Christian Perez's Travel Journal

In Hell, you prune vines for $50 a day, Mon Jun 5, 2006

I can't believe it has been a week already. I work everyday at the vineyard, pruning vines. It's crappy work, but at the same time, I like it to some degree. You start the day before the sun is out and the ground is covered in frost, and then the sun blazes over the mountains and in one hour your sweating as you work. I'm determined to make money...because I'm totally broke. There was a hiccup with my online credit card system, so I found out I spent more than I thought. I might have to call up my credit union and see about getting a general purpose loan.

I'm typically scientific in my pruning. I'm always watching others, asking questions, and testing theories--in addition to working my butt off. I've also met some interesting people. Of everyone here, Grant is by far the most newsworthy. He's a real Maori. He knows the language, the songs, and the history. My favorite activity so far is to listen to him sing traditional Maori songs and listen to stories about his people or explain some aspect of their culture. How better to learn about the nose press, the haka, or the prophecies of the Waitaha people who predated even the Maori in NZ.

Everyone here at Swampy's Backpackers work at the vineyard--most everyone for a contractor named Tracy Ross. The numerous vineyards in the Marlborough region ned constant attention from labourers: harvest, pruning, wrapping. They contract the work out to individuals like Tracy who then buy equipment (loppers, secateurs) and train seasonal staff--90% are backpackers like me. I drive four others 50 km a day to Matua vineyards to start work at 7:30 am. I wear gumboots, fleece jacket, trail hat, gloves, sunglasses, and my backpack with water and lunch. I sign the rowsheet so the boss knows what I'm doing and how much to pay me. Vines are organized into rows with metal wires and several heights. The wires support and organize the vines when they're growing and laden with fruit. For each plant, I cut out the old wood and strip everything off the vines except for 4 to 6 canes that sprout new shoots for next year's harvest. After stripping, I trim each cane of little offshoots and growth. For all this, I get $0.80.

I can finish a row of 110-120 plants in about 4 hours now, so I can get 2 rows a day. But that is a recent development. Mst get just one done (as I did most of this first week.) Do the math: $70 a day after tax. I call it slave labour. Thankfully, I've gotten faster even as my hands have become sore and inflexible from constant squeezing/trimming (when I get up in the morning, they're deformed, useless "claw" hands.) I should average at least $150 a day this week.

Saturday was a welcome change. I went olive picking on a small local grove of 300 trees. We started our day just before 9 am. Harvesting olives is very labour intensive and requires several people to manage one tree. You start with air rakes, which are pneumatic "jaws" (like pacman made out of plastic rakes) at the end of a long pole. Then someone jumps in the tree with a hand rake and knocks stuff out of the middle and points out olives to the air rakes on the ground. They just go to town on the tree, tearing through everything and knocking olives onto a ground sheet laid out below. After collecting olives into crates, you deleaf them and throw them in a 400 kg crate and ship them overnight to the olive press. In addition to $12 an hour and fantastic morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea they provided, I had a great time doing some interesting work. Plus, their olives are delicious...after soaking them for several weeks, of course.

Going to a hangi this weekend, put on by Grant's friends. Should be an awesome time, as I'm helping them set up the bonfire and earth oven. Sweet as! Although I'm getting restless to move on again. I'm finding I don't like staying in one place for too long. I'll will no doubt be in the North Island soon.