Weed killing- The natural way...

First of all a Daisy update and a big thank you to all who emailed my with their thoughts and wishes for her!  She unfortunately lost the tendon on the front of her left leg, which will mean that she will always have somewhat of a gimp, but thanks to antibiotics and a lot of TLC she's now starting to heal.  The wound on her leg is a nasty one that will take several weeks to close up, but the rest of her is coming along well.  She's in a fair amount of pain but is persevering, trying to adapt to her new foot which doesn't move the way she always wants it to.  Thankfully she is young and had lots of energy and joie de vivre!  She'll be just fine in a few months, maybe not quite as fast on her feet, but we're so very thankful to have her home!  That's all that really matters....

Now back to our scheduled programming:

One of the biggest problems with organic agriculture is weeds.  We have a fair amount of them, and this year we needed to try to get rid of them.  Up until now we've been mowing the rows, plowing and pulling as many of them as we can.  We bring a hoe out to the vineyards and try to chop out the thistles, which are the worst. You can buy a super duper attachment for your tractor that actually plows in between the vines, but they cost about €10,000 and for us we'd need a new tractor too, since ours doesn't have external hydraulics. Hmmm not quite in our budget this year.  Mr. Paume, the man who sold us our vineyards offered to loan us the old-fashioned model, a sort of plow that has springs, that you can manually push in between the vines to get a good chunk of the weeds.  So last week we spent 2 days plowing all of the vineyards, it was great timing, a few days later we had a nice steady rain which soaked in right at the foot of the vines thanks to this ingenious, if old fashioned implement!

Our friend Gaspard, age 11, wanted to come help for a day, so he's the one who you see in the photos pushing the handle back and forth.  Matt and I took turns driving the tractor until Gaspard was too tired to do any more.  I then offered him my camera and told him to take as many pictures as he liked.  Gaspard's father Benedikt Aichele is a jewelry designer in Uzès, his creations make you swoon, his mother Sophie Lossky is an architect and designs furniture, you'll see Gaspard has a great eye.  I'll post a slide show of his photos for you!

Lastly I couldn't resist showing you these two pictures, the first is a row that I plowed, the second one that Matt plowed.  For some reason I am incapable of plowing in a straight line, either I am too close or too far away, and I have Matt behind me constantly telling me!!  As you can imagine, by the end of the day, we need a break from one another, it's frustrating for us both!  Do you think anyone offers courses on how to plow in a straight line???

Comments

[wineguy]

But does it really matter whether the plowing is straight or not?

[Sean]

I like the organic lines of your plowing....besides, if it gets the job done then who cares. It's kind of like those darn wine ratings that lead people to ignore their instinct and taste buds and drink wines that someone else likes but they don't.