Spring work is done

Here I am on the last day of spring, and we have managed to complete all our crucial spring tasks. The vines have been suckered (water shoots removed), tucked and topped. This is when the perfectionist side of me comes out. My absolute favourite thing on the farm is seeing long lines of perfectly manicured vines. Perfectly looking vines do not necessarily produce better quality wines, but I will leave that for my next blog.

The work proceeded quicker this year than the previous two years, as we managed to escape the torrential downpours of the past few years. This has led to less growth, and only needing to trim the vines once. We have also experienced a cool spring, with a couple of extremely hot days of over 35ºC (close to 100ºF). These irregular temperatures do not aid vigorous growth. And did I mention the wind.

We probably experienced more wind this spring than anyone can remember. If shoots were not tucked in on time, they would have been blown off. Wind also restricts growth as the leaves stomata close, and no photosynthesis can take place.

The only job to do before harvest is to remove unwanted bunches from overbearing vines. This helps concentrate the vines energy to help ripen the remaining bunches.

So far things look promising for a good 2010 harvest.

Something for the community

We recently had the privilege of opening a computer room at the local farm school. For those of you in the first world this may not sound like a very significant event but for the schoolchildren who have very little access to information technology and research resources (the nearest library being not particularly well stocked and about a 6km walk from the farm) it was a momentous occasion.

Last year it was bought to our attention that the majority of our staff’s children weren’t progressing past Grade 8. We set up a meeting to discuss this with the local primary school and to identify what could be done to provide the children with a more solid foundation, particularly in mathematics and language.

The teachers identified three areas that they thought should be most importantly addressed.
1. There was a need for a remedial teacher to provide additional attention to those children that were struggling to grasp basic concepts.
2. The establishment of an aftercare facility to provide children with the support that they were not getting at home to do their homework.
3. A computer room would enable students to learn computing skills but more importantly provide them with some fantastic educational software.

We were able to address the first two areas almost immediately and Excelsior started an aftercare facility for the Excelsior staff’s children and employed two remedial teachers at the school. The third was to take a while longer. All the local farmers whose employees’ children attend the school, were approached for the funding of the computer room. All donated in varying degrees, and the special room was built. Khanye, an NGO, provided computers, furniture and software with the whole project costing about R400 000 (about $54 000).

It’s great to see wine sales translate into the funding source for such incredible projects!