IT’S been pretty cold, so it’s been good in the tractor completing a contract pruning and slowly knocking our block into shape over the past month.
Sid, the spider that lives in the tractor, often complains of smells in the cabin and I just say ‘we just drove past more dead rabbits, Sid’.
In the bigger picture, although we overall had a lighter vintage in Australia than 2021, the China export dilemma is far from being over and a surplus is hanging like a heavy cloud.
A recent item on the TV stated that wine bottle prices should rise because of increased cost of production. The grower’s costs are going nuts as well. The average prices for the major red grape varieties dropped by over $150 per tonne last season and are forecast to drop further for 2023. Growers currently receive the equivalent of under 40c/bottle for a $15 bottle of red wine.
I am pleased that I have a home for all our potential fruit for this coming season, many do not, so chat to your grower mates, take a lamington around to them for smoko and get them talking.
Sid and I were chatting last week about a fruit fly incident. Apparently one of the fruit flies had snuck in and had seen the new Top Gun movie and ever since had been a real pain in the neck, flying through webs while they were being built and creating real havoc.
Sid said that one of his mates strategically hung a frying pan behind his web but surprisingly he went straight through it and as the fruit fly glanced around to give some cheek, another spider with significant Spiderman experience simply picked the fruit fly out of the air knocked him around a bit and had him for lunch.
