Vintner's Secret Vineyard - WWOOF heaven?

Anyway, we arrived in Childers at long last, and Marianne from Vintner’s Secret Vineyard drove to the bus-stop to pick us up. Almost immeadiately upon meeting her our worries were dispelled – a chatty, warm, retired school-teacher, she put us at once at ease. And when we arrived at the property, a large house with pretty gardens, 5 acres of vines, three large cattle pastures, and a shimmering dam (a small man-made lake, in Pom-language), and were greeted by her son Matthew, and three other WWOOFers in the warm, bustling kitchen, we realised we’d found a place, and hosts, who would be the perfect cure for all our Townsville-ingrained negativity. After a tour we sat down to steaming bowls of home-made pumpkin soup, and everyone had a little meeting to discuss current projects happening at the fledgling business (bought the couple two years ago and revamped with new cellardoor, cafe and shop). We also got to meet Theo, their cheerfully scruffy white 'bitsie' ('bit of this and bit of that') dog, who likes to sleep wombat-style with all four paws in the air.

In addition to Marianne, Ed, and one of their grown-up sons Matthew in the house, there was also a Venuezelan WWOOFer, Anna, and a French couple, Elodie and Sebastian, who were staying in their van outside until Anna left and there was bedroom free. So the house was always busy and alive; either Anna or Marianne, or both, always seemed to be cooking something, whether for the cafe downstairs, for dinner that night, or for morning tea (Marianne’s much more civilised name for ‘smoko’), and our meals were taken round the large table in the diningroom/library/living room area, with much tasting (read: drinking) of the new seasons wines. Our room was at the front of the house in a converted verandah, meaning that half the walls were windows, giving the room massive amounts of sunlight and fantastic views over the gently rolling grazing fields of Vintner's and the opposite property, far away on the next hill. It also gave us a close-up view of the birds which sometimes flew unsuspectingly into the glass - and we could hear, perfectly-high-pitched, the crows of the three cockerels kept in the chook pens out back, at varied hours between 2am and 7am. (The chooks vary from the normal russety-brown types, to insanely fluffy things with 80s hairdos, to polka-dotted varieties that would provide the perfect accesory for the glamourous greenie with an eye on co-ordination their egg-layers with their outfit. There are even minute baby quails - the quietest and most retiring of all the fowl on site).
Thankfully we were spared the noises of the two boisterous and highly anti-social geese who lived on the other side of house, beneath Anna and Marianne&Ed's bedroom windows.

There is always something to be done on the property - from simply raking leaves, weeding and general upkeep to maintain the large grounds of orchard, cafe area, lawns and flowerbeds for visitors to wander and picnic in, to bigger projects such as the establishment of a raised veggie garden. But the biggest project in the coming days after we first arrived, and the reason so many WWOOFers were present at one time however, was pruning - preparing Vintner's 5 acres of vines for their spring 'bud-burst' by removing all the old, dead or surplus wood. We had to wait for a 'master pruner' to arrive to tutor us in the art of pruning, so in the meantime we raked the lawns, weeded (easy, hand-weeding this time!), planted cover-plants in various empty beds, collected the chook eggs, and, in a massive all-farm team effort - inside the shed during an epic rainstorm - unloaded hundreds of bottles of wine which Ed had recently brought back from their winemaker, located a few hours away in Kingaroy. It was a little disappointing that we wouldn't get to see any wine-making facilities on-site, but since it's completely the wrong time of year for that anyway, it didn't really matter either way. Nik and I also spent one morning hand-labelling bottles of white wine, spurred on by...let me say...interesting music on the local radio station (one stand-out lyric: "Are you a rockstar, or do you party in a gaybar?"). The music was mostly popular old classics and songs which had topped the UK charts four or five years ago, but the DJ was even so daring as to play a single by the Hoff himself. Strange.

The sun came out properly on the 30th July - perfect since the master pruner was coming that day to tutor us. We all went down to the vines, to the verdhello grapes, and had a lesson on pruning, before trying it out ourselves (Ed seemed remarkably relaxed about us practicing with actual sectauers on his actual vines!). It all seemed very complex to start off with, but the basic rule is to leave the best and newest wood on each spur coming off the vine. This meant the wood had to have very little bark, ideally, and be very green inside. Also, the pruner explained, though it would be possibly to make a slightly-less-good decision over which bit of spur to cut, there was only one real BAD DESICION to be made in terms on pruning on each spur, and as long as we could avoid leaving the very worst, oldest bits of wood in place, the vines would sort themselves out in time for bud-burst in spring. Still, it was slightly nerve-wracking knowing we were dealing with at least a part of Marianne & Ed's livelihood! Afterwards the pruning team repaired to the cafe off the cellardoor, for capuccinnos and some of Marianne's tasty homemade cake.

written by  LizIsHere on July 27, 2010 from Childers, Australia
from the travel blog: New Zealand & Australia 2010
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