Down and Out in Blenheim and Seddon

Before the harvest

Last year's bunches and canes

Our bosses are tough but fluffy

Rows of un-pruned plants: the stuff of nightmares

Finished, wrapped product in front of a gum tree

Working as a pruner is a real kick in the pants.  Whatever romantic vision you had of growing grapes (an attractive Italian woman slowly putting grapes to her lips to check for quality... Jeff...) I can tell you it is hard, painful work.  Though it does have its positives.  It is outside, often in the sunshine, and the land is beautiful.  And we move to a new block on a new vineyard at least once a week, which helps to keep things fresh (like your TF2 map change).  The pain in our hands and wrists from the repetitive stress, though, has made life outside of work unpleasant.  Tasks like chopping vegetables and stirring a pot have become nearly impossible, and the pain and numbness wake me up in the night.  We had hoped the pain would lessen as we became accustomed to the work, but it actually seems to accumulate more each week.

A short description of pruning is called for.  When growing grapes, a maximum yield of fruit from each vine is undesirable.  Light to medium crops produce higher quality, more complex wines.  If all of last year's growth was left there would simply be more grapes than the plant could ripen.  This would make for weak, watery fruit and bad wine.  Pruning removes the excess canes (canes are the pole-like branches that grow from the head of the plant), leaving three to five strong canes to be wrapped on the wires and produce next year's fruit.

My work as a pruner involves removing last year's growth and helping to shape the head of the plant with my loppers (large garden shears).  Each plant is like a puzzle that I must solve in as few moves as possible.  We get paid per completed plant, so it is all about efficiency.  Once I tire of pruning, I walk back down my row (anywhere from 50-200 plants long) and "strip" the plants.  The pruned canes do not fall easily to the ground.  Instead they get caught in the wires, tangled with each other, and so on.  Stripping, then, is when I reach into the wires and rip out all the pruned canes.  This is violent, physical work, and often the stuck canes will snap free with the same force that I pull at them, whipping me in the face, neck, chest, balls, etc.  After stripping, I walk back over the plants with my secateurs and finely trim the remaining canes of old bunches of fruit, laterals, and tendrils.  The plant is now finally ready for the wrappers, like Christina, to pass through and tie the canes to the wires, securing them in place for next year's crop.  I wish I could tell you more about what her work consists of.  Maybe she will make a guest edit here.

GUESTY EDIT BY CHRISTINA!!!!!!!!!

So you want to be a wrapper!? Instead, I recommend smashing both your hands in a heavy door, then sitting on them until they go numb while staring at a wall for eight hours all on your lonesome. I am so glad to be writing this from a place where I am no longer wrapping. I'm not sure how we lasted six weeks. We did work with nice people and friendly dogs. Anyways... wrapping happens after pruning so that the vines are attached securely to the wires under the weight of all the grapes that are growing on them. If the cane droops, the fruit could touch the ground and rot, or the whole cane could snap off. After pruning, the vines are sticking straight up in the air. Stand in front of your plant. If the pruners didn't have to, you will need to trim all of the tendrils and old grape bunches from each cane with the secateurs. Grab a cane near it's base in your right hand. Push down on the very tight wire with your left hand to create tension. Use the palm of your right hand to also push down on the wire while simultaneously bending the cane with your thumb and cradling it with your fingers. If you do not do this correctly you will snap the cane, or have a loose wrap. Now that it is bent, wrap the cane around the wire in a tight down-left-up-right kind of motion so that the vine does not twist...otherwise it will just untwist and you will have to start over. Hold the cane in place, use secateurs to cut it to the required length, and grab a twist tie to secure it. Most plants need to be left with 3 canes, others with 2 or 4. Repeat for the rest of the canes. Finished your plant? Great, hop to the next one cuz you just made about 30 cents! Due to the fine handwork, you cannot wear gloves through all of this, not even when the vines are covered in frost. But that is no issue if your nerves are already so damaged you can't feel them anyway. You will be alone almost the entire day, use your breaks to RUN to the outhouse and back so as not to waste time = money, and are in for a world of pain. Did you know, a single grape plant produces around 7 bottles of wine! Now if only they shared that with the workers...

Now the important stuff.

- A common grape disease is named bunchitis.

- I joked about the importance of the new Burger King here before.  But how much money is in the Blenheim drive through game?  Parked every day in the employee spot outside the neighboring McDonalds is a BMW with the vanity plate "B1G MAC."  Blenheim is the worst city I have ever lived in.

- Of a carton of eggs Christina and I bought, eleven of them were double yolks.  Our flimsy research (a Daily Mail article) rates the odds of this happening at far less than one in a trillion.  Apparently, young hens are more likely to lay double yolk eggs, and in the UK you find one in about every thousand eggs.  The dozen eggs were mixed grade, though we suspect there was an error at the sorting plant, since these were all humongous (the one egg that was not a double yolk was a super single).  What does it mean?  Some folklore: marriage due to pregnancy, windfall, death in the family, birth of twins.  My failure to document this in picture or video is the major disappointment of this trip so far.

- If the author of a blog I read resorted to bullet points to express himself, I too would be insulted.