How to Start a Vineyard, Part 24: Life Plays Tricks

Until recently, my day usually ended at 5 a.m., when I’d emerge from all-night milongas in Buenos Aires, Berlin, or Washington, D.C. Now, my day begins at that hour.

Then I leave the center of Krakow and see partygoers returning home through the car window. It’s a perverse life.
In the vineyard, work piles on work. It’s a bottomless pit, where before you finish one, three more are already lining up, and to make no mistake, these tasks are no less urgent. We’ve just spread the compost, and now we have to weed again, then measure and drive in the edge stakes, cut the bushes to a single shoot, tie them to the stakes, and then there’s the scaffolding, aphid control, mowing, spraying, and everything else that pops up in such conditions—like a drill that breaks down for no reason or a fat rabbit. Not to mention the afternoon heat or the nasty horseflies, which they colloquially call “farts.”
A person walks with their backs to the ground, cares for their children, and only occasionally, straightening their backs, is they able to look at the world at large. And these are the moments that recharge their batteries, in which somewhere deep within, the satisfaction of hard work awakens, and the meaning of it all emerges.