Age of Aquarius

The anticipation of doing farm work is always the worst part. There are the questions like: Is it going to be cold at night in our too small child sized Argentinean sleeping bags? Are we going to be asked to stomp around in horse shit, or handle other fertilizers risking infections when we cut ourselves? What work will we be doing? Do they eat polenta? What are we going to do at night if we get bored? Will Liz be allergic to their cats? And last but not least, Will the hosts be slavedrivers? The anticipation of all these questions is always the worst part.

Now let me tell you a little bit about the “farm” we choose and the outcome of these questions.

First off, I say ‘Farm” because Cloudscape is actually a beautiful vineyard about 90 min. outside of Melbourne. It is rare that we get cold in our own private wing of their gorgeous eco-friendly house. We sleep in the guest bedroom and have our own private reading room/ lounge area overlooking the vineyard from the elegant floor to ceiling windows. Our jobs for the day include 5 hours of walking up and down the rows of vines and ever so gently retraining the vines to go within their wire holdings. I tend to get through this devilishly hard task by bumpin my Ipod and having a daily booty shakin rock out jam session. Andre Deutsch & Jan Ward (the owners) are former hippies/scholars and have a massive book collection. There are shelves upon shelves of awesome books in the living room and Liz and I are invited to choose from any of them. I am currently reading a tom Robbins book called Still Life with Woodpecker. It’s hilarious. They also have a huge VHR collection (which made Liz reminisce about her old school pirating days in Reno) which includes The Princess Bride. Andre is a hobbyist chef, so every night along with wine tastings we have been getting delicious food from around the world. My favourite so far has been Vietnamese salad and noodles with calamari on top. He also makes a wonderful homemade pizza. Liz is allergic to the cats, one poor little kitty has 3 legs and is named Whoopee because she is black. Jan and Andre certainly do have a sense of humour. So we told them we never want to leave. All in all we’re quite happy here. When I think back to the other farm I can’t believe we actually did it. Liz says working for 9 hours a day stomping around in barrow was character building, but personally I prefer this type of character better.

They have dial up connection so uploading pictures is pretty much out of the question, but I will be sure to get some visual goodness to you when we get to the Chiefly Hotel in Sydney to meet up with the parents on the 13th.