wednesday here it comes cranker

Quiet around here lately.
On holidays at the moment, the Costa's were
lucky enough to have our friends beach house
offered to us for a week. Having a ball, today was
spent swimming, boogie boarding & collecting bucket
fulls out of the rock pools. The kids also had fun.

But... here it comes. Next week the kids go back to
school, however that's not it. This week the grape harvest
starts. It's all mechanically done, but as well as growing
wine grapes we also run a harvesting business.
When I was a kid, six people picking all day by hand
might pick up to 20 tonnes. These days we pick
that in an hour on the harvester.
Our first patch gets picked Thursday night but
the "boys" will handle that. When I get back there
will be no rest until it's all over which normally
is around Easter. Our days turn into night, we
normally start around 6pm & pick through until
lunch time the next day.... 7 days a week.
After about the first month your body has
adjusted to the lack of sleep, but it's scary when
you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror.

Without rambling too much here's a tip from
someone on the ground. If you like your
Aussie reds, 2002 was great quality grapes,
2012 was even better so look out for them
when they hit the market, & I'd avoid 2011.

I'm mostly out of the market as of last week.
But have enough in there to keep logging on
to HC. Crankers are going to be hard until the
busy parts done.

Cheers everyone
Have a great day
Costa.

Ps. Chris Ford & Jeeps I always enjoyed
your 2am posts while harvesting when I
was still a lurker.