Winemaker, Wayne, and his 12-year-old daughter, Natasha, each wrote about their own experiences as farmers and winemakers. Below is Natasha’s version…
A lot of people love a certain thing about their job. For me it’s blending wines. In my opinion blending wines is not about checking the sugar levels or the ounces of alcohol it has. To me it is about creating something new, something different that people can enjoy. Adding flavor to flavor, spice to sweet, I feel as if I did something that only I could do: To make our beautiful new flavor burst inside someone’s mouth and have our hard work make the people pause for one moment and think about what it took to make that single drop of sun shine that came out of their bottle and into their glass.
Another thing I enjoy is taking pride in every single groaning branch and laughing leaf that my family has. I love nature, I don’t believe that not one of you readers has not fallen in love with one of Nature’s wonders – I believe one of you at one point stood and thought “wow” to a symphony of trees or canyons. That is what I feel every day that I see, smell, feel, or work the land that I’m proud to call my family’s.
Not only does our natural beauty that is named Youngberg Hill make me proud, but it inspires me. You see I love to read and write fantasy novels, and this place creates a lot of my settings in the books I write. When it rained, snowed, and shined here, in my mind I created small settings for any story that I could write.
This is my book of inspiration, and as my teacher would say, the setting is only the first chapter.
Something I’m looking forward to:
A lot of kids can’t wait to get and drive in their first car. Well I can wait, but what I can’t wait for is to learn to drive our tractor.
Unlike most girls I don’t focus on girly stuff. Some kids are like me; one of my friends is even more tomboy than me. But that is not the point. I want to learn to drive the tractor because then I can help more with my family’s work. I can help load the crates at harvest, (one of my favorite times of the year) and help with the driveway when it snows. It would be so important to me just to do more of anything around my home.
