Two full, and I mean FULL days of moving, hauling, and cleaning, and Aaron has the workshop cleared out. I took a few pictures of the progress earlier in the day on Saturday, but haven't been back out to see it all clear! You might remember what it looked like when I posted a picture of the full workshop in this post.
He has to have it cleaned out by Monday so they can start work on the interior renovation for this to be the new winery space! We rented some storage space from our neighbor, so fortunately, we've been able to store a lot of his equipment nearby.
People have often questioned where Aaron finds all the time and energy to do everything he is doing, but it hasn't been until lately that I, myself, have really brought that into question. He's been superman lately.
He started Saturday morning walking up to Axel talking in his crib at 6am. It was Aaron's turn to get up with him that morning. They played and ate breakfast together until I got up close to 7am.
Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day that "sleeping in" until 7am was a luxury!
At 7am, Aaron went out and started working on the workshop. Around 8am, when Axel started carrying me his shoes and pointing to the door, I got the hint and we went to play outside and see how the progress was coming in the workshop. Seeing his Daddy, he immediately held his hands up to be held. Since Aaron had work gloves on filled with dirt and metal shavings, he diverted Axel's attention by getting him to dance to the music playing on the radio instead. He was quite content with that compromise, so we had a little dance party for a while.
At 10 am, Aaron came in because he had to be on a conference call for work. Yes. On a Saturday. He had one on the 4th of July too! Amidst the winery planning, vineyard work, new baby prepping, getting our county, state and federal licenses completed, it's been a busy time at his day job.
After making himself a little brunch of scrambled eggs and hash browns, he was back outside to keep working.
The day went pretty much like that; A balancing act of all of his gigs--businessman, farmer, and daddy. A true depiction of the Gentleman Farmer that he is. Besides a brief break for dinner, he didn't quit until 9pm on Saturday. It was then, he came in kicked his feet up with a glass of wine and good flick from Netflix. Having him captive and in one spot, I took that opportunity to ask him a few questions on one of our applications that I was working on completing for our licensing.
And since I still had his attention, I decided to throw out a few baby girl name ideas too. He'd contemplate the name over a sip of wine and then respond with either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Since you won't really find Aaron thumbing through baby name books these days (and I have my nose buried in them!), it's easier for me to bring names to the table and get his feedback on them in order to start paring down our list.
Of most important note of all we have going on is that the grapes are starting to look plump and juicy!
Yes, already!
All this excessive heat has accelerated the grape ripening process. We'll likely be ready to start picking grapes in mid-August!
Mark your calendars for grape picking weekends starting next month and continuing into September. Like last year, we'll have to wait until we get closer to the time to see which grapes are ripe which weekends, but everything is looking ahead of schedule at this point.
We'll do most picking on Saturday and Sundays, likely with 2 shifts, morning and afternoon. And as always, we'll have a lot of fun with it!
Stay tuned for more details in the next week or so!