Dear Desmond,

I've come up with a wonderful addition to your visitor guide of out-of-the-ordinary ways to spend a week in our region. As you know, I'm away from the office for a month. I decided to try grape harvesting as a seasonal hand at a vineyard in the Niagara area. Can you picture me cutting bunches of grapes from dawn onward? This was not what I first had in mind, but I spotted a few small cards for pickers tacked to a board in a coffee shop, and I thought it was worth a try. I will confess I was a little uneasy, since the work could hardly be more different from my usual editing job.