For Celia, at Rickety Bridge harvest
time held other problems. It is traditional that the grapes must all be picked
before Easter and temperatures at that time of the year can be high and
unsuitable for grape storage and processing. Before the Tonkins built the new
cellar, the old cellar’s cooling system was anything but perfect and had to be
supported on hot days by whatever ice could be made or acquired. Celia
remembers sending the bakkie to Paarl to collect bags of ice, half of which had
melted by the time the bakkie returned.
The
pipes laid for irrigation had not been buried but were lying on the surface and
as they sweated in the night the moisture attracted small animals that gnawed
the pipes, making repairs to the lines an ongoing feature of life at Rickety
Bridge until the pipes were safely buried.
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