No lights....no camera....no action!

I'm afraid to admit that today's post is more like history rather than news - it should have been written several days ago. We have been almost completely without power for the last two and a half days - no phones, no fax, no computers, no e-mail- in other words, at peace with the world. I therefore apologise to those of you who may have been trying to contact us. I simply should have warned you beforehand, rather than after the event.

So this is how it came about:

I think I may have mentioned last September (during our harvest), that we were having fun and games with our electrical supply - we simply did not have sufficient power to meet the demand of all our equipment. It was almost a case of turning off one appliance in order to be able to supply another! The problem, we were told, was in the Bodega itself - our poor old wiring system was just not up to the job, and it was clear that something needed to be done to avoid a repeat this year.

Although the job was planned some time ago, we have, believe it or not, been waiting for a window in the weather. The electricians needed to run a new cable into the Bodega from an outside junction box, and I am reliably informed that electricity and rain water is not a good combination.....

This week the sun has come out, which was not only good for our electrics, but much more importantly might have helped to save the flowering, which to date has been struggling in the poor conditions. Using our 'agricultural calculator' we have worked out that this will almost certainly result in a late harvest (around the end of September).