In Georgia, when the grapes are ready, everyone gathers together, finding whatever knives they can (this time I had a butter knife), hops in the pick-up and heads to the vineyard for the grape harvest, picking up a few contract laborers along the way. The going rate for grape-picking from dawn (a loose term in Georgia, which is more like noon) to dusk is 10 Georgian Lari (GEL) (approximately $8) plus lunch. If you think grape-picking is fluffy work, think again.
I started my day at an early hour, rising with the sun (as I had been told that we would get going early), excited to participate in the famous “rtveli” (the grape harvest) (the “r” is essentially silent, but I was chastised a bit by a cute 6-foot 6-inch tall man when I wrote “tveli”). Such enthusiasm was quickly stifled by the family: instead, my mother-in-law wanted to ease slowly into the day with a few cups of thick Turkish coffee (called “nalekiani kava”) and the men were bustling around the farm trying to arrange wine barrels (never mind that they could have done this any time in the past few days that we were hanging around wondering what to do), as if it were a surprise that rtveli had actually come.
After drinking coffee with Irina and changing my clothes a few times to accomplish just the right temperature regardless of the work-load or position of the sun, I saw the men pile into the truck. Excitement was mine! Thinking we were finally on our way, I headed toward the truck, but quickly learned that it was a false alarm: they first needed to find (borrow) a scale for weighing the grapes. Again, something that might have been done in one of the previous leisurely days spent on the farm was saved for the day of the harvest. Perhaps it makes things more fun when you don’t know whether you’ll be able to weigh or store the pick. I’m not sure - I have yet to embrace that mentality.
It doesn’t get me down, however, because I then had a small chance to write some thoughts on paper (in secret of course, because if I was caught philosophizing in any way, my pen would be swept from my hand and I would be made to sit and watch while everyone else bustled around the farm (because I was the new bride, they would expect me to “relax”)). So I retired up to my room, saying that I had a few things to do there while we waited for the men to find a scale. Meanwhile, the women cooked and gossiped about people they knew and bills they had to pay.
Babo (G’s grandmother) is the only other person without much to do any more - sitting in her wheelchair and watching the world go by. Her daily fun consists of whacking at the small puppy and cat with a stick when they start to banter. Her wide toothless smile and twinkling eyes when she makes them jump make it easier to forgive the not-so-animal-friendly behavior. Once, to add some excitement to the day, she released her wheelchair brake and rolled down the driveway heading straight for the garden fence. I caught her about ½ inch before her front wheel hit the curb. Furrowed brows for the family were lost when we looked at her laughing face and realized that she had done it on purpose: she was quite satisfied with the bustle she was still able to produce.
An indefinite amount of time later, the men finally found a scale - ancient and rusted through, but they had been assured that it worked nonetheless. Then, and only then, they kicked into gear, hurrying me up to go as if they’d been waiting for me all morning. I rushed around to gather my things and took my seat in the back of the truck, thinking I would be polite and let the others sit in front. However, I didn’t realize the sheer number of people who would be crammed into the truck’s cab and bed. I realized how fortunate I was as a female because I was allowed (actually made) to ride in the cab - smashed between the wall of the truck and my mother-in-law not unlike a sardine waiting for the canning seal. Being the owner (a loose term at best) of the truck, and therefore the driver, G was also inside the cab. The rest of the men rode in the bed with the scale, buckets and bags.
On the way to the vineyard (about a 15 minute ride from the house), we stop and greet friends and friends of friends and relatives of friends and friends of friends of friends on the road. We ask them all if they’re interested in helping us, and some take us up on the offer, run back into their house to grab their buckets, and hop into the truck (women inside, men outside). When we finally make it to the vineyard, having taken much longer than the 15 minutes due to the greeting factor, everyone piles out, knife in hand and wonders where to start.
To harvest grapes by hand, two people must work either side of one row, helping to spot the grapes on each other’s side. Aunt Dali has the greatest work ethic of anyone in the family and she watches the men, bucket in hand, waiting with a twinkle in her eye for her husband to finish what he’s doing and walk down to begin the row with her. Irina notices that I’m ready to get some work done and grabs my hand to take me down another row.
Nugzari (Dali’s husband), however, has different ideas about how to begin the harvest. First and foremost, wine from last year’s harvest must be drunk to toast this year’s harvest, always pouring some into the earth where the vines grow for libation. I cannot tell a lie, getting me to join the wine-drinking is never very difficult. I joined right in for the fun. We toasted last year’s harvest, this year’s harvest, each other’s health and God. Not necessarily in that order.
We had forgotten the glasses. But because wine and fun were the most important aspects of the day, we improvised: using a dull knife, George cut the top off of a spare water bottle to make two drinking vessels and we toasted with jagged pale blue plastic glasses, each taking our turn. The wine tasted just as sweet.
After a few glasses of wine and libation pouring, the picking began. Irina was my partner for the row and she was an expert, whizzing down the row with years of experience, spotting grapes growing near the ground in the grass on my side like a pro. The brambles were thick and it took me a while to get the hang of spotting the elusive grapes, but my eyes and the rest of my senses adjusted and before the end of the day I was doing quite well myself. Except for the headache. Note to self: do not consume 3 glasses of wine without eating anything in close proximity and then proceed to do hard labor in the sun. Next time I’ll know better!
The picking gets left to the women except for a few brave men who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. And they do get dirty: grape vine sap combined with the juice from accidentally crushed grapes creates a clear tar-like substance that smears easily on human skin but is irremovable without clean water (not available en mass in the middle of a field) and continues to build up all over the hands and under the nails as the day goes on. In addition to dirty hands, we also acquire sore backs and fingers from repetitive motion. I imagine the opportunity for chatting might alleviate some of the pain, but alas, my propensity for such things is minimal, especially when it requires the extra effort to translate before speaking. Hence, my main goal quickly became getting the work done as fast as possible. Efficiency was the name of my game. Descendant of the German American farmers that I am.
Efficiency, however, is not a concept easily embraced by the Georgians. In fact, there is no direct translation for the word (we’ve spent many a long hour trying to find one). The Georgians prefer to work at a steady pace and take frequent breaks. Generally the men do this break-taking much more often than the women (cigarettes are the main culprit). In fact, more likely than not, the men will eventually find themselves simply hanging out near the truck all together, smoking, and discussing strategy while waiting for the grapes to be delivered to them for weighing on the ancient scale and loading onto the truck.
In a perfect picking world, when we’ve filled a bucket, we’re supposed to yell vedrebi” (meaning “buckets”), and one of the men is then supposed to rush down our row with empty buckets, drop them at our feet and rush back down the row to the truck with our full buckets where the grapes can continue on their journey. However, like many other male/female scenarios you might be able to envision, as the hours wore on, calls for vedrebi were less and less answered. The non-smoking man (there was one) ended up running buckets while the smokers stayed at the truck to “weigh the grapes”.
At one point in the day, some Azerbaijani men appeared in one of the rows of grapes offering to trade a bucket of mutton for two buckets of grapes. Not a bad trade for meat eaters picking grapes. George leapt at the deal and lunch (which originally consisted of leftover stew, bread, tomatoes and pasta) suddenly held new excitement for the non-vegetarian pickers.
Looking forward to another party opportunity, Nugzari headed to the picnic area and began stripping tree branches to make skewers for the mutton. I jumped at the chance to wash my hands and headed toward the truck and picnic area to make myself useful. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure how, plates and silverware appeared, food and people migrated to the table, and bowls overflowing with fresh meat cooked over grapevine coals found the hungry stomachs of the grape-picking crew. And of course, there was more wine. This time, I passed on the wine and drank a few glasses of water instead.
Getting back to picking was easier than I had imagined: we were just about half way through with our goal for the day (4 tons) and the sun was making its way into the lower half of the sky. My continued efforts to speed things along would have made my mother proud, but fell on deaf ears in the Georgian countryside. Perhaps it has something to do with the weather or maybe the crop itself. Although their actual stress level is likely the same as other poor farmers all over the world, Georgian vintners appear to enjoy life every step of the way, never rushing a task or dinner party.
My favorite afternoon undertaking became the black grape harvest. It was my job and my job only. Never having been much of a team player, I was relieved to finally be on my own where my thoughts could play without interruption. I also had the added bonus of being able to work through rows that had been picked already, making me feel doubly efficient. Walking down the rows with a bucket in either hand, free from the crowd, I hunted the black grapes that had been left behind for a separate pick and to make my favorite black wine. They came in small patches, one vine here, another there, throughout the huge vineyard. I found the black grapes with ease and even caught many good bunches of pink grapes that had been overlooked. Again, feeling doubly efficient.
Being outside the crowd, a call of “vedrebi” really fell on deaf ears, so I had to carry my own buckets. Good exercise, but tough work for someone who had only eaten some bread and a tomato earlier in the day (the stew and pasta had meat). Not to mention the 3 cups of wine that began the day. Hence, I, too, would spend some time at the truck with the weighing men, helping them with their tasks. I thought up many solutions to time-consuming problems they faced with the grape weigh, pack and transfer, but something got lost in translation when I tried to explain. They were likely relieved when I’d take my empty buckets and traipse back down another row taking my ideas about efficiency with me.
Only once did I require assistance with my black grape task: when I came upon the bees. If you know me, you know that I’m not a flighty person when it comes to being around other living creatures, and in fact, have been known to don protective netting and gloves and even harvest honey myself. However, when it came to repeatedly plunging my sap-covered hand into a bramble of vines and grasses to pull out multiple bunches of grapes, each of which had approximately one bee per grape, not perched, but almost submerged into the grape’s flesh, obviously enjoying its newfound treasure, I hesitated. If it had been only one bunch, I would have left it for the bees. But the bees had apparently just found this particular vine’s grapes and had taken control of the whole vine. Knowing what I know about nature, it wasn’t difficult for me to deduce that this vine’s grapes must be exceptionally tasty, given the bees’ preference for it. I knew I had to get those grapes. I called for help and Irina was there in a flash. She took one look at the grapes, one look at me, gave a little laugh, tossed her head and plunged both hands into the brambles to pull out the grapes. Nary a sting. Truly amazing. She had all of the grapes off the vine within seconds, gave me another little look similar to the grinning look she gives me when she catches me philosophizing, and went back to her own buckets, leaving me to wonder in amazement at her expertise.
Eventually (when dusk came), the men put down their cigarettes and pitched in to pick the last of the grapes. By the time we finished picking, the sun had gone down and we had to load the last of the grapes onto the pickup truck by the setting sun’s afterglow. When we finally got the truck loaded, we piled in fast and headed for home: there was still much work to do back at the farm. We decided not to stop at the harvest church and party house (a place where thanking God and drinking wine are really one in the same) on the way back because of the late hour. Instead, we drove the workers and their buckets home for the night, finally arriving at our own home, where we needed to crush the grapes.
After efforts to make the electricity work so we could have some light, we hauled buckets of grapes to the crank-handle grape crusher perched on top of the huge wine barrel. When one barrel would fill, we would move the crusher to another and begin again. We filled one large oak barrel and two small ones with one ton of grapes and sold the other three tons to a buyer in town.
It was a banner harvest. In one day, we picked 22 one-hundred-meter rows, yielding four tons of grapes. No one could decide whether the good fortune was due to my entry into the family or last year’s “rolling”. Georgian tradition holds that at the end of every harvest, you must take someone believed to be or have good luck and roll them around in the vineyard to ensure a good harvest for the next year. Last year, they rolled George’s niece Tatuli. This year, they talked about rolling me, but that fun was forgotten when the sun went down. I was happy not to be rolled. That night, we all slept well.
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