Grape Picking
I’m a grape picker. It was interesting work. Not sure I could do it eight hours a day, but two or three in the morning seem fine, especially when you’re gifted with a bottle of wine. I did wonder how in the world they were going to pick the acres of grapes that remained, because I was pretty sure it would take hundreds of people to get the job done. Then I learned about the grape picking machine. It doesn’t really pick, however, it shakes, and the grapes oblige by falling off the vines. And now I know something I didn’t know before.
I guess that’s why you do new things, to learn something. I learned something else yesterday. Agricultural work is hard. I guess it’s why kids leave farms and go to the city because there you can sit at a desk in an airconditioned office and make a good living with time to yourself. When you’re on a farm you do what the animals and plants demand. Right now, the grapes are ready to come off the vine. They’re fat and full of sugar. So, we picked and this week the machine will pick and at some point later this year, we’ll have wine. There’s more to the sausage-making story than that simple explanation, but those are the high points.
And while I’d like to think I’ve moved on and become more sophisticated than my rural ancestors, the truth is something else. In a bit, when I’m finished here, I’ll go water my plants, and I’ve already fed the cats and put out the bird feeder. In a sense, I guess you could say, I’m still living the life of my ancestors and their agricultural ways. I move to the rhythms of the growing world. And the more I think about it there is a nice sense of fulfillment that goes with the job and that’s probably a large part of its appeal. It’s a well defined world, with precise expectations, and a nice sense that you know what to expect out of things.