Cutting weeds and taking pictures

The weather was a pendulum all morning long, from drizzling to heavy mist. I was hoping though that it will eventually clear, like it did the previous days and I will be able to complete the task that I left unfinished, yesterday.

The sound of heavy rain came to destroy my illusions and made me accept the fact that I have a day off! Sitting in front of the computer, with the company of a cup filled with hot cacao, to write a post with the pictures I took yesterday, was in order :)

So how was the first of June for you?

Happy new month, by the way!

I spend it in a vineyard, cutting weeds with the trimmer. Not the most charming way to spend a day but it wasn't so bad after all. I even had my camera with me to change mode during my breaks, from land worker to photographer. Some may find this behaviour quirky but for me it is resting and balancing.

The first set of pictures are from the edges of the plot where thistles and wild vegetation are continuing the natural circle of life that farmers brutally disturb in their fields! I am not saying it in a judgemental way, it is just the way things are. Some plants have to be removed in order for some others to thrive. And farmers seem to prefer nice, juicy grapes over thorny thistles. They seem to ignore though that thistle seeds are a very expensive product themselves. Anyway I wasn't there to change the farming orientation of the area, I was just cutting weeds and taking pictures :)

The grapes now are very small and hardly recognisable but the struggle for the cultivators, to protect them from various diseases, has already begun. Sulphur is the main weapon in this battle but for those more keen in chemical farming, a lot of poisons will be used during the summer. This is the main reason I never dealt with vineyards, I prefer to make a better use of my summers :)

But if I don't deal with vineyards what am I and my trustworthy Kangoo, are doing here?

A fairly reasonable question and you have every right to ask it!

Well, here is how it goes. This vineyard belongs to a cousin of mine, let's call him John. A few meters away there is an olive grove that belongs to me. @traisto and myself are cultivating this olive grove. John has a tractor with a shredder and we have a lot of cut brunches from the olive trees but no shredder or chipper. You see where I am getting?

So John will drive his tractor through our olive grove and clear it from the brunches, saving us a ton of work (and money to rent a chipper). On the other hand I'll cut the weeds between the vines, in places that the tractor can't get into and save him a lot of manual work that due to a back pain can't (and shouldn't) do.

A win win situation, isn't it?

I tried to do some before/after shots with my phone. They have not the best possible quality and now that I see them next to the ones from the canon, they are rather pathetic but I'll share them anyway. The phone as rubbish as it might be, it has a huge advantage in comparison to the dslr, it is always in my pocket :)

I hope you got an idea of what I was doing. It doesn't seem much but as in most agricultural jobs, it is not the job itself, it is the endless repetition that hits on your nerves :)

I used the mulching blade for the trimmer, a risky decision since it is a very powerful blade and I wouldn't want to damage the vines. So I had to be extra careful when I was getting close to the trunk of the vines and careful means more time and more effort. But then again I love that blade, it is unstoppable and it delivers a beautifully tidy result :)

I'll end with some pictures of a pear tree that is in the middle of the field. Pear trees as well as apple trees seem to make a good company with the vines, at least the old seem to believed so. It is very common to see those trees in the vineyards in Crete, especially those that has been planted many years ago.

The pears are not ripe of course but they make wonderful models nevertheless :)