SAMPLE CHAPTER.

With Book Two of Bringing Wine Home poised to come out in about a month-ish, I wanted to post a sample chapter from Book One to hopefully entice a few more people to join the story! Copies are available here, and digitally or physically on Amazon. Hope you enjoy!

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Chapter Two.A First Time For Everything(Bugtussle Farm, Kentucky - January 2010)

Eric and I were walking swiftly by the gardens as he introduced me to the farm, musing how he would give anything to see this place for the first time––sans history or emotions––essentially, to see it through my eyes. For fifteen years Eric had lived at Bugtussle, and I could only imagine how it would feel to have a casual, familiar perspective of such a thing.For me, this was not only the first time I'd seen his farm, but the first time in my twenty-seven years I'd been to a vegetable farm, period. Growing up in Kentucky, I'd been to farms before, sure––to drink beer. Farms, to me, were corn fields or muddy pastures with a keg buried somewhere in a crowd, and they looked and smelled nothing like this. In fact, I wasn't entirely confident I knew what organic farming was, beyond notoriously grueling work. Eric wished he could see this place through my eyes; I wished I could let him. Having just arrived from New York that morning, and having placed my stuff in a barn I'd be staying in for the next two nights, I felt rather bewildered, and in over my head. Bugtussle was a wildly foreign land to me.Frozen deeply in my thin, fragile frame, I made a futile chore of rubbing my gloves together while Eric turned off the solar-electric charger and crossed into the livestock's paddock. Chickens––dozens of them––were working hard below me, incredulous of the pasture's presumed emptiness, scratching through cow pies and lamb droppings with conviction. They weren't just free-range, these birds seemed to have no boundaries at all. The closest thing to it were a few mobile shacks they congregated around, gossiping. I didn't know much about chickens then, just that standing in that field amongst all those animals whose noises I'd been programmed to imitate on cue since I was two, and whose meats I'd eaten innumerable times, was the most familiar thing I didn't actually understand.There were two small paddocks set up adjacent to one another in the pasture. Eric was about to let the livestock out of one and into another, an act which seemed fully intuited by the animals. The ten or fifteen cattle he owned, and all the forty or fifty sheep, were neatly lined against the fence, heckling him. I watched in awe as he opened the gate and they all poured in en masse––a powerful sight. Watching the animals move in this miniature stampede awakened some primitive brand of nostalgia in my DNA, perhaps even Pavlovian. Instead of salivating though, my hands sweat, my heart raced, and my immediate impulse was to pull an arrow from my quiver––I felt like I'd seen a ghost.Once the livestock were in, we picked up the fence from their old paddock and began constructing the next one. Eric was telling me what to do and where to go and I was hustling to do and go effectively. Suddenly, I realized, we were working. Or more excitingly, was this strange act of picking up plastic, solar-electrified fence and setting it up in a large rectangle on the other side of the livestock an actual act of farming? Not only had I never farmed a day in my life, but in preparation for this trip back to Kentucky, I'd spent legitimate time wondering what even constituted farming. In theory, farming was just putting a seed in the ground and removing the results. I came to find out, farming was picking stuff up and moving it around. Eventually the food would pop out, but never before the sweat and tears. Eric called it the "materials-handling business." It was physical, then it was a miracle. Two or three times a day he'd repeat this livestock move. Every three days the chicken coops were pulled behind as an imitation of how birds would follow the bison in the prairies. It was a lot of work, but all part of a process to build better soil, so he could grow better food––that, it turned out, was farming.Bugtussle asked that every intern applicant do an on-farm visit. Eric had received my application, approved of it, and called me. In essence, this was my interview. Like a stage young chefs are required to do in professional kitchens––where they spend a day working in the kitchen as a sort of interview process––I was having to show I could work, physically and cooperatively. However, this stage was taking place in an environment so remarkably opposite the lifestyle I'd been living––not unlike most prospective interns, I assumed––I was barely able to tell if I was doing what I was asked, let alone doing it well.I decided to just put my head down, work and hope. I'd never farmed a day in my life, but I soon learned that was not what was important. What was important was the intern's willingness to work, his or her eagerness to learn. To get this job, it would turn out, it was more valuable to know how to work hard than to know what farming was.The year before, Eric had built accommodations in the barn resembling two small apartments stacked on top of each other, the lower half possessing a small wood-burning stove and desk, the top half a twin-sized mattress. With no electricity or running water in the barn, my space was just a bed, a desk, a heat source and a bucket with a toilet seat. That evening Eric showed me how to build a fire in the stove, or rather, he taught me. Somewhat embarrassingly, I'd lost any prior knowledge––if any existed––of how to maintain fires and tried my best to heed Eric's instructions. The weather was calling for mid-twenties by morning, and the sleeping bag I'd brought was nothing special. After the fire went out later that evening, and I made several failed attempts at resuscitating it, my sleeping bag proved this.In the morning I saw (and felt) my first hard freeze, but by noontime the day was friendlier. Cold though it was, the sun was out, and I was moving. Bugtussle was about 170 acres and, despite not having any idea what an acre looked like, I was still pretty sure I'd only seen a handful. So after we did some farm chores, we took a walking tour through the woods and pastures. Mostly I just listened, staring at the place in awe, completely captivated by Ira, the six-year-old, and his ability to rattle off names of trees and birds and plants as if they were action figures.When lunch came around, Cher, Eric's wife, opened up the cast iron dutch oven to reveal a roasted pork shoulder and sweet potatoes. They'd raised the pork and grown the sweet potatoes the previous year, just up the hill from where we were sitting. In front of each of the adults, Eric placed a wine glass and filled it with a bottle he'd snagged from the cellar as a treat––persimmon wine. He had made a bunch in a good persimmon year, and knowing my present profession, they were curious about what I thought––we all were.I'd never tasted wine I liked that wasn't made from grapes, so I was surprised when I couldn't tell the difference. It tasted undeniably like wine. More specifically, it tasted like grape wine––unctuous and mildly oxidized, like a dry German Riesling someone spilled Madeira into––yet, most importantly, made from persimmons and not grapes. In short (or in long if you count this whole book), I loved it. Here was country wine––farm wine––in the flesh, and like the sweet potatoes and pork we were eating, grown a short walk from the cabin. I'd feared most wines made without grapes were either sweet or bad, but here was proof refuting both. This wine––flaws and all––just tasted like wine.Frighteningly, this meant I had been correct in my assumption: wine didn't have to be grape wine to be a complex, enjoyable beverage. I had found a possible candidate for American champagne––and this was the right place to work, if they'd have me.