The Grape Squishery Of 2009

When I signed up to harvest grapes at Tres Suenos Winery, in Luther Oklahoma, I was not expecting a spiritual revelation from God. But, in essence, that is what I got. The growing of grapes and the making of wine has been a part of the world's economy for centuries. God knew this exacting process would be around for a long time. I believe this is partly why He chose to use the "fruit of the vine" for His remembrance supper. It brings new understanding of Jesus saying "I am the Vine, and you are the branches."

A few years ago, a crowd of our friends attended a wedding at a winery. The bride wanted an outdoor wedding. It was very pretty. They have a small vineyard right on the property, and a small grove of trees on the other side of the main building, where the wedding took place. I fell in love with the beauty of it all. The wine was something new to me. I had never before found one that tasted good to me. This wedding had two flavors of wine that did taste quite good.

DH and I went back later, to an annual festival and wine tasting. We heard wonderful live music, tasted several varieties of wine, and had a grand time. We have been to the festival two years in a row, and are planning to attend our third this fall. The owners of the winery host a harvest in August every year, once the grapes are ready. This year, I signed up to be notified of the harvest. DH did not come, I was on my own this time.

I drove the almost hour from my home, and got there near 7:00 am. I met with the owner of the Winery and about 20 others. We then drove in a caravan to a contract vineyard about 8 miles away, to harvest a white variety of Sauvignon grapes. We snipped grapes off the vines from 8:00 until 11:00 am. Some of the grapes we harvested after the picture.



This is me, among the vines. The first picture of the day. A nice lady came by and said she wanted to take pictures, but her camera was at the house. I handed her mine, and asked that she take a picture of me (so she would know whom to bring the camera back to).



We were each given a white 5 gallon bucket. This is my bucket, mostly full of white grapes.



When those were filled, we put the grapes into bigger crates that could hold 3-4 buckets of grapes. This is one of those crates.



The crates were then picked up, and workers transferred the grapes to huge white containers, and brought back the crates to be filled again. This is one container being loaded on a forklift.



The owner had the load weighed, but he didn't know his empty weight, so there was no exact number for the weight of the grapes we harvested. He estimated that we picked around 3 tons of grapes.

This is one of the owners. His name is Richard.



We got to watch the grapes be moved from the small crates and big white containers through a machine that took off the stems, crushed the grapes, and sent them through a tube to large blue drums. This machine was quite noisy.



For our work the owners provided lunch. (The owner's wife had bought Red Table Grapes at the grocer for us.... and got picked on about it.) After lunch, we had the opportunity to personally stomp on a small batch of grapes. The owner had pulled many stems out of about one crate of grapes, and put them in the bottom of a 55 gallon steel barrel. We got to wash off our feet, and step into the barrel to mash the grapes. There was a baby about 1 year old, and he was having a stomping good time, and then he realized that he was not able to get himself out of the barrel. He cried, and continued to stomp all the way up the side of the barrel. Poor baby. His older brother was also having a great time squishing grapes, ending up in the barrel at least 3 times, with others and by himself. I was the second to last person to step on the grapes. Have you ever stepped on one grape accidentally in your kitchen? This was messy and fun, and totally squishy. These are my toes in the grapes.



The owner will further press those grapes and keep them separate from the rest of the harvest. He will bottle that wine, and put our names on it. He said there would be about 20 bottles from this barrel. White wine should spend about 6 months fermenting before they put it in the bottles, where it will spend another 6 months before it will be drinkable. A year from now, I will have a bottle of wine from the harvest I helped to pick. I plan to refer to it as Baby Toes. This was the baby.



The grapes at the winery property are purple grapes, but I don't know what variety.



The white grapes we harvested.



God truly is an artist. He created such lovely plants, people and processes. I plan to do this again and again. DH hopefully can come next time, and several of my friends have also volunteered. I have to go back there to collect this year's wine: 2009 Sauvignon Baby Toes. If you get a chance to taste wine from Tres Suenos Winery, do it. The name means Three Dreams, and the dreams of the owners have come to be a tasty reality.

New Adventures Of The Traveling Bloggers Or The Chelf Life Of Flea Bytes

I enjoy travel. I love meeting new people. I adore getting to combine the two.

Back in July, on a Thursday, DH and I made a trip to Bricktown (downtown OKC). We met Jayme for dinner, with her immediate family, and some extended family, too. They were in town for the big annual family reunion, that was being held in a church building (less than a mile from my house). We had a really good Italian dinner at Zio's. We enjoyed walking around Bricktown and along the canal.

I had (conveniently for Jayme) left my camera in the car. Apparently, Jayme was nervous that I would chronicle our visit here. I don't like pictures of me, but I am happy to share pictures of others! No pictures this time. Good for Jayme, bad for the rest of us. Ha! I didn't want her to think that I had left her out of the journal, simply because there were no pictures. I loved visiting with them, and I wanted you all to know it!

We had a great time. Neal and DH are friends from many years ago, and it was nice for them to catch up, too. Ellie told DH he was "Ca-RAY-zy!" for not liking Strawberries. That was cute.

A month later, DH has this week off. He took a week of vacation to hang out with me, in honor of our 10th Anniversary (this Friday). We are doing much like we did when we took our honeymoon. Then, he was still in College, and I was working full time. I took one week, and we spent that week taking small trips. We spent our first two nights in a Bed and Breakfast in Guthrie, OK. We also took day trips to Wichita and Tulsa.

Monday this week we went to Tulsa. We met Flea. I don't remember precisely when I found Flea's blog, but we have been enjoying each other's blogs for around two years, I suppose. I knew when I started reading that we were kindred spirits.

She brought the "loquacious" Red Rocks with her. We met at DH's favorite place to eat that we don't have here in OKC, Fuddrucker's. We refer to it simply as Fudd's, as to not say terrible words accidentally. They make burgers to order... you can get a one pound burger that covers a plate! We ate, took pictures and visited for most of two hours!

This is Red Rocks... talking. He is quite into Classic Rock, and was a pleasure to talk to. He had to go home to make an original dessert for a Scout thing that night. Good looking, prepared, and smart. What more could you need from a kid?



Fred and Bessie also came, and enjoyed the picnic. This is Fred, making sure he got the last of the Jalapeno Cheddar Cheese sauce. (A must for the french fries.)



Here is Bessie, worrying about Fred and his balancing act to reach something.



Mr. Monkeysuit came, too. He is a ladies' man. Flea got some good pictures of him giving me a kiss.



Here is DH giving Mr. Monkeysuit the contemplative stare... and probably a warning about getting too fresh with me.



This is the Good Flea and Chelf, photo on my camera, courtesy of DH.



Thank you for coming along on the driving adventures of Chelf and DH. More entries to come, as the Anniversary Week progresses!

Top Reasons I Won't Have A Credit Card

This is a news article I saw on my local television affiliate.
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NH man swipes debit card for smokes, charged 23 quadrillion dollars (plus $15 overdraft fee)

By Associated Press

9:05 AM CDT, July 15, 2009
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire man says he swiped his debit card at a gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes and was charged over 23 quadrillion dollars.

Josh Muszynski (Moo-SIN'-ski) checked his account online a few hours later and saw the 17-digit number — a stunning $23,148,855,308,184,500 (twenty-three quadrillion, one hundred forty-eight trillion, eight hundred fifty-five billion, three hundred eight million, one hundred eighty-four thousand, five hundred dollars).

Muszynski says he spent two hours on the phone with Bank of America trying to sort out the string of numbers and the $15 overdraft fee.

The bank corrected the error the next day.

Bank of America tells WMUR-TV only the card issuer, Visa, could answer questions. Visa, in turn, referred questions to the bank.
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Information from: WMUR-TV, http://wmur.com
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Thursday Thirteen
"Reasons I Won't Have A Credit Card" and "Why I Think This Is Funny"

1. This was a DEBIT card, so I am still at risk.

2. 1% of this bill is more than four times the National Debt. (To copy the media, "That is QUADRILLION, with a Q!" Imagine the perky blonde anchor making you feel stupid, because you couldn't have heard it the first time.) I can live happily on that kind of money. The bank can never have enough.

3. Bank of America, the man's personal bank, is the bank known to give accounts to Undocumented Illegal Immigrants... I suppose they have to make up for that in some small fashion. I hope they don't think this is SMALL fashion.

4. I am sure that the numbers are meaningless..... no SSN or PIN in there. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!)

5. One of my friends on Facebook commented that the average daily balance would yield an interest charge that could be "ugly". They are allowed to be around 30%, especially if you are overdrawn.

6. How many people didn't get charged for their transactions that day, due to the keying error? I wouldn't want to be that person!

7. Cash Is King! Check out Dave Ramsey, and learn to survive without plastic. This is not a paid advertisement, just a personal testimony. I am not completely debt free, but imagine that as a goal! Now imagine that as a lifestyle!

8. I know that smoking kills you, but I thought it was for actually smoking! I am excited knowing that the guy is still alive after the SHOCK of seeing that bill.

9. Jesus said that our hearts are tied to our treasures. Junk purchased with plastic and debt are not treasures, but our hearts sit there with it anyway.

10. Nothing in the world like the Bank of America and Visa pointing fingers at each other. Poor guy had that balance on his personal checking account for a whole day, and nobody wanted to help him fix the problem.

11. The banks don't keep records better than I do. They can't! I am a perfectionist about accounting. I can't afford to let a penny slip by unaccounted for. I can't afford to write off mistakes. I can count!

12. Banks are really good at sticking you with fees when you really do overdraw... by a penny or two. Shouldn't they PAY you when the mistake is THEIRS?

13. Even Bakers know how to give a little extra to get a lot of loyalty. Banks could learn from this generous practice.

Blessings to you, more than money.