Escaping the eye of the law!

Two lads, one well under 16, were on a tractor grubbing up the weeds between the vines early this Sunday morning. When the tractor came back through the village a bit later the younger of the two was running behind! In UK there would surely have been some busybody reporting him and the farmer would have been prosecuted and fined very heavily. Sad, because I spent some of the happiest days of my childhood sitting on the back of a tractor ploughing, watching the seagulls following and diving for worms. That is where I learnt to whistle...

There are so many differences of opinion about growing grapes - do you leave the weeds and force the vines to work harder, explore deeper for moisture and food or do you leave the weeds? Do you spray to death all about you and give the vines a chance or do you leave nature to take care of itself and perhaps only spray with bio against vine weevil which the butterflies gobble up and then can't lay eggs?

In the distance you can see the two avenues of plane trees that are a feature of this village landscape - they will be dead and gone in 10 years because of the virus...