I should have known that something was wrong when our geriatric rooster, Old Man Henry, started sleeping in the nesting box.
At first Rick and I just figured it was cold and that he’d go back to his low senior citizen’s perch in the spring.
But when I found Henry sleeping smack dab on top of three eggs, we knew something was not quite right.
From then on, Henry was always on the eggs. Every morning I found myself in the odd situation of having to reach under the rooster to gather the eggs from the nesting box.
We were standing in the middle of the olive grove on a cold morning in the middle of May. Nearly five hundred olive trees surrounded us, and there wasn’t a single ripe olive to be seen.
The frosts would be starting soon, but the grove simply wasn’t yet ready for harvesting. We didn’t know what to do.
Frost damage can completely destroy your crop, because it ruins the taste of your oil. We needed more time.
I looked around at all the green olives. “We have to delay the harvest. There’s no choice. We just have to hope the frost doesn’t get us.”
Back in March, just as the fall weather was setting in, Rick and I were talking with our neighbors at a dinner party about getting firewood for the coming winter.
When you heat your home with a woodburner, getting wood in for the winter becomes an annual event, like the changing of the leaves and the onset of shorter, cooler days. Rick and I have been living in the country for over 3 years, and every year we’ve picked up the phone to have firewood delivered.
When I admitted to this, I received some strange looks from around the table that night. I didn’t understand. Had I said something wrong?
Old Man Henry is blind, bow-legged, and pauses strangely after every step. On certain misty mornings he looks like some twisted chicken fancier’s version of Dawn of the Dead.
But he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner among poultry, and it is by peacekeeping that he earns his keep.
We were off to enjoy the ‘Grape to Glass’ tour at Murdoch James.
Leelee was in the front seat next to the Wolf as their big black pick-up truck turned off Dry River Road at the Murdoch James sign. New olive growers like ourselves, Leelee and the Wolf are the good friends who helped me create our olive oil labels.
As we began the long meandering approach down the drive to the vineyard, we passed open fields and poplar trees with golden leaves. A small bridge took us over a bright and sparkling stream.
We all had a pleasant, comfortable feeling that we were in for something special.
I took a deep breath and walked up to the counter at the Martinborough Wine Centre. All around me bottles of gorgeous wine and olive oil stood sparkling on the shelves.
I was there to try and sell our olive oil for the very first time, and I was nervous. Would a Real Live Store actually want to put our little labor of love out on display with all those bright shiny things?
“Buy a used tractor?” I said to Rick. “Do we need one?”
Three years ago, after finishing the paperwork to purchase 20 acres with an olive grove in Martinborough, Rick and I received an email from the real estate agent asking if we’d like to buy the vendor’s tractor as well.
In our city boy minds, a used tractor would break down and require mechanical know how. We wanted a new tractor, but we were already broke from the mortgage. We planned to wait a few years before investing in equipment.
So we sent an email back to the agent confidently telling him that we did not yet need a tractor.
Lucy noticed her purse was missing just as the tsunami warnings came across the kitchen radio. It was early on Sunday morning, and the horrible earthquake in Chile meant that New Zealand was expecting a giant tsunami.
Lucy was one of our four good friends visiting from Chicago – including Russ, Joel and Louise – who had together enjoyed our earlier wine tasting at Escarpment vineyard.
We’d all been looking forward to spending the day at the coast visiting the seal colony and exploring the Cape Palliser Lighthouse. Should we still go?
The folks over at the New Zealand Food and Wine TV blog have picked up the short ONYA video about ‘Moon over Martinborough’ and featured it in their blog. Nice!
“Turn up Te Muna Road,” I tell Russ. “It’s up there.”
I’m in the front passenger seat, and Russ is driving. Joel, Louise and Lucy are squished together in the back seat. They’re friends of ours visiting from Chicago, and we’re headed to one of my favorite Martinborough wineries, Escarpment Vineyard, for a private tour.
Rick couldn’t join us today because he has to work, but that isn’t going to stop us from visiting a vineyard. And this isn’t just any vineyard.
I was sitting in an internet cafe at Bondi beach in Sydney. Just outside the waves curled blue into the sand. Surfers had left their boards leaning on the railings of outdoor cafes to have breakfast. The sun was bright and warm.
But I was in a dimly lit room full of computers, trying to find out if I had won an award back in New Zealand.
Back in January, I was interviewed for a Kapiti Coast community access radio show. It ain’t Oprah, but it’s somethin’!
Thank goodness Rick offered to drive to the Kapiti Coast for the interview, because I hate mountain roads. After nearly two hours of twisting and turning through two difficult mountain passes, we finally found ourselves looking straight out across the Tasman Sea from on high. The long, lovely shape of the Kapiti Island bird sanctuary lay the foreground.
You can listen to the radio interview at the end of this post.
I had just hopped back over the fence after visiting Kiwi Bronwyn and Jim when I saw Rick walking towards the chicken coop. He had a shovel in one hand and an axe in the other.
The evening light was bright on the far hills, but the paddock we were in was drenched in shadows.
I knew what Rick wanted to do. In fact, I’d agreed to it a couple of weeks earlier, but all of a sudden I had reservations. I certainly hadn’t expected to be doing it now, on a peaceful Monday evening after visiting the neighbors. I wasn’t prepared.
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough 
