Summoned by bells

Dramatis Personae: Me (Ashby for the moment), Mummy/Caroline (M), Daddy/Patrice (D), Grandpa and co-writer (GP),Grandma (GM), Mami (MM), Papi (PP)
Hi
HBHB here again(Haricot Bean Hughes Beguet)hence Grandpa's idea to christen me Ashby as that was becoming a mouthful. Still no decision on names as no-one knows, not even me, what variety I'll be. Apparently my cousin, due a week later, is kicking Christelle, Daddy's sister, like mad and he's a boy. All I do is politely hiccup, so I suspect that I'm a girl. We'll see...

I live in Mesnay, adjacent to Arbois which is one of the famous Jura wine-producing regions and looks like a picture from a chocolate box. M and D moved into the house next to the church in November. It's an old stone house with a massive cellar down precipitous steps- probably 18th Century (some houses in the village are 16th C). The inside has been modernised, but not finished and so one takes one's life in one's hands going up the stairs with no banister or handrail and no banisters around the landing. I suspect that it will be finished before I am able to practise sky-diving from the balcony!

Being next to the Church and being French, the bells ring 24/7. As if that weren't enough, just in case you hadn't caught the number of rings on the hour, they repeat them a minute later. I don't notice them much at the moment - hopefully that will continue. Working in the vines nearby, GP found it rather pleasant, in the sunshine, to have one's time controlled by bells- took him back to his school days.

Daddy has 4 plots of vines in and around Arbois. This being his first year, he had difficulty in acquiring the vines and they weren't his until January/February. Everyone else around had been working on their vines since November and so D was automatically 2/3 months behind. He is also a Maths teacher at a local school part-time until the income starts to grow, and so this created extra pressures on his time.

Firstly one has to remove the string supporting last year's harvest and tie it up neatly. Then the vines have to be pruned to leave two main shoots about 60cm/2 ft long. Then the dead wood has to be prised, kicking and screaming, from the wires. Boy, do the triffid-like tendrils put up some resistance.

Next the posts need to be checked. D had to replace about 120 which means carrying sledge hammers and iron poles up 30 degree slopes and banging the new acacia posts into the stony ground. Then the wires need to be tightened to allow the vines to be attached firmly. In the Jura there is not as much sun as, say, in the South of France and the vines need attaching in a special way to maximise sunlight and bud growth. Normally attachment is not too arduous but, because D got the vines late, some shoots were decent-sized branches and these needed bending into U-shapes over the second wire before being attached to the lower wire. Apparently the sap travels automatically to the end of the shoot but will also hang around at the top, so a U-turn will maximise distribution. Already you can see the sap dripping from the shoots.

Bending and tying is what M, D, GP, GM, MM and PP got to do during April. Each vine shoot segment needs careful bending to stop it snapping. Each emerging bud on the shoot, though miniscule, already contains the leaves and grapes that will emerge over the summer. Bending, twisting the shoots under/over/under, often led to snapping and the buds being knocked off, which in turn led to GP using language that I hadn't heard before- it must be English, although mention was made of Anglo-Saxon.

Then the attachment of the vines is done with a neat tool which twists the thin wire using a spring-device which you pull away from the vine. D has a left-handed one- wonder whether I'll be left-handed?

During the school holidays D, MM and PP managed to finish the tying (GP and GM had returned to Kent) on the 20,000 vines which should produce the equivalent of 20,000 bottles, but D still has to prepare his lesson-plans for next term, so he's working quite hard at the moment.... He's hoping to get a little tractor to go between the rows next month, which will mulch, strim, spray, rotovate. Unfortunately some of his rows are on such steep slopes that he will have to continue to tend these vines by hand, which is a shame.

Aaah, I hear the 12 o'clock bells, and yes, there they are again in confirmation. I think I'll have a little snooze. Hope Mummy isn't going to rush around too much like she normally does.

No suggestions for the name of the Hughes Beguet Wine brand yet- suggestions welcome at patrice@hughesbeguet.com