Wwoofing Finale: Wine Lesson, Beer Pong & Giant Cookie

Danny gave us a quick tour of the vineyards and man-built cave where he bottles his wine for friends and family. The rest of the grapes are sold. It takes 10 pounds of grapes to make a bottle of wine. He manually runs a metal device that de-stems the grapes and crushes them to juice. The vines grow 30 feet tall within a year. He found hybrid vineyards from 50 yrs ago buried underground, that were planted by a priest for soil testing, which he is trying to rescue.

A tractor from 1917 has been converted to pump water irrigation. Danny said, “it just wont die” as he will need a new and bigger one down the road. Once up until 1000 AD 10 thousand people lived in these canyons. Now there are only a handful of families. Danny has vivid plans to expand and make all the wine here; projects are endless and I admire his young, strong, visionary spirit.  We learned that UT has some crazy water rights, where he needed a lawyer to help get approval to be allowed to well from his own water. It’s a dry county thing.

We played beer bong for hours. Danny is pretty good and I was on his winning team 5x in a row. Carissa also made 3 batches of chocolate chip cookies; one was a giant delicious cookie pizza! I am so gaining weight here.

 We had the day off as Danny went off roading. Joey took us to Recapture Lake and we just chilled in the sun. When the wind blew, I felt like the Earth was breathing deeply. We basked on flat rock towards the sun like turtles I have seen in Hawaii. My feet felt like sandpaper, so I gave it a natural mud scrub by the lake. 

 

I’ve been exposed to a variety and new music that I would never have otherwise discovered; it is a cool travel benefit, just like trying new food dishes.  Heard 2 hours straight of music by “Girl Talk”. I also just realized that in the past 11 weeks of traveling, I have watched 3 movies (1 was new-Paul) and a handful of 30 Rock and Office via Hulu. Can’t complain though, I am likin real life. I feel that TV supports laziness, isolation, confinement, and inactivity.

Friday, we finished putting up all the dry wall and Greg finished his electrical work. The spot b/w by thumb and index finger is so dry and sore from drilling. Our last night we made a fire and had BBQ for dinner. Oh and I got talked into a silly game of tequila shot w/ hot sauce race then slap the person; the drink was worse than the slap. I will miss seeing the stars as I will have 21 hours of daylight for the next 3 months.

Overall wwoofing was a great experience

From the little farm work I did, you quickly see how much hard work goes into it and really appreciate food. It will be interesting to try it out again in a few days in AK. Click here for more pix.