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As I walked, I checked some of the areas the volunteers had been working to ensure the vines had been cleaned up. Volunteers had been coming in because I couldn’t hire anyone yet without knowing that we could make the money back on sales. It was a trade-off I wasn’t entirely pleased with, but one that Cameron insisted on. Thankfully, there were groups at the local community college that got us in touch with volunteers who would come in and do the work just for the sake of experience. Some of them had been doing such a good job, I was contemplating hiring them when we got approval.
I wound my way through the grounds, checking vines and occasionally making a note in the tiny notebook that I carried with me at all times. About halfway back to the main building, a dog I was pretty sure belonged to one of Noah’s guys joined me. They were working on a building just off the main series, and occasionally a dog would be on the grounds with them, providing a new furry friend to go meet and pet.
The dog ran ahead a little and seemed to be highly interested in a vine, and when I got up to it, I searched to see if it was noticing something human eyes couldn’t see so easily. Nothing seemed to stick out, but I noted where we were in the field and wrote it down in the notebook, prepared to come back and check after the inspector left.
My thoughts turned to how nice it would be to have a vineyard dog. Maybe not one that would live at the house and compete with Simon for attention and love on lazy weekends in front of the TV, but one that could be with me while I walked the fields and kept me company during work hours. Being able to protect the fields when others were asleep or otherwise occupied would be helpful too. I decided I’d talk to my brothers about it later on.
The buildings were close, and I pulled out my phone to check the time. It was still morning, but getting closer to noon, so I picked up the pace a bit. When the dog peeled off by the back side of the newer building, I figured it had rejoined its human and shrugged. It had been nice having company while it lasted.
I finished the walk through the area without company and only stopped a few more times. The sun was getting higher in the sky, and I realized I needed to go ahead and get inside if I was going to beat the grape inspector in the door. It was imperative to make a good impression, and the last grape inspector had been a real bear to work with. If it were still the same person, I knew being late would only exacerbate how difficult he could be. That would make getting cleared to serve our own wine extremely difficult and time-consuming.
Reaching the main building, where the restaurant and the offices were, I ducked inside the back door. It was still dark inside that part of the building. That meant I could sneak in undetected and hopefully make it past the kitchen and into the area with the offices without alerting anyone and making it look like I had been there a while.
There was a storage room just off the hall from where I was, and I ducked inside. Taking the sneakers off my neck, I untied them and replaced my boots with them. Without a mirror, I decided to take out my phone and use the camera to make sure I looked presentable and not like I had been out in the field doing last-minute fixes, even if it was exactly what I had been doing.
As I opened the storage room door to head back out, I tried to figure out where everyone was. Derek was most likely in the restaurant already, even though we hadn’t opened for lunch services during the week yet. He always made it in early to test new dishes or to just generally prepare himself for service. Noah had a house job he was working on a good bit away from the vineyard that day. That meant that when I got into the offices, I was only planning on seeing Cam and Alex.
Cameron would likely be in the same room as Alex, both bent over a computer and doing something technical and utterly boring to me. My attention was reserved fully for the crop and the wine that could be produced from it. Keeping up with social media and restaurant technology just wasn’t something that interested me. Though Alex had helped me integrate some new systems in the fields, the tech work on the other side of things was of no interest to me.
