5-13-10

VINEYARD VIEWS #1

VINEYARD VIEWS #2

VINEYARD VIEWS #3

THE LE VIN BARREL ROOM

JEN PRUNES & SUCKERS

After our first real day at LeVin, our feelings of the place are still uncertain. We like it, and will stay here as planned, but there is a tension in the air when inside the house. Really, it's tension between Holly and Eric but things are just sort of strange at times: Holly goes out without notice and doesn't come home until 10pm, Eric is out mowing the fields after 8pm, we are uncertain about the food situation since it's our first day...do we all eat together? do we cook? do we wait for them? Intuition ruled and we started cooking dinner at 8:30pm and ate all together, at least with Eric, and Holly joined us when she arrived back home around 10pm.

There is one other WWOOFer here right now, Josh. He is nice and we're glad to have another person to work with and try to figure out exactly what's going on here.

We pruned and suckered several vines all day today. It's good we had some previous teaching about pruning from Thurston and that Josh is pretty informed on vine care because Eric basically sent us to the fields and just said, "You know, do it." It was fine but for someone who had never worked on a vineyard before, it might pose a problem. It's interesting how WWOOF hosts vary: some micromanage to the point of frustration, others teach and allow enough alone time to practice the theories they taught, while others just give you sharp tools and tell you to get to it. We think we'll learn a tremendous amount of wine making while we're here, just in an unconventional way.