Another day, another
chance to lead the carefree life of a vineyard owner. Ah! The smell of the
vines as they go dormant. I’m well aware there is no smell associated with the
dormancy of vines. Well that’s not entirely true. There is indeed a smell
associated with the process in which the vines slip into a slow slumber. Not
the smell you would imagine, not a breeze infused with the rich soil and crisp
autumn breezes of maples drying their leaves.
As a matter of fact the aroma is at the exact opposite
spectrum, somewhere in the neighborhood of a horse’s ass. By which I am
referring to the animal, not the writer of this…anyway.
The horses at Petit Clos were getting a little tired of
walking up their mound of Merde’, in order to get to their favorite sleeping
spots. I was approached by the man who has a few horses here. He asked if I
were free to help him relocate the pile of aged horse manure, not too dry, not
too wet. Aged just right.
“Where would we be relocating it too?” I asked.
“Why that is being the beauty of it,” He said as he
pointed in the direction of my Sauvignon Blanc vines. “We would be spreading it
amongst the vines, la bah!”
Point of topic…the French have a saying. They will point
vaguely, never precisely, and say. “la bah.” It translates roughly into: in that
direction, in the vicinity of, but not next to, or next to but not in the
vicinity of.” You divine the application
by inferring the remainder on the sentence. The one exception is if it is used
by solely by itself and accompanied by vague pointing, in which case the person
is using it thusly so that later they can argue that they never meant it to be
in that area.
Well,
that would be nifty. The vines have been looking a bit peaked, and after the rough year
it might be a welcome treat for the little dears. A nice layer of fertilizer for the long cold winter approaching. So I sign on, nod at him and
say “La bah.” Pointing at the vines. He crooks his head as if to try to
understand why I might be vague about the location of my own vines.
Well,
my part of the bargain is to ask a couple neighbors if they have one of those
manure spreading trailers. The man with the horses schedules it for the
following Friday.
Thursday
arrives, and so does the man with the horses.
“So
have you managed the simple task of asking to borrow one of those manure
spreading trailers?”
“Funny
you should ask. I went by one neighbor’s house and it wasn’t the right kind.
And another neighbor I didn’t ask.”
“So
you’ve essentially done Jacque Merde’.”
“Pretty
much.” I answered.
“Alright,
I’ll be back in the morning. I will find one to borrow and you can then be
asked to do as little as possible.” He smiled and shook his head as he glanced
to the ground. Well at least that’s what I inferred what he said. He has a
dialect…an accent so thick in the countries dialect that even my French
Electrician had to have me translate for him. That actually happened, as a side
note.
The
next morning arrives and I’m drinking my coffee and notice that his van is
parked, and his smaller tractor is gone. It’s 8 a.m. and I start looking around
for him. Turns out he had to drive over to one of his neighbor’s house to pick
up the special manure spreading trailer. He arrives a short while later towing
the trailer. He parks the tractor trailer rig and proceeds to load it with the
aged horse manure.
The back of the trailer has two rotating flails. On the
bottom of the trailer is a conveyor belt set-up. It conveys the aged manure to
the two flailing rotating blender like wheels. They in essence spread the
manure out behind the trailer. Only in essence. In reality it accelerates the
manure to light speed in all directions, even the direction of the clown
driving the tractor. Insert my name here.
Well
we finished all six rows of vines. And I must admit that it was the most
efficient machine for the job. I had entertained loading our small trailer and
having my trusty Peugeot tow it. We would manually rake it out as it drove
slowly down the rows. But this was definitely the way to go.
Experiencing
life allows you a perspective. It allows you to verify the adages that others
have passed down into lexicons of our language. You know, like “Never look a
gift horse in the mouth.” Or “When one door closes, another opens.” Stuff like
that. I enjoyed verifying the adage that “We all gotta duck when the shit hits
the fan.” Or in this case, a flailing hyper speed manure
spreader.
