Two rows are ready

 

Sun sets around 4 o'clock PM, and in Loisy-en-Brie, late afternoon, we enjoy this pretty scenery.

It is just as wonderful as it looks. Though cold. Freezing cold, in fact.

 

 

So we don't work more than a couple of hours. We are too cold, it got too late. With temperatures around zero but with a freezing cold wind from the east.

The wind arrives from the flat plains, that stretch from the slopes, covered with vines, the flat lands reach as far as the eye and even beyond. And the cold air really gets the time to grow very very cold when it finally catches up with us on the slope. Even the most hidden-away bone in our bodies are frozen after a couple of hours outside.

You don't move that much when you prune. If you are fast, you spend a couple of minutes at each plant, the slowly - this is where you find me and this year also Alain who is still not up at normal speed - use double or even more. (Read more about pruning.)

Fire in the brouette
There is only one way to stay warm on a day like this. I just asked uncle Michel for his best advice after spending a generation in the vines.

No clothes are good enough to keep this wind away from your bones, he says. Fire in the brouette, the special kind of wheel barrow, constructed of old oil barrels, is the only thing you can do to help yourself stay warm, he says.


The brouette may not look much, but a nice little fire, nourished by the stems, you cut, is the only way to keep your fingers and feet going om a winter's day in the vines.

But the brouette is unfortunately not at home. Alain's cousin had his brouette stolen in January, and borrowed ours, that thus spends the weekend at the Belles Feuilles-plot, rather than the "Vieilles Grandmeres, where we work this weekend. He has promised to deliver it back before January, where we'll need it even more.

 

 

Status is now two rows pruned and finished. The plants are very visibly better than last January, where we pruned them for the first time. We see new branches and stems, that are stronger, and almost every plant has a least one, some even several stems as strong and thick as my thumb.

It is fantastic to see. It is fantastic to experience so fast, how the right treatment, the right pruning shows very positive results for the growth of the plants.

Now only 40 rows to go.