Le Couvent Diary

Over the past week we've had our A-team of volunteers staying. They come each year to help us in the vineyard, but it's much more than you might imagine. Each day one pair is responsible for getting up early to prepare breakfast for up to 16 people. Then there's a huge drive to get all the tools, machines, food, drinks, crockery, water, dogs, petrol, and people into the cars and on the quad ready for a day's work in the vineyard.

They've been strimming, ploughing, pruning olives, making glass bottle walls, burning, collecting rubbish, hacking back pathways and cutting hedges. They've worked like Trojans and we've had huge fun.

Then, each evening  two more people have prepared supper for around 18 people. We've eaten extremely well, and guzzled a fair amount of Languedoc wine too. It's been an excellent week and you can see photos at our vineyard website: 5000vines.com .

Our plucky volunteers pay to get here, hire cars, then work for a week. We give them rooms at Le Couvent to sleep in, food and wine and a tee-shirt. They tell us they really enjoy it and they keep coming back for more. We all have a very good time and laugh a great deal. They have certainly put their feet on the stairway to heaven.

Two of our vollies, Chris and Sue, are staying on at Le Couvent to look after everything while we go off to Australia to see Ali's family. We leave on Tuesday and will probably sleep for the entire 30 hour journey. We'll blog again at the end of the month. Have a very happy March. xxx