Two Daughters, 1 cat, 6 chickens and roughly 30,000 Vines
We’ve had several real lows; blowing up the comedy heating system the night before it hit -14 degrees for three weeks, sinking the tractor and having to dig it out, in the rain, with a fever, sobbing and more crucially, losing two harvests; the first in 2013 to a biblical hailstorm (livestock were killed), and more recently this April, having the worst late frost in 20 years. We’ve also had astonishing highs, the births of both our girls in one of the best health services in the world and knowing they will be effortlessly bilingual….I am so jealous! My husband has replaced the rook, installed massive beams and built a staircase singlehandedly and we live somewhere so incredibly beautiful it makes me thankful everyday. Our neighbours are fantastic, the closest is about to have her 70th birthday (which will almost certainly be an extremely alcoholic affair) and cuts our lawn for us when she feels things aren’t as tidy as she would like and also replaced our fox-taken chickens, with four of her own so, ‘Les Petites Christmas’ would not be ruined.
I’m still not entirely sure how my husband and I came to pack away our lives as London photographers, wrestle our cat into a cage, and along with all our possessions, drive to the south of France to start new lives as vignerons. Seven years on and we’re still here, and still on a huge learning curve.
To say it has been an easy and smooth transition would be papering over the disasters. The vineyard had been poorly looked after for years and some might argue strenuously neglected in places by the chain smoking roofer who had owned it before us. The 200 year old house, with its wood fired heating and very, very French electrics wasn’t much better – the gite attached to the house had carpeted walls!
We don’t make the wine ourselves, although that’s the dream. We sell our grapes to the local Cave co-operative and the vendage is done by an enormous yellow harvest machine, without any of the romance of a hand harvest. We grow Merlot, Cot (Malbec), and Sauvignon Blanc and have replanted over half or our original acreage. I think we probably need to plant a few trees to replace the amount of paperwork involved in the bureaucracy. In order to take up the old decrepit pieds and replace with young pot grown plants requires a minimum of five separate forms to three different government departments and elicited at one point, “Oh no, it’s that woman again” from one of the customs officials, when I turned up, for the sixth time brandishing yet another load of forms and a dictionary.
The Old Cornelian SUMMER 2017
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Our other neighbour at 80, recently got up every morning at 5.30am to help Pete water the latest new plantation of 6000 odd vines.
MY CAT IS A HERMAPHRODITE’, ‘YOU’VE LEFT YOUR SHEEP BEHIND AND IT IS IN THE BATHROOM
I’m certain that none of the more obscure phrases I have used over the years, ‘My cat is a hermaphrodite’, ‘You’ve left your sheep behind and it is in the bathroom’, and ‘Stop tring to talk me into a happy place and give me the epidural’ were covered by Mme King and I suspect that I will always have to ‘try harder’ and I always ‘could do better’ but my daughters will never have to think before they speak or come away thinking, ‘No, that’s not how that’s said you idiot’ and that is worth it all!
OC
Francesca Sims Class of 1990
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