Death of the Vendage

The vendage, grape harvest, is wrapping up now.

This weekend, our neighbor Bernard walked over to say "hello" to my husband and me while we were in our front walnut grove picking up nuts. Bernard is Therese's son and works at Airbus overseeing the writing of the flight manuals. He comes up to visit his mother every other weekend.

While we were chatting, a tractor with a steel grape wagon attached went speeding by on our narrow road. We all commented on how reckless the unknown man was driving.

Bernard is one of the younger neighbors, not yet 50. He mentioned that it was very sad for him to witness the demise of the vendage as he knew it. Bernard told us that it used to be, up until very recently, that the grapes were cut by hand, and that all the community participated in the event . . . men, women, children. When the harvest was finished, the owners of the vineyards would host abundant dinners. As Bernard put it, "there was much happiness."

When we arrived in 2001, many vineyards were still harvesting their grapes by hand; but within the past four years, all of the harvesting has been mechanized. And the parties are gone too. My husband and I were lucky enough to experience one.

I guess there isn't much to celebrate when one man on a noisy machine finishes harvesting all the grapes in a field in less than an hour.

If the vendage is gone, then Romantic France is gone. I try desperately to cling to it's ghost with my chickens, sheep and walnuts.