Cement! That's our new hobby. Who knew when we bought a vineyard that we would become experts in masonry. We've lifted more buckets of sand and gravel into the cement mixer than I can remember, but finally we are almost done. Just one little tiny patch left. Last night we finished pouring the slab for the press by lamplight. Unbelievable. Our poor neighbors were having a dinner party and here we are in the back yard with the cement mixer churning away for hours. Oh well, we are almost done. Luckily for us, and unluckily for her, my sister Molly flew down from London for the weekend to give us a hand on our first big weekend of floor-pouring. It's definitely back-breaking work, then you add the July heat and a bit of humidity and it made for a very sticky weekend. Thankfully Molly is a very dedicated wine drinker and was willing to show her sisterly love all in the name of our future wine. Three weeks later and we are just finishing the top layer which here we call a chape (according to my French-English dictionary it is called a screed coat in English.) It's a much thinner layer that is supposed to take out all of the imperfections, well since we are only semi-professional masons, ours isn't quite perfect, but we are proud of it nonetheless. During this time we have also been finishing the drain, we had the first part dug out, but had to finish it, and we did, and it works! That was very exciting. Oh, that's another thing to add to the list, plumbing, now we know a little bit more about plumbing. Our friend Nick is doing our electricity, so he was over here this week wiring up all of the plugs and the new box. EDF (the French electric company) came out to tell us that we can't bring the electricity in from the back of the house like we wanted, but have to bring it in from the front. No problem, now all we have to do is run 3-phase electric cable from the front of the house, up the wall through the attic and out into the "cave" (or winery.) 60 meters of very heavy electric cable later we will have electricity, that is when they come to hook it up, which since everyone is on vacation won't be until the 2nd week of September, dangerously close to harvest, so we'll have to keep on them! ( I think that's a run-on sentence!) Here's a few photos of our latest masonry work, enjoy!