More grapes to be picked

I've been migrant farm labor for most of this month (in between performances at the nearby theater.)

The area in which I live is home to many Concord Grape vineyards as well as wine grape vineyards and wineries. My cousins have a large grape vineyard and pick grapes for many other area grape farmers. When we moved back to the area three years ago, I got drafted to help with the harvest.

So, for 14 of the 17 days this month, I've been helping pick grapes.

Now this is mechanized grape picking...none of that stuff with pruning shears and boxes. My cousing drives this great lumbering 35-year-old grape-picking machine which straddles the rows of grapes and proceeds to slap the grapes off the vines with little paddles. The machine catches these grapes, feeds them onto a conveyor and up and onto a chute which feeds into a bin being carried on another tractor (which I drive.) We can pick about 10 tons of grapes in an hour - two hours to fill the bins on a 20-ton semi. That sounds like a lot of grapes until you realize that the vineyard we're picking at now will probably have 300 tons of grapes this year. It's a great year for grapes here - a record year according to my cousins.

Anyway the grapes are put on a truck and sent to a plant in Coca Cola Pennsylvania to be used in Hi-C drink products. We've just found out the plant is to close for the season at the end of October and we've still got about 400-500 tons of grapes to pick - it sounds like there are going to be a lot of disappointed farmers who won't get their grapes harvested before the plant closes.