Hi, Family and Friends!
It’s another Sunny Sunday afternoon at Blueberry Cottage, our happy little home in the Marlborough wine district. B and I have now been living in this region for over a month, and in that time we’ve only had two days of rain, which has been such a wonderful change after eight months of on-again-off-again storms. B and I have decided that Marlborough is our favorite region of New Zealand (and we’ve been to them all now), so it’s incredibly fortuitous that this is where we get to spend our few remaining weeks in the country. Still, our time here hasn’t been without its bumps along the way.
You see, our cottage has a bit of a mouse problem. On our very last night of WWOOFing we came back to the cottage after dinner with our hosts and found a dead mouse caught in our mouse trap. Brandon very carefully scooped it into a paper towel and took it back to our hosts, who told him to feed the mouse to their chickens. Ew. After that B and I set the trap again, just in case, but we imagined that we had caught The Mouse, and wouldn’t have any more trouble with rodents.
The next day we started pruning, and the first day wasn’t too exhausting because we got rained out and came home early, but the second day left us feeling about two-hundred years old and brain dead, so we pretty much flopped when we got home. That evening B was checking his email in the bedroom while I was sitting in the living room reading when I saw a little dark thing dart across the floor toward the fridge. I, of course, freaked out and called Brandon in to help me “catch the mouse.” Brandon really wanted to just let the mouse trap work its magic, but I really didn’t want to have another mouse-fed chicken on my conscience, so we each got a large plastic bowl (our mouse-nets), and our search began.
We knew the mouse was by the fridge, so we tried opening the drawers around there to disturb it, but then it ran back across the room behind my instruments. So we moved the instruments and the darn thing ran behind a cabinet. It was a vicious cycle – B and I would disturb the mouse until it had to leave its hiding spot, but when it emerged B and I jumped on chairs, waving our arms, and shrieking – or maybe that was just me. Anyway, we never caught the mouse, and eventually we had to just shut our bedroom door and go to bed.
The next morning the poor little thing had been caught by our trap, but I was glad that he’d at least had a chance to eat all the cheese we set out before he died. We caught another mouse last week when our British friend from Stewart Island was staying with us (I’m getting there), but we haven’t seen any since then. I’d like to hope that we’ll be mouse-free for the rest of the winter, but I’m not holding my breath. The cottage is wonderful because it’s ours, but its sealing leaves something to be desired. But, hey, it’s cheap.
Actually, because the rent is so reasonable here we’ve had a little expendable income lately, and since B and I like to expose ourselves to as much local theater as possible, we bought tickets to a couple shows: a musical called Blood Brothers, which is also playing on London’s West End right now, and a touring comedy show. The main theater in Blenheim (the closest “city”) is pretty small for something called “The Civic,” but it’s not a bad facility. The cast for the musical was mostly pretty bad except for one of the main actors. He was actually fantastic, and, oddly enough, B and I recognized him from one of the plays we saw in Auckland. I guess it’s a pretty small theater circuit here.
So, about pruning. You know, it’s really not that bad. I would actually really love it if it just wasn’t so damn cold in the morning. Every day B and I have three alarms go off: the first at 5:30am, which is when we spring out of bed, turn on our two radiators, and then climb back under the covers, the second at 6:00am, which is when we’re actually supposed to get up, and a third at 7:10am, which is when B runs outside to turn on our car so the frost on our windows has a chance to melt. When we get to work at 7:30am it’s still basically dark and everything is frosted over. For the first two hours our hands and feet just ache with the cold, but when the sun comes out it’s really nice. We just listen to our iPods and do our thing. We were supposed to be up to “piece rate” this week, which is quite a bit faster than we’re actually going, but we’re getting there. Some people have been doing this for decades and can just fly down the rows. B and I are probably too thorough, but most of the new recruits are at about our speed, so we’ll just keep doing our best and try not to worry about it.
It is, of course, very repetitive work, and our bodies are still acclimating to the strain. In the morning I can’t really close my right hand because my fingers are so stiff, and B’s back aches from leaning over to reach some of the lower vines. During our second week of pruning one of the toes on my right foot swelled up and turned purple – probably from a spider bite. The pros don’t seem to feel the strain of the job at all, though, and most of them are pudgy chain-smokers in their fifties, so B and I are confident that we’ll adapt.
It’s crazy how seriously the professional pruners take their job. There’s this one guy who chain smokes WHILE he’s pruning, and he easily goes about twice as fast as Brandon or me, but one day he was pruning the row in front of me and I decided to try to keep up with him. I sped up as he approached, and he sped up to pass me. I stayed with him for a few plants, but then when he did pass me he actually looked back at me, shook his head, and chuckled before continuing on. It was like something from a Chevy Chase Family Vacation.
So after our first week of pruning B and I were starting to get into a comfortable routine, and that can only mean one thing for us: that something will soon come along to change it. That element of change showed up on Sunday in the form of our British friend from Stewart Island. He had been WWOOFing since he left the island, and was now going to try to settle somewhere near us and find vineyard work, but in the meantime he needed a place to stay. B and I were happy to be able to help, and glad to hear that we might have a friend in the vicinity, but our landlords didn’t seem to like the idea of us having even a limited-term house guest. Our friend ended up staying five nights because in the past few weeks even all the vineyard jobs filled up, and he was a bit stuck for alternative options.
We invited our friend to the comedy show that week, but until he found a job he felt he shouldn’t be spending money on much besides food and the occasional shelter – pretty much what B and I were doing before we found jobs here. The comedy show was fun – four comedians and one emcee sharing about 2 1/2 hours of stage-time. The line up started with a Canadian guy, then an American guy, then an Australian woman, and then a New Zealand guy. They were all funny, but the most interesting thing about the evening was the fact that we were being treated as part of a kiwi audience. The American definitely played-up his American-ness, coming on stage in a cowboy hat and boots, and affecting a really heavy Southern accent. And almost every comedian said something that I knew just wouldn’t fly for an American audience – mostly jokes about Americans. It was a different sort of experience, and B and I were very glad we went.
I felt bad for our friend, though, who spent the evening in our cottage catching another mouse for us.
That weekend we also had Monday off because of the Queen’s Birthday, which was amazing. I probably left the cottage a total of about two times during those three days, but that was two times too many. It really has been achingly cold outside.
This past week we kept on pruning, getting faster and better all the time, and perhaps a little more immune to the frost on our boots. We also had a day or so of “stripping and trimming,” which just means that we pulled all the cut canes off the wires and then trimmed the excess off the good canes that will be wrapped down for next year. The best part of the whole gig is being together all day – that’s always hard to beat.
On weekday evenings B has been making dinner so I can keep working on rewriting a play for grad school applications. I try to make up for it on the weekends by baking lots of cookies for him, but I know that he’s just incredibly, uncommonly generous and supportive. Hopefully I’ll get into grad school and get published someday so all this work will have been worth it.
On Friday evenings B and I go to a wine tasting after work, and then drive straight to town to do our weekly grocery-run. Saturdays we make a nice breakfast (usually crepes) and do laundry, and Sundays we just chill out, which is what we’re doing right now. Chilling out. It’s awesome.
But the sun is already setting (because winter sucks), so we’ll probably be making dinner soon, changing to our pajamas, and setting our alarms for tomorrow. These weeks of manual labor are hard, but they’re still going too fast. Thirteen weeks from tomorrow we’ll be getting on a plane and leaving this crazy little country, so B and I are savoring it while we can.
Enjoy some summer sun for your winter-bound kiwis!
Much love,
Brandon and Jenny
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