In the land of the little people

On Tuesday, the farm was invaded by 120 schoolchildren, ages six to thirteen. They were here for a field trip to learn a little bit about farm life.

One of the initial activities was to take the children out into the fields to pick grapes.
Rowan and I had to keep the kids in two rows of dolcetto. We had harvested most of these grapes a week ago, but we kept the two rows for this particular visit. But the kids kept wanting to run and pick the bountiful barbera grapes, which were just a row over, and won't be harvested for another week. This was mildly annoying.

After we picked the grapes, we served lunch. This was quite chaotic.After lunch, I pressed the grapes the old-fashioned way. We used a slatted wood barrel to hold the grapes, and then pressed them down with a bar attached to a threaded metal rod. I had to walk around in circles to press the grapes. This seemed to fascinate the kids.
I then loosened the grapes and pressed them another two times to get all of the juice out of them. Then, I took the barrel apart to remove the grapes.The grapes were compressed very tightly, and held the shape of the barrel.
Rowan helped with a demonstration of how we would turn the juice into jelly.
We took the juice inside and boiled it in a large cauldron. It probably wasn't a cauldron, exactly, but that's what I'm going to call it.This both sterilized the juice, and dissolved the various jelly ingredients. Some of the kids helped bottle it, and each child got to take home a little jar of jelly.

Then, thankfully, they left. The day was exhausting, but somewhat fun. However, I think dealing with 120 kids is a pretty effective form of birth control. Maybe the government should look into this.