Sky

The sky here is incredible. I just cant stop looking at it while working. At first I thought it was because of my sunglasses but its defiantly just because it is so beautiful.  The sky is ALWAYS so blue and the clouds are so fluffy looking. Maybe its because I'm living in such a small town with less pollution or maybe its just the Australian sky.

 Sure, the sun rises and sets are amazing, but during the day is beautiful as well.

This post is dedicated to Miss Katie and her love of clouds <3

Work

Harvest started to kick in full blast. After my birthday weekend (great timing) we started to work two 10 hr shifts between the crew, 6 days a week. Mine is the morning shift, 5am-3pm Monday thru Saturday, and the afternoon shift is 2:30pm-12:30am. It is long and hard hours, but will be rewarding to see our hard work in an actual product.

One of the first days of the two shifts, we had a bit of down time and one of the wine makers let us stomp grapes with our feet. It was a really cool experience, except when anyone walked past us they liked to say, "...remember what happened 3 years ago...." Three years ago, one of the wine makers did the same thing but to a ferment and he ended up in the hospital with a yeast infection on his leg!! Ours was grapes hadn't started fermenting, and had been in the cold room (good for freezing your feet, it was really cold) for a week, so I think we are in the clear! 

Birthday

I had an awesome birthday this year even though I was far from home and also, having it during the summer was so much better than the dead of winter. My birthday lasted 3 days this year!! Thursday, Feb 7th here in Australia, then Friday because it was the 7th back home (thank you everyone on Facebook for the well wishes) and then again Saturday with a big party!

Thursday, at work, one of the girls was so sweet and brought a cake to celebrate. Everyone got together at our morning tea (mid morning break) to eat the cake and sing me happy birthday. Then when I came home, there were some beautiful flowers at the door! Thank you mom, dad, Shelby, Matthew and of course Ab-E girl!!

I invited everyone from the winery to my house on Saturday for a BBQ and some drinks. The people here are so giving and love any reason to have a party and celebrate. One of the full time lab girls brought about 20 sausages to share with everyone, someone brought guacamole  others brought chips, jello shots, and of course beer and wine. Needless to say, we had a GREAT time!!

Cat Walk

Today at work I was doing some work on the up on the cat walks around the top of the tanks and realized I wasn't scared. I used to be SO scared of heights especially going up stairs and walking on things you can see through to the ground.

I think that skydiving this summer really helped over come some of that fear. Thanks Miss Bruna for making me do that!!!

Work, Elizabeth and Money

WORK

Work has been good so far. We received our first load of white grapes last week, January 30th. The process was pretty similar as what I had done at Gallo, just on a MUCH MUCH larger scale (weird to say since Gallo is so big..) First all the grapes are dumped in to a hopper (basically a huge stainless steel bin that moves up and down and can pivot to dump) to be weighed and then pushed through a destemmer which separates the grapes and all the other stuff (leaves, branches, lizards, etc.... yes we saw a bearded dragon lizard). The grapes then move through some pipes to the press (basically a huge juicer that uses air pressure to squeeze the juice out of the fruit) and then into a tank. In theory it’s a pretty simple process, but St. Hallett being a pretty big winery, there are many overhead pipes that need to be connected to each other just right in order for the juice to end up in the right place. You must check and double check everything, always!!

First lot of grapes

Out Looking at the Vinyards

There is always something to do around the winery when the fruit isn’t being processed. Juice always needs to be transferred form one take to another, or we need to add something, or the wine needs to be filtered. None the less, there is always something to do, unless the winemakers just like to see us push around the big pumps and drag hoses around… we’ll never know!

The saying is, “Working in a winery is 49% cleaning, 49% lifting/moving heavy stuff around and 2% drinking beer.”

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth is our 4^th roommate, the spider. I think we met the 3^rd day I was living here when Giles, Quentin and I were sitting in the kitchen talking when she was just there on the wall. She was very scary for a while until Quentin gave her the name Elizabeth and Giles told me she takes care of all the other bugs that would be in the house if it wasn't for her. She was in the kitchen for a few days, then disappeared (worst part not knowing where she is…) for a few days and then ended up in the hallway outside of our bedrooms. She sat there for about a week not moving and we all thought she was dying! It was actually kind of sad to see her not moving and kind of shriveling. But then she surprised us and moved in to MY BEDROOM!!!! Needless to say, I liked her much better when she wasn't in here... Finally she came down on the wall low enough that Quentin was able to catch her in a container and put her outside. I am sure we will see her back in the house in the next few days, but we’ll see.

Quentin Capturing Her

Above My Bed

Elizabeth is a Huntsman spider. I did some research and discovered the average lifespan for a Huntsman is about two years of MORE!! The good thing is, if she were to bite, a cold pack is all one needs to relieve the pain. Still not very reassuring but at least she won’t kill me.

MONEY

The money here is really fun and easy to spend because it looks like monopoly money. Every bill is a different color and size with a little see through plastic piece in the top corner. There is a $100 (green), $50 (yellow), $20 (red), $10 (blue), and $5 (purple) bill. The weirdest is there are $2 and $1 coins. I also got a hot pink debit card, pretty cool! 

My friend Kaitlyn brought up a good point, “When someone wants to go to a strip club, do they just throw coins?” The answer is no, you switch your money for ‘stripper dollars’ and at the end of the night its gets switched back to real money. Kind of a funny concept that I would have never thought of if it wasn't for her. 

COMING UP..

My birthday is in 2 days and I am so excited to having it during SUMMER!! Its probably the only time in my life that this will ever happen, so its so exciting!! We are planning to have a party over here at the house with all the other harvest interns as well as some of Giles friends. He just bought/moved in to this house and wants to have a house warming party. SO.... we are going to just have a joint party that is going to be American themed. Hot dogs and burgers on the grill, chips, pop and maybe some salads to go with it. We'll see!!! 

and as always, 

GO COUGS!