March 2004
Author: Jack (mostly)
The big issue this month (no we’re not homeless) has been the winery. A crisis arose around the middle of the month when it transpired that a representative from our Mairie failed to turn up to a planning meeting. At this meeting he was to have added his signature and therefore the agreement of the Mairie to our plans. Once signed it would have meant that our plans were finally fully approved. We only discovered that he hadn’t turned up as a result of a series of telephone calls made by us to try and discover if any progress had been made! Desperate efforts to determine what would happen next failed to reveal anything at all – we sink into a pit of despair and begin to contemplate the possibility that we will not be able to make wine this year. We continue dialog with our architect who assures us that this will not be a problem, mind you he also says that in his 20 years of experience he has never encountered a project over which the bureaucrats were so pernickerty (at least I think that’s what he was trying to say). So sure is he that on the 9th he arranges a site meeting with all the contractors who will be working on the project. Ten assorted Frenchmen all babbling away; we sat there silent for the majority of the time whilst they discussed various issues and planning conflicts. Three hours and several cups of very strong French coffee later we reached the point where everyone, including us amazingly, was happy with the project. And time to sign the contracts. Work can start on the foundations without planning permission (but the walls can’t go up) and everything would begin in earnest in early April. We have a further meeting with the architect later in the month to go over some minor points and to sign the work orders. Start date is now April 15th. We are definitely cutting things close! Then a breakthrough. A call from the Mairie on the 30th to tell us that all was in order, we could start building and the paperwork would follow on in a couple of weeks. Shocked, Iain asked several times if this was really the case. At last.
We have also now got the plan for the installation of the fermentation vats. Iain spent the majority of one morning with the man from Agrifoy (and lots of coffee again) discussing the furnishing of the winery in detail. It all looks very professional and we allow ourselves to become excited about it all again.
As the work in the vineyard is now under control (I really can’t believe that I’ve written that!) we have been able to work on the house a bit. Iain has finished the wardrobe fitment; it is now in place and painted. All we need to do now is decorate the room, which may take some time. We (well I suppose I mean I mostly!) seem to be completely incapable of finishing any job indoors with any speed. We have also spent some time tidying up the hangar in preparation for storing the tractor and all the other equipment that is beginning to arrive. A majority of our possessions from England remain in cardboard boxes but at least they have been stacked neatly in the nether reaches of the garage; where they will probably remain! Slabs, cement and sand for the pool terracing have been delivered and now grace the drive! Work is yet to be started. We had hoped that Tom, who with Sally visited us for a long weekend at the end of the month, would lend us a hand, but no such luck. He was happy to play on the quad bike, have a go on the tractor and even mow the grass, but seemed somehow to always be in bed at the mention of any hard work.
I have finally finished decorating the downstairs toilet. A pretty major achievement for me. I had stripped the wallpaper off and started painting the door before Christmas. But that was it. And now it is finally finished. Why it took me so long is beyond me, it’s no bigger than a cupboard!
Iain has acquired another new toy, a ‘thatcherator’! A what? Well, it’s spiked and when dragged along behind the quad bike removes the moss from the lawn (I use lawn in the loosest of senses since whilst it may look green it is actually about 70% moss, 20% weeds and at most 10% of anything that should really be there). However it is worth trying to revive the grass. And off he goes with it. It’s actually quite efficient and manages to scratch out loads and loads of moss. Pleased with his efforts he goes to get the mower out to tidy up the grass only to find that we have yet another flat tyre, the third on the mower. So off to Duras with the tyre to get it fixed. Whilst at the garage I bumped into Joel (the previous owner of our vineyard), who we haven’t seen for several months. I chat to him for sometime. He seems to have taken up a new job, house restoration, which is giving him much more pleasure than his vineyard. And apparently he is thinking of selling off a few more hectares, which could well be of interest to us. In fact, eventually, we want to acquire about another five hectares, so this could be very useful. We have also been talking to the owner of a neighbouring field who is happy to sell us his three hectares, once he has found some land elsewhere to replace it. This land we would have to plant up, whereas Joel’s is ready planted. We will be very lucky to acquire both.
Granddad and Janet were with us again for the first week of the month. He was here to sign the sous-seign for his new house. Before signing we went for another look round the house. He was more than happy with it and I accompanied him to the notaire for the signing (Iain managed to find something that he absolutely had to sort out in the vineyard and hence missed out on three hours of tedium). We are hoping for completion by the end of April, although that may be asking a bit much of French bureaucracy.
The 2nd should have been a good day for José as it was his birthday but he had some bad news. It had taken him months to set up his business, ensuring that he had all the correct paperwork. He was finally given the go ahead to start work on December 1st. But today he has had a call from the Lot-et-Garonne MSA (an organisation that acts as a kind of union, standards agency and social security office for agriculture) to tell him that he has been operating illegally in Lot–et-Garonne and must cease his activities immediately. Furthermore we have been told, via a third party, not to employ him! Absurd and nonsensical. He is extremely upset. Concerned, we decided the next day that we should go and see him and see if there is anything we can do to help him. Our first thought is that he might be in his favourite bar in Duras, Jose’s office as granddad calls it, but no. So we try his house. Nearly there, we passed him going in the other direction. Damn. Hastily Iain turned round and sped off after him. We imagined he was heading for the bar when suddenly he took a right turn. Not wishing to seem like we were chasing him we decided we had better not follow him, so ended up going home! Turns out he was off to see Jonathon to chew the cud at his place. Happily he recovers from what seemed like a devastating blow. He has consulted a lawyer and is now taking the case to court. In the meantime he has taken his company to the Gironde, the neighbouring department and set it up there and is now back at work. C’est la France!
The 5th was a red letter day for our friend Jonathon. He appeared late in the afternoon with a bottle of red wine in his hand. Modestly he handed it to us saying it was one of his. What we didn’t realise was it was the very first ever bottle of his own wine, Chateau Gourdon, that we were opening. It was very exciting. We all sniffed, swirled, sipped, slurped and generally gave the new baby a thorough examination before declaring it a success and wishing him well. As usual, Jonathon was modest about his achievement.
We invited Jose and Evelyn round for a typical English roast dinner on Saturday 6th, the day before Granddad went home. Unfortunately I made a mistake with the time. In saying to them come round at dix-sept heures I thought I was saying 7 pm. Oops. In fact of course I said 5pm! At least they weren’t on time and arrived at 5.45 pm apologising for being late! But it didn’t matter as the rugby was on and Iain, Granddad and Jose enjoyed watching the game together. Unfortunately my plan to be organised by seven meant that I had to carry on in the kitchen leaving Evelyn to watch the rugby with them. I don’t think she minded too much. We had a very entertaining evening although I’m not too sure that they were particularly impressed with our roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner, followed by apple pie. No garlic!
We continue to pursue the possibility of getting grants. We already have one lined up but it transpired that there may be others available. We had a visit from someone from the Chambre D’Agriculture. He turns out to be the man who gave the wine tasting course; a somewhat dour man who occasionally breaks out into unprompted and seemingly unfounded fits of laughter (too much drink?) at which Iain and I exchange slightly puzzled glances. Anyway it seems that we may be able to get a further grant or even grants from the Conseil Generale and the Conseil Regionale, especially with respect to the water treatment plant we are having installed to treat the waste water from the winery. Happily, later the same day we had arranged a meeting with the salesman from the company supplying the water treatment plant so we were able to discuss the possibility of grants further with him. What luck, he offered to help us put together the necessary paperwork to put in our applications. But the main reason for meeting him was to discuss what possible solutions were available to us to help eliminate ‘the smell’ that mysteriously seems to continue to be produced by our existing waste water systems. It seems there are ways to help resolve the problem for a cost. We continue to consider our options…….
Iain left on the 10th for a weeks’ visit back to England, partly because he was taking a one day spraying course at Plumpton on the Friday. So there I was back alone again with Rebecca but not for long as Aunty Anne arrived on the Saturday to visit us for a week. The following week was going to be a pretty hectic one as lots of meetings had been arranged so I was a bit worried that we wouldn’t be able to do too much. Fortunately Jose had discovered that there was a wine fair on in Bordeaux, so dropping Beck off at Grace’s for the day, Anne, Jose and I went off to the wine fair. Jose, being the gentleman that he is, took charge of Anne and her wheelchair, asked her about her favourite wines, and then guided us round the stands looking for wines of interest. Needless to say we ended up with a few bottles, and a couple of real finds.
Monday 15th, not a good day for Rebecca. She had been complaining since the Friday of a painful neck, so much so that she had to stop horse riding on Saturday as it was hurting her too much. Talking to Sara on Sunday I discover that she had fallen backwards off a space-hopper last Wednesday. On Monday morning I decide to take her to the doctors to get her checked out. Clearly she was in some discomfort. We left armed with the usual lengthy prescription (I’m sure that doctors over here measure their effectiveness by the number of things that they manage to prescribe), which included a neck collar for Beck to wear for the next fortnight and a note to make an appointment for an x-ray. She was none too pleased, mostly because it meant she couldn’t take part in any sports, particularly football lessons on Tuesday lunchtimes. Later that day we had a dentist appointment in Bergerac. Anne came with us and waited in the car whilst Beck and I went for our check ups. Beck was first in the chair. A quick examination and he decided she needed one tooth out and one filled. No need for another appointment though, they were done then and there. Beck was brilliant, made no fuss whatsoever and sat calmly in the chair for twenty minutes whilst the dentist worked away. By way of compensation we ate out that evening courtesy of Anne at Beck’s favourite restaurant in Allemans.
Iain returned on Tuesday 17th, landing in Toulouse, which meant a two hour drive to collect him and then a two hour drive back. As if that wasn’t enough I then had to go to Marmande that afternoon, a further hour sitting in the car! I had an appointment with our accountant to fill in our first tax return as residents, or were we? It certainly was a poser for them, with Beck and I being resident for 2003 and Iain not. Although we had very little to declare, having only the income from the rental of La Vitaille, I was still in the office for an hour, and despite a call to the tax office, it was not clear how we would be taxed for 2003. Unable to complete the return the accountant arranged to call me when the tax office decided what was to be done. A few days later I was called and told that they had decided to tax us as residents. The problem stems around the fact that from a tax perspective in France it is the family that is taxed and not individuals as in England. However they decided that because the income arose in France and because two thirds of the family were living in France we should all be taxed as residents. Another visit the following week to sign the forms and then a visit to the Hotel des Impots to file the return. Compared to what will follow in the coming years (we have heard lots of horror stories about form-filling not only for income tax but also the vineyard) this was actually piece of cake!
Jose, looking out for us as usual, came round on the 16th in a panic. Apparently everyone was out weed-spraying. The weather was particularly mild and ideal for this. We were not quite so panicky about it, which didn’t go down too well with him. Anyway we decided we should place our order with Terres de Sud, a 100 litre barrel of Buggy Plus, a foliar spray which is inert on contact with the soil; thus being kinder to our vines. Iain was pretty horrified when he saw the barrel, being unsure how he was going to move it or indeed empty it. But his worries were unnecessary. Jose arrived the next day with a half made stand for the barrel, which he then proceeded to customise and we now have the 100 litre barrel resting on the stand at the perfect height for opening up the tap that is incorporated into the barrel and dispensing the liquid.
[Iain] We have thought long and hard about how we would go about weeding
between the vines (grass grows between the rows and we’ll cut
that with our first ever bit of equipment for the tractor but you can’t
use that to get stuff that grows between the vines). Being determined
not to use pesticides unless essential we reviewed the various alternative
options and made a few visits to see them in action. There are basically
three choices. (1) spray, (2) use a kind of mechanical weeder or (3)
(frighteningly) use a huge machine that uses butane gas to burn the
tops off the weeds. As usual in these situations, no single choice is
without its problems and after much circular debate and against the
impending need to take urgent action we decided to use a sprayer this
year – we also took the decision to spray a thin swathe with (only)
glyphosate which is systemic but becomes inert immediately it touches
the soil (avoiding last year’s harsher treatment that kills seeds
as well) This might be friendlier than last year but could mean that
we have to do an extra spraying, oh well…..The choices don’t
stop there though, even for this kind of basic spraying there is a multitude
of options – rear mounted (on the back of the tractor that is!!),
side mounted, front mounted, discussions needed about capacity and throughput,
oh dear. With the aid of the man from Bonny (the place we bought the
tractor) we plumped for a front mounted sprayer. 
I’ll
try to describe it; there is a big green tank on the back of the
tractor with a pump that is powered by the tractor, this sends pressurised
solution to an upside-down-U-shaped contraption with two baskets on
the end containing spray jets. The inverted U straddles the vines and
you simply (hmmm) drive along and press a button to start spraying –
oh and the whole lot moves up and down because it needs to be kept at
the right height. Anyway, the Bonny man took away our 3500 euros along
with the tractor to fix a little problem with the accelerator pedal
(too close to the brake pedals) and to get this thing attached. He returned
the thing pretty much when he said he would (which is a good job because
Jose is getting almost hysterical about the need to do the spraying
before the vines burst into leaf). Alas, the standard jets and buckets
were too big, we want to keep the area that we spray to an absolute
minimum. 
To
his credit the Bonny man took them away and promised to return the next
day with the ‘special mini-capots’ (I remember hoping that
Jose didn’t drop by in the meantime, the delay would not have
done his blood pressure any good). Meanwhile, armed with notes from
the recent course at Plumpton and a translation of the label of the
product we are to use, I am getting my head around the technicalities
of spraying properly. We check the tractor speed by timing it over 100m.
Worryingly the speedo is completely wrong (it says 4.8 kph for a real
speed of 5.6 kph, don’t worry said the man from Bonny “we’ll
sort it out at the 50 hour service”). Having a constant and repeatable
speed is the first requirement – the Bonny man says 5.6kph is
a good speed and I take his advice even though it seems worryingly fast
given the precision that will be needed to avoid uprooting anything.
I couldn’t go much further until the spray jets are back so I
spent the rest of the day getting confused about how to calculated the
precise amount of product we should be using (the label tells you how
much for a full hectare but, obviously, we’re spraying lots of
narrow strips). I comforted myself by putting it all into an Excel spreadsheet
and awaited the last step of the calibration. The next day Bonny man
returned as promised with some smaller baskets but this time there was
a washer missing for one of the spray jets – so the whole thing
is inoperable, fantastic. Anyhow, we made a trip to their service depot
to collect the washer and I finally checked the rate of delivery at
the spray jets and the total width of the spray. Feeling slightly foolish
I followed my notes and stood for 1 minute collecting water to measure
the delivery rate at a fixed pressure. Having set up the contraption
(many many settings to calibrate the u-shape) I perform a test drive
and spray water down a row of vines. The whole thing is incredibly scary
and I just about managed to avoid damaging anything. I resorted to the
spreadsheet again and calculated that we should use 606.89 litres of
water and solution with a dose of 36.41 litres of product. There is
no putting this off, if the weather is good tomorrow (if it rains before
three hours have passed you have to do it all again) I’m going
to have to do it! I checked the weather forecast and have to admit so
a small degree of relief when it indicated rain in the afternoon. J
would have none of this though and despatched me outside to begin work
with an instruction to stop if it looked as though it’s going
to rain in three hours time! So I mixed up my first tank full (well
half tank actually, I did 300 litres to do ½ the vineyard today)
of product (using a faceguard and big black rubber gloves I felt as
though the product should have been radioactive rather than a barrel
of Roundup, but better safe than sorry….). I spent the next few
hours getting to grips with the job and actually did ok, on the whole
managing to work the various controls whilst steering a steady course.
It’s when I stopped that things started to go wrong (I think the
concentration went), in short I managed to take a big branch off of
our sweet chestnut tree, rip a branch off an apple tree (necessitating
a field-repair of the u-shaped thing) and put a dint in the garage door
in the space of about 10 minutes. I ended the day with mixed feelings,
completely exhausted and with a growing dread of attacking the second
half of the vineyard…… Unfortunately the weather was fine
the following day (26th) so I mixed the product and set about the job.
Comfortingly little to tell you about except that I had to drive terrifyingly
close to some very steep ditches on one part of the vineyard. I finished
at about 3pm again exhausted from the concentration but happy to have
finished the job – I also give myself a small pat on the back,
the actual amount of spray worked out at 620 litres and 37.2 litres
of product – amazingly close to the original calculations (there
might be a small element of luck here though…..)
The quad bike has had it’s first service, without any problems. The same cannot be said of the pick up. We took the quad bike to Marmande for its service on the pickup’s trailer. Getting the quad bike on there was pretty dodgy – we don’t have any ramps (too tight to buy any) and the first piece of wood we used snapped instantly. Eventually we decided that the only wood that we had that was strong enough was the shelving Iain had only just put up in the garage. He took it down and with some trepidation he managed to get the quad on the trailer. The quad safely delivered to the shop for servicing we went off to Leclerc for breakfast and to shop. Iain went to lock the car with the remote but, oh no, it wouldn’t work. We thought it must be the battery, but no my remote didn’t work either. In fact not only didn’t the remote work, the clock had reset itself and so had the climate control. Another problem! Luckily we were only down the road from the garage so after we had finished our shopping I dropped lain off at Mr Bricolage ( a fruitless visit it turned out to be as well!) and went to the garage. Didn’t take long for them to decide that a fuse had blown and that we needed a stronger one! So that’s two fuses that the trailer has blown. Can’t believe that they sell pick-ups with fuses that don’t support a trailer. Anyway – problem solved.
Beck had a school medical on Friday 19th. I decided to go along with her, partly for support and partly out of interest. It lasted over an hour and was very thorough. Worryingly for us it transpired that Beck was unable to read any but the first line of the eye test. Not wanting to seem like the uncaring mother she must have thought I was I pointed out that I had booked an appointment to see the ophthalmologist but not until the end of May. She wrote me a note to take to the ophthalmologist for a more urgent appointment. I got one for the following Saturday. The result; the ophthalmologist was unable to find anything wrong with Beck’s eyes and concluded that she must have a problem at school!!!! Very scientific. We have another appointment in early April for a repeat test and hopefully for a more scientific explanation!
Rugby is playing a bigger role in our lives these days, or at least
Iain’s. On Sunday 21st he, Jose and Jonathon spent the afternoon
and evening in Jose’s office (the bar in Duras) watching the six
nations matches. Jose returns Iain in a somewhat less than coherent
state sometime just before midnight…….
