Vintage Life

“It isn’t until you stop that you realize how fucked you are.”. These words of Sam quite accurately describe how the long days in the vintage feel. During the work days there aren’t really any breaks. One jobs follows the next and the machines are always moving as they don’t make any money while standing […]

Clearing Showers

The weather has improved over the last days and we got some work done. Some vineyards are hit by diseases like botrytis but most are still ok. The rain also left many blocks as big muddy puddles which is quite a problem when heavy machinery has to get through there. The harvesters got stuck a […]

Bad Weather

At the moment the Barossa area is getting a lot of rain. That’s bad for me for two reason. Firstly the grapes can’t be harvested when it’s raining because the harvester can’t separate the wet leaves from the fruits. Secondly the grapes had enough rain and any more could do serious damage. The grapes get […]

Time off

Back in Adelaide for a couple of days now. There is probably no work till Tuesday and I didn’t feel like hanging around in that old farm house. It’s a fine place to sleep at but there’s not really anything else to do. Work in the vintage is, as already mentioned, highly irregular. Right now […]

A Circus called Vintage

The last days have been pretty busy and working times have been all over the place. Yesterday I started at 2:30 am, worked till 1pm, went home to sleep and came back at 7pm for a couple more hours. As I’ve been told that’s pretty standard for vintage. “Sleep is overrated.” or “Eight hours off? […]

In the Barossa Valley

One week after my first experience with night work I now have a chance to get used to it. At 3am in the morning I left Adelaide to start work on the vineyard at 4:30. This time not as a tractor driver but on the harvester with Jim. That harvester is a huge 9.5t load […]

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