In my travels from my kitchen through the dining room into the living room I can smell grapes fermenting into wine. Permeating the household is an aroma of dark rich berries which have been crushed and then coddled into their current state of fermentation. It carries with it the satisfaction of hard work and tolerance of a variety of circumstances which have now been overcome. There is an excitement during this part of the process because the grape must, like wine, is ever changing and each state is better than the last.

There are also two tanks, one with South African Sauvignon Blanc and one with South African Sémillon. The excitement here is the grape pulp during fermentation, which is darker in color, sinks slowly to the bottom of the tank revealing the cloudy color of the finished product in the glass.

In other parts of my life, I have some news about Ivy. The ongoing issue with Ivy’s ignition switch being broken is almost over. One night on my way home from happy hour, when I made the turn onto Jaine Lane I accidentally let go of the key. This caused the engine to briefly stop. I moved the key just enough to get her started again and with a loud backfire, right in front of my neighbors house, the engine engaged and we made it home.

The steering column, where the switch resides, contains a bunch of wires. One of which is for the horn. When Rich, my neighbor who lives ironically where the backfire occurred, was working on the ignition, it did enter my mind, “I hope he doesn’t fix the beeping.”

Much to my chagrin, the switch repair caused the beeping to worsen. Each time I turned the wheel, even just a little bit, the horn would blow. So much so that I parked Ivy and called Rich. Sadly, the horn wires are now disconnected and the next step is to rewire what’s in the steering column, fixing my new problem — the lack of a horn, and correcting that charming erroneous beeping.

Lastly, Sue Miller and I took a quick trip to the Finger Lakes in New York to drop off wine for the International Wine Competition. My entry was submitted just days before the cut off so the trip was a necessity and I was happy for the traveling mate.

Sue is a good navigator and she brings snacks. Apparently, the same snacks Ken eats between meals — in retrospect they were probably Ken’s snacks.

Inevitably, Sue and I did not take the photos we planned on taking. That is the one improvement neither of us seems to be able to accomplish. As we are doing our spring reorganization at the happy hour we keep telling ourselves we are going to take pictures and the time comes and we never lift our phones to snap them.

When you stop by to see us and our new layout at the farm, please snap a few pics and share them with us!

Cheers!

Sharon