The kids and I made the trek to South Australia to visit my aunt and her partner for the first part of their grape harvest. I had never been there at harvest time before, and Andrew and I thought the boys would enjoy the experience. So Thursday night after school the three of us set off in the car and drove to Horsham, leaving a recovering Andrew (he has pneumonia) with a stocked fridge and enough food and milk for the next few days. Friday we traveled for 6 hours to reach the farm and today was the big day. Harvest day!
Actually, the grapes are being harvested in two lots. Today we did some hand picking for some boutique wine and later in the week the big harvester machine will be used to grab the rest of the grapes.
The day started with us letting the chickens out of the coop and checking on the sheep. They are lambing and there was another new lamb this morning. Then it was down to the vinyard for some instruction on what to pick and then it was a simple matter of filling the black buckets. Simple but tiring and exhausting too.
The boys had a ball for the first couple of hours. They spent ages on the back of the ute asking people to hand them the full buckets to tip into the crates, and Toby also took delight in using the snips to cut off bunches of grapes.
When the crates were full they were loaded onto another ute and trailer to be transported to the winery. The wine maker, Vanessa, was there and she took the first four crates that were filled to the winery, and then we moved from the Tempranillo to the Shiraz grapes and started filling two more crates. By this time the boys were getting a little tired and hungry and then it started to rain and all they wanted to do was go back to the house. So took them back and we had a very yummy roast lamb lunch while waiting for the others to arrive.
It took a lot longer for the pickers to finish than anticipated, and it was mid afternoon before they were back in the house for their lunch! Then Shirley took the Shiraz grapes to the winery while Silver came with us in the car. We got a little lost, but eventually made it to the winery where we saw the Shiraz grapes being separated from their stems and squashed. Vanessa showed Nathan what was going on, and then she put in the yeast and we went back to the farm. We had a great day!
Letting out the chickens…we didn’t get them all inside last night, oops!
Moving the sheep to the next paddock
The quad bike is a favourite with the boys
The vinyard
Tempranillo grapes
Mack the dog got a lot of attention from the kids
The machine that separates grapes from stems and juices the grapes
Vanessa, the wine maker, showing Nathan the grape juice
Grape juice
Vanessa adding the yeast
