Harvest time, part 2

Yesterday, I left the farm where I spent almost two weeks helping harvest grapes and begin the preparations of organic juice and wine from the year's grape harvest. It was such an intense experience that it seemed much longer, however. Our host's passion for biodynamic methods and small-scale production were quite inspiring -- I would highly enourage anyone with an interest in spending some time in France in the autumn to look up The Domaine des Grottes in Beaujolais!

It was interesting to see the range of people involved in the harvest. For the traditional (non-organic) growers, some of the harvesting is done mechanically now. But most of it is done by hand -- mostly by 20-something workers, many of whom travel by caravan or truck from seasonal worksite to site. Their work days are much longer than the shifts I put in as a "WOOFer", finished each evening by a gathering in the parking lot of the local farm cooperative -- relaxing with cheap bottles of wine; the tradition is to make a wish before spending your cork flying into the crowd. On the one evening I dropped in with the friend of one of our hosts, there were probably 200 young people sitting in the parking lot. It was quite the scene.

Back on our organic farm, it was a smaller crowd, and a bit less rowdy, although the wine did free quite flowly -- a perk of helping out at a vineyard!

A few pictures follow:
-the beautiful "grappes" of "raisins" that we searched for
-pressing grapes by foot -- a first stage to bring out liquid
-preparing juice for filtering pasteurization with my lovely fellow WOOFers -- a British couple & a South African woman
-and various states of relaxation with our fellow pickers
-it's our host Romain who is playing the piano out in the vineyard, just as we finished the harvest on the last day -- a yearly tradition on their farm!