Pick up sticks

Madeleine Angevine vineyard

Secateurs at the ready! 

Well this job certainly offers plenty of variety and opportunities to get outside so a few weeks ago,I headed along some quite rural roads/tracks to a local vineyard, about 8 miles away where a particular variety of vines called Madeleine Angevine had just been winter pruned.  My mission if I choose to accept it is to collect around 5000 'sticks', these are the prunings which are still live, no less than a pencil width and about 2ft long. Amazingly these will then be used to graft onto rootstocks to create new vines which will eventually be sold, each little bud on the stick will potentially be a baby vine. As the 'sticks' die back a little in storage, which is inevitable, the ends will not be able to be used hence why we have to pick so many . So I readied myself with my secateurs and a good motivating playlist and set to work. Obviously, the first track had to be 'Red Red Wine'! (Although for those of you who know your vine varieties, this is in fact a white grape!) So after one afternoon of enthusiastic collecting, I was three bunches in (each bunch is about 100 sticks), hmm 47 bundles to go. Well after a few visits I did get there. For the final push Pete, who helps in production, came along to help get to the final total. I have to say, it was quite rewarding to see the 50 bunches stacked up at the end of the vineyard knowing that we had done that all by hand, although next year I think i will grab a bunch of peeps to help, much easier with company. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera that day but it was five times the size of the photo below.

Getting there