It all looked a bit staged really.

It all looked a bit staged really.

Certainly, the chainsaw, the front end loader and his father had every right (reason had long since deserted activities agricultural) to be flailing about in the dam. After all, it had been a warm day, all the sheep had been drenched and there was just cause for a quick splash before dinner.

But the skid marks down the collapsed bank and the steam drifting  from the partly submerged diesel engine, quite apart from the smoke hissing from the partly submerged Dad, all suggested another reality.

You see, his father, (well let's just call him Dad,) Dad had had (as Dad's do from time to time), an idea. Those willows overhanging the pump-house had been dropping their leaves in such profusion of late, that the foot-valve feeding the Lister had developed a leak.

 Now, as most Dads realise, a leaky foot-valve causes all sorts of problems if it is ignored. While dissertations on such annoyances enliven the occasional dinner party conversation and cause a great deal of analogous mirth in rugby shower blocks, they really are no laughing matter when it is you who has the wet boots. That's what Dad reasoned anyway.

Problem? Overhanging branches. Solution! Stand in bucket of front end loader, chainsaw at hip, directing vertical and lateral movement of bucket via biological switching package (son's brain) to hydraulics of machine. Result?.., well pretty much as described above.

You see, Son (well lets just call him Mark) Mark, unbeknown to Dad, had recently secretly developed encephalic illuminati of the accelerator foot. Even though the 'biological switching package' had been perfectly functional up until that awful mechanical avalanche, on that day, Mark's brain was numb to the knees on account of intensely libidinous thoughts involving a certain Lulu la Lingere from Longreach.

Moral?..farm machinery and lingere don't mix.

Every farm is a dangerous place. Every day in the vineyard there is ample opportunity to feel glad I have comprehensive life and health insurance. As pruning gets into full swing for another year, and the band-aid bill mounts, I can't help but wonder why we bother with it at all.

Having had the doubtful pleasure of being garrotted by trellis wires on a cold and bitter winter afternoon, I have concluded that this activity is not my idea of a fulfilling natural experience. However, it probably does explain why I'm not enamoured of hydraulic pruning shears. Besides the noise of the compressor, or the weight if the battery pack, or the inconvenience of dragging all those air hoses through the paddock, I hold the view that if anybody is going to have the pleasure of lopping off one of my  digits, that somebody, without mechanical assistance, will be me.

But again, why do I bother?. I like order. Vines endure years of untrained life in natural disarray. Ask any lateral what agony your secateurs bring, every laborious incision, every vicarious excision means emasculation of the plant. No wonder there's a price to pay in kind.

Pruning, after all, is all about balance, maintaining the correct number of fruiting buds according to the vigour of the vine. Lop too much off, and you will grow lots of leaves and not much fruit; too little, and there may be more fruit than the vine can ripen. There's no denying it, as you nail each vine to it's particular cross of trellis, there's nothing natural about pruning.

It's all a bit staged really.

Be Proud Of Your Poultry

Standing in the blend block the other day, pruning my way along a row of ancient Cabernet Franc vines, I had a very strong feeling of pride in our Bloodwood livestock. An investigatory vehicle had rolled up to the cellar door and, as is usual in these cases, Mum and Dad struggled out of the front seats, while a phalanx of kids, freshly blooded greyhounds that they were, bolted from the back of the vehicle, and raced towards the dam. A stylised stretch of the "ol' back" from Dad and a casual hopeful glance from Mum in the general direction of their rapidly disappearing offspring, prompted the usual introduction to this quite normal domestic  passion play. Says Dad,  "and don't go near the bloody dam youse bloody kids. Simon, Lizzy, Mark, Ed, Phil, Trina- did ya hear me,-- bloody keep outa the water"

Their familial duty done, Mum and Dad repaired to the cellar door for a quiet tipple in the magical afternoon sunshine just as their first greyhound slipped up onto the dam wall. Now, long suffering readers of these pages will have learnt, from time to time, of the extraordinary exploits of Bill and Ben, our psychotic Embden geese. You will have some memory of the mighty "Brian The Bull" verses "Bill and Ben" belly-flop championships conducted on the dam over the course of last summer. This was where Brian the bellicose Angus , (nose flaring as he busts through farm gates sideways in the stifling dust and emitting so much smoke from his ears that a casual observer could be forgiven if they came to the conclusion that he had just elected himself Pope), would hurl his terrible black bulk into the dam in tormented pursuit of these feathered avengers, only to find them behind him on the bank, honking their honks off and deriding his indignity.

You may also remember the case of the terrorised cyclist, the manure heap, and the complete indifference of both Bill and Ben to the whole smelly affair. It wasn't the poor cyclist's fault that they, at the very beginning of a glorious spring breeding season, had just come to the terrible realisation that neither of them was a goose and, ergo, both of them must be ganders. What they did to the pneumatic interloper is best not revisited here. Suffice it to say,  in short, without any more ado, these particular geese are completely nasty bastards.

And so to the scene at hand. Picture if you will, both Ben and Bill, awakened from their early afternoon slumber by the pitter patter of little feet approaching at speed from a south-easterly direction. And this, after a boring winter of hassling wood ducks and persecuting pathetic plovers. What joy! It was almost too good to be true!. They looked smirkingly at each other for an instant before going into what could only be described as a vicious kind of goose Haka. Without the war paint but with all the tongue flushes and mega-phonic hissing, they set sail for glory; two feathered robotic psychotics in pursuit of, well, kiddies.

It really was no match. In an impressive display of battle tactics which would have bought joy to Napoleon's heart, they out manoeuvred and regrouped the junior infidels with such glorious precision, that it wasn't long before they had herded them all the way back to the family Commodore, just so many cowboys, wagon-circled into submission. It was a wonderful sight; as if the mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery suddenly developed the ability to turn front-on and fire back.

And what did our ever vigilant father say as he emerged staggering from the tasting? "I thought I told you kids to stay away from the bloody dam, and Simon, how many times have I told you to stop foolin' with them bloody ducks".

Ah yes, in a world where the small framed joys of this life are too often overlooked for the bigger, bitter picture, it does one's heart good to be proud of one's bloody poultry.

Tales of Christmas Past

"I'll make it snow for you. I'll make it snow tomorrow morning!."

There's not a lot you can do to impress city kids these days, and it's even more difficult when those same small people have experienced more of the real world via TV and the Interweb at age 6 than you are ever likely to explore before your final vintage. Still, all you can do is try.

"By the time you come home from town tomorrow morning, the whole vineyard will be covered in snow!"

There was a Christmas past when a need arose for a similar demonstration of control over the mystical elements, a Christmas in which there deserved to be a bit of a spiritual lift. The great days' eve was filled with the sort of conversational game which amounts to somebody putting up a cultural paradigm , and everyone else knocking it clean off its sacrosanct pedestal. You know the sort of thing. " Santa does not exist because I happen to know he is Uncle Roger in disguise, and the nearest he's been to reindeer is Dubbo Zoo." or " If the sleigh really does land on the roof of  the winery, how come we don't all wake up with the noise?"and "What was Rudolph really on when she developed her red nose and what's with the stupid fur-lined suit and second-hand motorcycle boots.?" Nah ne nah ne nah nah!! 

In effect, by the end of the second bottle of Rosewood Rare Topaque, (proving for me at least,there is a god), there seemed no doubt that poor old Nic'd had the flick. Now everybody knows M/S Claus is a part of all of us from time to time and, chimneys and flying pigs aside, she has been a power of strength to desperate small and large children alike, down the depressing ages. Therefore there was, even on nostalgic grounds, a need for balance to be re-established in the debate. Indeed, a sullied reputation needed to be righted, and a righteous use yearned to be made of a redundant bean bag. What do we want?... "to save Santa!' When do we want it?..."Now!",.. more or less. It was time for Santa's little helpers to strike back!

Early next morning, before the aforementioned very fine Rutherglen tokay had allowed those vocal souls of the previous night so recently uncorked to re-enter the fantasy and privilege of another glorious day at Bloodwood, a terrible plot was hatched. An impressive trail of pristine deer poo, courtesy of the carefully spilled contents of a slashed bean bag, cometed away beyond the Cabernet vineyard and disappeared down stage right into the breaking dawn. As the dreary, bleary slum of over-hung Christmas eve cynics one-eyed the break of this special day, both barrels of the 12 gauge shotgun, in uncomfortable proximity to the tin walls of the shed,  mortared the cowering dawn.

"Get back in your own backyard, you discredited cross-dressing old hippie bastard, and take those poncy bloody velvet-eared sheep with you, they're stripping the Yellow Box trees."

Well, you could have heard a cork float.

Children of all ages, (mostly post-war), hushed in disbelief. "He's shot Santa. He's bloody shot Sandra Claus !!". That bearded kindly person, so lately a figure of conjecture and cynicism, of mock and ridicule: neigh doubt and disdain,  had suddenly re assumed his substantial corporeal proportions, and there was the trail of synthetic reindeer poo stretching to the horizon to prove it.

And was the whole vineyard covered in snow when the city cousins returned from the Boxing Day sales the next day? You bet your best bean bag it was. Rhonda and I are becoming a dab hands at liming vineyards these days, and as these particular city folk know what's going on in the real world by watching all the weather on T.V., they'll never know the difference.

Nothing ever changes in the worlds we invent..without a little bit of help!