The rain keeps coming

Beginning to become annoying this rain. They say you should never complain but there is still some washing on the line and just as it begins to get dry another shower hits.

We moved the cattle on HHF into one of our front paddocks which now had some good growth. Just so they wouldn't pig out we fed them their sprouted grain and some Lucerne. They seem very happy with green grass even whinging Warren was quiet.

After knocking over the early morning chores of feeding whoever needed feeding and opening pens for chickens and ducks we performed another Yoga session which seems to make us both feel better. Being a fast day we got ourselves busy after a green tea to take the mind off food.

Jean went across the river to harrow some paddocks. I thought it would be too wet but surprisingly the RTV left no tracks on the river paddocks when I was feeding the cows earlier that morning. Nothing like good alluvial soil. She arrived home soaking wet. apparently a heavy shower caught her by surprise while she was negotiating some paddocks which needed gates opened and closed as the harrows were brought across from the other side of the property.

The last of the grapes needed pressing today. Three batches of Tannat. One grown on HHF and two purchased batches only being different by the yeasts used. The first batch was very powerful but drinkable straight out of the press as was our very small home grown batch. Should develop well. But the real standout was the batch using VR21 yeast. What an amazing difference. So good in fact that two glasses were put aside to have with tonight's meal. This process of leaving the wine on skins for a minimum of 22 days does amazing things. A 50/50 mix of American Oak and French Oak chips went into the demijohns. This should really round off the wine.

Our tiny harvest of 3.8 KG needed the baby press.

Working in the Cave with clean floors is pleasant. Very annoying whenever wine splashes on to it. We have even been taking off our boots whenever we enter. That's the trouble with tidiness.

Being a fast day and having done yoga in the morning we decided to really punish ourselves and finish the day in the pool with light workout. It turned out that light was all we could do. At 4pm the pool had a lot of activity of the 5 lanes 2 were taken up with swimming club training. A third had someone doing laps and that left us to share the remaining two with the Learn to Swim class. Still all was not lost we completed our High Intensity Training session first with 3 x 30 second sessions and then went on to Aquarobics. The only bit we skipped was the swimming. Back home to dinner pre and wine making. A good day.