After 5 magical months in the south of france— everything came to an end this past weekend… We had a final dinner together in Laure’s restaurant check it out:
a farewell to french cuisine– I missed the cheese and bread before I even left France. Ensuite: after 5 months in a different world there are very few words that come to mind when writing a blog post. There are no words that can do this experience justice… it was magical, moving, and life-changing. I guess I’ll leave it at that. I can’t begin to thank the Martials for their generosity in putting up with my american ass all summer and fall— It was such a treat… such a fabulous summer. Thank you to all at Blancardy, Montpellier, Chamonix, and Paris for this experience–it’s going down in history as the best summer of all time for Rachael Burks! 
Archive for the 'Summer in France' Category
Yeah. That would be the sanglier (wild boar) that David hath slain my last weekend at Blanardy: 97 KILOS PEOPLE! Congratulations David! (SECOND SANGLIER EVER HAPPENS TO BE CLOSE TO 100 KILOS!!! get-off on your bad self friend!) 
So, the wine harvest came and left enormous amounts of work to be done on the vineyard to care for next years inventory… My last job at Blancardy was to shovel grape skins from the cabernet into the presser. The grape skins were well over my head:
I shoveled grapes for hours:
It was awesome to have a job like this; it combined my love for hard work with my love for “playing in the mud” — I WAS COVERED WITH GRAPES: (then again snow-angels in the tail end of the grape skins helped me achieve super-filthy!)
… after shoveling all morning, I got in a little bit of a grape war with Thomas:
I’ll let you be the judge -who do you think won? (I think I lost?)
A farewell to my working partners: I miss them already after having worked with them both all summer: David and Thomas. great friends to work with. Thanks guys.
THE WINE HARVEST CAME AND WENT! Work hard for 8 days… finished with 390 hectares. Yeah… you work hard… One night I was so tired i left the dinner table and fell asleep on top of my covers filthy with grape skins and sugar-shoes still on -WITH MY DINNER NAPKIN STILL IN MY HAND? 
Grapes 
Grapes
Grapes
Grapes
Grapes
Pressing Grapes 
Future Wine The wine harvest is hard work… up early-work late. sometimes it’s cold sometimes it’s hot–but regardless of the temperature you are covered in grape skins and saturated in the sticky sugar omitted by picking, pressing, moving, and shoveling tons and tons of grapes. It was an awesome experience- I got to drive the machine for the vindages as well… which is always a bonus.
well gang- let it be known that I CANNOT BUILD THINGS LIKE BILLY POOLE COULD! Here I was thinking i was “ok” with a skill saw— WRONG! I’m horrible and can barely hammer in a nail correctly…. let alone figure out where to put it— however loved every minute of being outside attempting to build stuff…. (with power tools)
pas mal… pretty cooool beans.