vendredi 25 octobre 2013

The day after the harvest

"Aaahhh," I screamed to my husband from the bedroom, "I can't move, help me!"

This was me the day after I picked grapes for a vineyard near Bordeaux. Today I'm going to tell you about the reality of grape picking.

There are loads of people with romantic views of coming to France and spending a few weeks getting "back to the basics" by participating in a grape harvest. The reality of the work is very different from the image these people have in their minds. How do I know this? I was one of these people.

Most of the work is done by family, interns who are paid next to nothing, immigrants from developing countries, or people who are "experts" at this kind of work - people who are used to physical labour and toiling in the fields.

Looks so innocent, doesn't it? Author of photo: Den Nation.


There are opportunities for tourists to experience picking grapes during a harvest, but let me tell you something: make sure that the owners are aware that you are a newbie and don't ever try to work as fast and as hard as the "experts". The wine chateau will have their own employees, either the immigrants as seasonal labour or the "experts". I find that the chateaux are not hiring immigrants like they used to: they prefer cheap interns or free help from their family or friends. There are also tons of wineries around Bordeaux looking to hire labourers, but my feeling is that they want to hire skilled labourers (the "experts") not immigrants who are just passing through. This is probably because technology has erased the need for the immigrants doing manual picking; the chateaux need skilled labourers that know how to handle machinery.

Please don't do what I did:

Me: "There's nothing to this, of course I can keep up with the "experts".

Me the next day: "What was I thinking..."

The experience is wonderful, but this is the reality: it is back-breaking work, you will be dirty, the sun will burn you, and your muscles will scream in pain the next day.

At the end of the day I felt fine. I laughed all though the evening with my fellow workers during the dinner at the chateau. I declared that I had never felt better. Haha!

You know how you feel the day after having done some strenuous exercise after a long break? You know the pulling and burning in your muscles that you feel that make walking uncomfortable? Well, the day after I picked graped I felt that. I felt like that times a hundred.

It was the worst muscle pain I had ever felt. So bad that I physically couldn't get out of bed. I went to move my legs and was doubled over with pain. I crawled on the floor to get to the bathroom in the mornings and it took 5 minutes to crawl a few metres. My legs were the worst, so I would use my arms to pull myself on the floor and drag my legs behind. It even hurt just to move my head to the right 5cm. And you know how that pain you feel after exercising lasts a day or two? Well, this lasted 10 days. I'm not kidding, I dragged myself around the house for at least a week.

The moral of the story? Don't be like me and assume that anyone can pick grapes. It's a great experience, but it's not for everybody. You have to start at the crack of dawn as grapes are best picked when it is cooler outside. You work the entire day because when the harvest has to come in, it has to be done ASAP. 10 hour days are not uncommon. A grape harvest is an extremely intensive and delicate operation, one where timing counts for everything. I had these thoughts of spending the day outside under the sun eating the grapes while I worked, talking with the others, admiring the grapes while I picked them, taking the time to breath in the fresh vineyard air... Yeah, right.

The "experts" are like robots - they are so fast you can't even see them picking. I wanted to be just like them, to be part of the gang.

My neighbour works at a wine chateau. She gets up everyday at the crack of dawn and spends the day doing what she loves. This involves a lot of physical activity, but she is used to this and is very athletic to begin with so has little problems with the physical aspect of the job. Being a woman in this industry makes everything harder, but she has such motivation and she works even harder.

Me? I had these ideas of doing some harvest work every year to pick up a little bit of extra money. Who was I kidding?! There's not an athletic bone in this padded body of mine!

I think I'll just to stick to doing what I do best...

Drinking wine!

Cheers! Author of photo: Den Nation.

15 commentaires:

  1. Poor you! Try some "baume du tigre" on your tired muscles. It helps.

    Nantes is a vineyard region but I have always avoided doing the harvest for either money or fun because I have always heard it was a back-breaking exercise. In fact, every year, there are stories of locals not being able to find help for harvest because folks rarely sign up for it twice once they experience it.

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. This was a few years ago - I learned my lesson back then and haven't been back since.

      Whenever I think about signing to actually earn money from picking grapes I think back to my experience as a volunteer. Can you imagine if I had to get up at 5 AM on the 2nd day of work (considering how I felt the day after) and drag myself to work? It wouldn't be physically possible!

      Supprimer
  2. Ten days? Wow - even skiing isn't as bad as that! And just a heads up: you probably don't want to read my next blog post ...

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Seriously, I have never had such bad muscle pain as I had the week after I participated in the wine harvest. I used to practice and teach tae kwon do for several hours every week and that was nothing compared to what I felt after the wine harvest!

      I can't wait to see the next post! I'm dying to know...

      Supprimer
  3. As someone who spent his summers working on a farm growing up I find this romanticism of farming intriguing. I love farming. In my early twenties I strongly considered becoming a farmer. But it is a hard life. Getting up at 5 am and doing more work by 9 am then you do almost an entire normal day. Your lively hood is at the whim of mother nature. You hope for rain, but no too much rain and not at the wrong times :) But then you get that great sense of satisfaction at the end of the day when you can look out at a field of growing plants and think, I did that. So I guess I do understand the romanticism.

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. I definitely can understand wanting to get "back to our roots". But I think that people have gotten used to working sedentary jobs and they just don't have what it takes anymore to do physical labour. That is certainly the case for me. I guess what bugs me is that people rave about participating in wine harvests, but they don't realise how hard this work is day in and day out. One day is fine, but doing this every day?

      Supprimer
  4. Nope. Not my thing. I love grapes, I love wine, but I don't like hard physical labour. Sorry you felt so sore afterwards!

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Ce commentaire a été supprimé par l'auteur.

      Supprimer
    2. I had no idea that I was going to be so sore the day after. I always heard the stories about wine picking being back-breaking work, but I naively and stupidly though, "Nah, that won't happen to me, I'm careful." Yeah, right.

      Supprimer
  5. Whoah! I think I would have died!!!! That sounds incredibly tough. You were brave to try!!

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. I got talked into it by friends...

      I couldn't believe how sore I was afterwards. It was so bad, I couldn't even bring myself to stand straight without wincing.

      I do things really slowly and meticulously. I put all this pressure on myself to pick as fast as the others. If I had just worked at my regular slow pace, I wouldn't have been in such a bad way afterwards.

      Supprimer
  6. I always used to think it would be fun to participate in a wine harvest, and then I heard about how exhausting and back-breaking the work is. Needless to say, I haven't done it yet. Though from time to time I do feel the temptation, but I know better at this point!

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Yes, it really was that bad for me. I still think you should do it, though. You just need to find a harvest that is mostly volunteer-based, that way there's little pressure. After my experience, there is no way I would try and get paid for picking. I would probably be fired within the hour.

      Supprimer
  7. I would so be like you and assume there is not much to picking grapes! What makes it so difficult? Not all are eligible to be picked? And what was so strenuous that killed you the next day? Was it the hunching over? I know, so many questions but I'm curious!

    Sounds like you earned your dinner and champagne! What a great experience nonetheless! It does sound romantic.. : )

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. It's just that you are bent over all day and in strange positions. The height of the grapevines is at the most inconvenient position for picking work. And then when you see the fast "Experts" you want to be like them and try to be fast.

      With the kind of picking I did we had to fast and pick everything. Maybe I would consider picking work again if I could pick grapes covered in botrytis cinerea, a type of mushroom that develops on sweet wine grapes. These grapes are ususally picked selectively. I would love to see how that works.

      It was a great experience, that's for sure, but physically I don't think I could do it again. It was great to meet the team, work outside for the day, have an inside look at the business, and drink to the meal at night with my work mates. I could never do it more than a day.

      Supprimer