Viva la Vino!

The town of Blenheim, population 20,000, boasts having the most sun in New Zealand. Vineyards have popped up here like dandelions during the past 15 years, making it a “ten dollar town” (meaning that the hourly pay is higher than most of New Zealand). The vineyards require 3000 seasonal workers over the course of a year, and I’ve joined a slew of other travellers on working holiday who have found themselves broke and are taking advantage of the highest paying winter work available. I found a job through a very homey backpackers called Swampy’s - I am now a proud employee of Wither Hills Vineyard (I even have the monogrammed sunhat to prove it). Most pruners work on contract and get paid per plant, but I work hourly at a rate of $11.50. This means that being slow is ok, that I get the pleasant company of other (mostly semi-retired Kiwi) pruners while working, and, most importantly, I get paid toilet breaks.

Day 1
I was so lucky to begin work on the spot with Abigale today. I just showed up with her, filled out an application, and was given my secteurs (small pruning shears, pronounced ‘seck - a - teers’ here in New Zealand), a pouch for rubbish, and little gloves to help ward off the morning frost. It’s not nearly as bad as everyone said - I actually enjoy it, minus the sore thumb syndrome. Right now we’re working with plants that are only two years old, so we don’t need the big loppers, and it’s not too physically demanding. We get a “smoko” break at 10am (the blue-collar version of morning tea, when smokers are allowed to roll a cigarette on break and the rest of us grab a muesli bar and a drink), an unpaid 30-minute lunch at 12:30, and then we’re done at 3:45 for an 8-hour day with 30 minutes of paid breaks. Not bad. And we all work together, so you can play Twenty Questions with your row partner or turn around to watch the early morning grey silhouette of the mountains against the sky or look up to see the sparrows fluttering above.
My training in how to prune took approximately ten minutes. It does actually take a bit of thinking, a bit like being given a deck of cards and deciding what to do with it. Fiona calls it “vine design:”
Step 1: Decide which branches you will cut down to two buds. These are the “spurs,” which ensure the life-long health of the plant. The spurs must be below the fruiting wire and above the irrigation wire, ideally growing on opposite sides of the plant.
Step 2: Try to find three branches that are long enough to make it to “cane” status (usually at least 15 buds). The canes should be as low down on the trunk of the plant as possible (so the water from the roots travels the least amount of distance), but they need to be higher than the spurs.
Step 3: Trim the canes so they are free of all the twisty tendrils, old leaves, new shoots from the buds, and grape remnants.
Step 4: Cut off all the remaining branches and strip them from the wires.

Day 4
Today was gorgeous - no rainbows, but a few showers with mostly sunshine. The morning sky was breathtaking. I was looking at the clouds above the sea, and when I happened to turn around, the sky above the mountains was pure pink, tinting the snow on the highest peak. Amazing. Fiona and her friend were not there today, so I was alone in my row at first, which was fine because then I could listen better to the sparrows. Later on Brian and I worked together - he has been a busker, a builder, an air force mechanic, an acupuncturist, and he has spent the last seven years building a house on the beach for himself and his wife and six children. And what is a busker, you ask? A street musician - they are actually given the legitimacy of a title down here. Brian says that buskers are actually respected in Australia, whereas in New Zealand you’re pretty much seen as begging for dinner.
My hand has been falling asleep during the night - every time I wake up I can’t feel it. Must be all the pruning.

Day 7
Cloudy this morning and threatening to rain, but nothing but a bit of a sprinkle and a chilly breeze every now and then. There was mist pouring out of the mountains and hovering below the horizon. Tried to be ambi-dextrous with the secteurs because my right hand was so sore. By lunchtime the sun had won out over the clouds, and we amused ourselves with the cows in the paddock next to us - two cows were giving birth, and I saw my first tiny calf. It was very sweet and already taking its first steps.

Day 8
Just when my fourth blister from Geraldine had nearly healed (but before the cut from chopping wood in Hororata went away), I snipped my hand with the pruning shears - not a fatal wound, but a bit uncomfortable. Trish gave me a few plasters (bandaids) and I was good to go. Fortunately this happened an hour and a quarter before home time on a Saturday, so I have Sunday to give myself a break.
The rest of the day was absolutely beautiful - bitter cold in the morning with frozen fingertips and toes and gloves wet from the dew on the vines, but with another few incredible moments of sunrise - Christine and I stood in awe at the view of Mount Tipuae-o-Uenuku in the distance, the highest visible peak, snowcovered and bathed in pink. By smoko we could feel the sun on our backs; at lunchtime I spread my rain jacket on the grass, listened to the roar of the sea and stared at the blue line in the distance that Denise told me were the mountains near Wellington. Richard told me all about the rise and fall of unions and government-owned enterprise in New Zealand as I munched happily on my very American peanut butter and jelly.

Day 15
The white chalky substance that builds up on the strings and in the grow guard boxes is not pesticides as I assumed but lime, Brian tells me. Makes the grapes sweeter. I remember that Marty put the same on the soil before planting the courgettes. Some of the plants are already bleeding a bit after we cut them - how I could pass biology class without remembering that the reason the leaves on trees fall off is because the sap stops flowing and the tree goes to sleep for the winter, I don’t know. But that’s why we have to do all the pruning before spring when the plants wake up again, otherwise they would bleed do death when we cut off the branches.

Day 21
Awful. I think I may not be able to climb up to my second bunk to bed tonight. James and I got stuck on the ‘VIP’ job - opening grow guards, green plastic boxes that cover the young plants until they are old enough to withstand the chemical sprays. Opening grow guards involves bending over for every plant, down to ground level, over and over and over again. I tried to vary my bending position, bending at the waist until my back couldn’t take it, then bending at the knees until my legs couldn’t take it. It was so extremely boring that I feared for my sanity and devised a tactic to avoid screaming: sing through Simon and Garfunkel albums until the end of the first row, then count the plants on the way back. This lasted until about plant number 630. Then I realized that of course each half-row should have 120 since there were 240 planted in each row, and the counting got old and I got tired of singing. Staying positive is hard work. This is just another reminder of how disgustingly privileged I am - complaining about a hard day in a job where I am making money to holiday, not survive. Most people in the world would be thrilled to have my job.
So, for approximately 1320 plants (I estimated after 630), we bent over and opened the boxes. Privileged or not, 3:45 didn’t come very fast.

Day 22
So once I realized I wasn’t going to die, things were much better. It’s amazing what human contact can do as well - with James as my row partner we hardly talked, but Lorna is a talking machine, so the day passed so much more quickly today. Like Trish said, it’s like going to the gym for the first time and coming home terribly sore, and then after three more trips the to gym you’re ok. Heather said she booked herself a massage for Saturday.

What would have been Day 31
And so my stint as a vineyard worker has come to an untimely end. Last Sunday I was walking back from the river, very excitedly telling Dan and Raquel about the People Tournament, and the next thing I knew my foot took a funny turn in a hole in the road and my ankle swelled to the size of half a tennis ball. Fortunately for me, there happened to be a physiotherapist from Germany staying at the backpackers. She gave me a free treatment, judged that my ankle was not broken, wrapped it up in an ace bandage, and told me to lie down for three days. After a week of not working (well not exactly not working….I actually flew up to the Northland to say good-bye to Katharina before she headed back to Germany - we wwoofed with Graeme and Dora again, and they were kind enough to give me five days’ food and accommodation in exchange for a clean refrigerator, a well-sorted silverware drawer, semi-clean windows, and a few dusted shelves. What good people there are in the world.), I am still in no shape to be squatting all day, so I have taken a job at Swampy’s for the next three weeks as the manager. (“Manager” is code for cleaning person who is also available for 14 hours every day to answer the phone and give people two-dollar coins for the laundry. But for someone with a bum ankle, it sounds perfect.)
And so I must give back my secteurs and rubbish bag and say goodbye to the mountains, the rows and rows of vines, and the sparrows. A glass of wine will never be the same.