Harder than I thought!

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Last weekend we had a bit of a get-together with a couple of ‘Mum’ friends and their daughters (two each), so with the four of us there were ten of us altogether. Since we have so many grapes I thought pressing some to make juice might be a fun group activity (plus of course easier with many hands than just doing it myself). I managed to hire a pasteuriser from a local community group and imagined we could all do a bit of preparation while having a chat, sitting on the patio in the sunshine, and then after an hour or two we could do something different. Of course it didn’t work out that way. The younger girls thought it was the best fun to climb the ladder and cut down the bunches of grapes; they were piling up the bunches faster than we could provide trays to fill. That left the adults stripping the grapes from stalks, and once we’d got to a certain amount I was sent scurrying back and forth with pans and bottles, with no time to chat because they were filling containers as fast as I could empty them! By mid afternoon the others had to leave and were glad to go home for a rest! So it wasn’t quite such a relaxing, social activity as I had thought it would be, and we didn’t get any time to do anything else. We did get more than 20 bottles of juice to share out though, and of course the others were also sent home with as many bags of grapes as they could manage. We’ll have to meet up again for something a bit more relaxing! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.