the whole south east, South Australian wine industry this year. Up to 80% of grapes have been dropped on the ground. Rob dropped over 150 km's of grapes on the ground in a four day period - now that's a lot of grapes that make a lot of wine
Our advice is don't buy too much 2011 vintage !!!!!
Now it's Easter and the harvest is coming to an end
Our work here is done
HAPPY EASTER EVERYBODY
Chow for now
