I've settled in to life on the farm in the Wairarapa Valley. The main town may be 20 minutes away, but the pub is only a few minutes down the road. The first two weeks have been quite busy, but there's always a good supply of food and beer. It means a lot in the middle of harvest. The burgers at the pub are delicious. One day we started a 2-hour press cycle, went to the pub for a beer, and came back to clean up. I spent a day in the vineyard lifting bins of grapes onto the trailer of an ATV.

The Easter weekend was difficult because even the supermarkets were closed on Sunday. We ate delicious lamb and tried several different wines at the owners' house. There was a good white Bordeaux, an Austrian white, an Arneis, a NZ Pinot Noir, and a Rhone Syrah/Grenache. I visited a beautiful spot called Castle Point, but it rained all day. I touched the water in the Pacific, officially making it three oceans in three months. The three others wanted to see a movie, so we watched "Just Go With It" which is an average Romantic Comedy, but at least I laughed a bit. I tried Pastise, a hard alcohol from Provence that Olivier and Clara bought. It has very strong herbal flavors, but is good in small amounts.

To press the plastic cylindrical tanks of Pinot Noir, we usually scoop out the skins one bucket at a time, but Olivier was determined to find a better way to do it, so we strapped a tank to the forklift using two pallets, two ratcheted straps, a chain, and two planks of wood. It looked very dangerous, but it worked. We found a safer solution for the second one, so hopefully we won't have to use the bucket anymore.