Spring is on the way, with the days lengthening quickly.It’s nearly light now when I jog out the door for my morning run.
Oops, I mean wobble out the door to the ute so I can drive it to the tractor.
It’s week 12 of machine pruning and we have now hooked up the barrel pruner to make horizontal cuts between the cordons in some blocks – I can’t drive both machines at the same time, but should have it all sorted by the end of the month hopefully.
I noticed the first sap running in pruned canes the other day, so even the vines are beginning to wake up.
I will try and refrain from whingeing about the dire position in which the red wine industry currently finds itself, except to say that 25 years ago it was said by wineries that for the fruit that goes into a $10 bottle of wine the grower could have expected to receive $1000/tonne.
And here we are now, a quarter of a century later, faced with much higher winery and grower costs and government taxes, and wineries this year will try and only pay the grower $300/tonne.
If you see a wine grape grower, offer to take them fishing, or for a hit of golf.
The snails disappointingly failed to win any medals at the Olympics, in fact the trackers affixed to their shells show that they are very stationary and remain at the French restaurant they attended as soon as they reached France last month.
The crows are flat out doing the spring thing, renovating their nests, throwing out the old gear and gathering new stuff.
All crows look pretty similar, but if you pay careful attention a bit of lippy and mascara can usually be spotted on the Lady Crows at this time of year.
The bloke Crows are a bit harder hard to pick, except for those which originate from out west in the golf course territory – these have little dimples visible when they smile and they do tend to swear more.
Obviously learnt from growing up near the golf course.
Talk to your mates.
