We spent the weekend helping our relatives from the neighboring village place baggies over grapes...this will ensure that the grapes are blemish-free and fetch a high price at the market. A bunch of thick-skinned sweet grapes with seeds will sell from $7-$15 USD during the harvest season. I don't care for them myself, because they have been sprayed and the skins are so thick, you need to peel the grapes to eat them and then spit out the seeds- it doesn't leave much to eat!
We get together with relatives and neighbors to do this monotonous chore, looking forward to little breaks where we sit under the vines and eat sweets and drink tea. On a sunny afternoon, working under the plastic was sweltering so we welcomed the thunderstorm today which brought torrents of cold rain to the hillside.
My aunts are all about 5' tall, so for them, they have to look up and reach up to tie the baggies on the vines. For my husband and me, (we are 5'9"), it is a matter of squatting below the vines and trying to find headroom! My neck isn't sore but my hands are aching!
We had lunch at the uncle's house who owns the vines. My tongue was pierced by a fish bone and I had to try to conceal my pain because I didn't want to admit that I was foolish enough to eat a fish bone (I swear Japanese people can filet fish with chopsticks like a cat). I also ate something akin to a sea worm - I have eaten just about everything imaginable but I don't think I've eaten this thing before. It looked just like an earthworm boiled in soy sauce...imagine that...and tasted kind of meaty. Our uncle's farmhouse kitchen has not been cleaned since WWII. It is so encrusted with gunk and filth that I could hardly keep my lunch down...and I am very tolerant. They are hard-working good people and I love them. They can grow anything! But keeping house? That's something not high on their list of to-do's.
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