Harvesting in the dark

Most of the grapes out back have now been picked, either manually or mechanically. Both methods were on view yesterday. The days are hot and dry right now, so the growers have been starting each day very early in the morning, a good hour before sunrise. The harvesting machines are equipped with big lights. They remind me of the alien machines from "War of the Worlds," moving slowly but with determined precision.

A harvester in the vineyard parcel behind our house on Wednesday morning. The trailer is parked to the left.

When the on-board bins are full, the big machine pulls up to a waiting trailer and dumps the contents in. Once the trailer is full, a tractor takes it to the winery while the harvester continues to suck grapes off their stems in the vineyard.

As the sun rises, things become a little clearer. The trailer parked in the background is collecting hand-picked grapes.

 

The hand harvesters wait until sunrise so they can see what they're doing. Pickers clip the grape bunches off the vines and put them into a bucket. Other workers walk up and down the rows with a large bin on their shoulders. The pickers empty their buckets into the bin and the bin carrier takes it to a similar trailer parked at the end of the rows. The process continues until the parcel is harvested. It all ends in late morning, as the day's heat builds in.