Harvest: A Haiku

Four days and not done.
Averaging eleven hours
a day. Help me, God.

No really. Life's crazy right now. We had an early frost the night of Sept. 30 that wiped out most of the vines and the frost the following night took care of the rest. So now it's a race to harvest all of the grapes before they rot on the vine - or otherwise degrade. Personally, I've done little harvesting. I've done plenty of distributing empty picking bins to workers and picking up said bins when full... as well as even more destemming, crushing, pressing and pressure washing the bejesus out of all of the equipment in between each of those steps. It's been a long, taxing process, but I've been on auto pilot for the last 2 days or so. We'll be done soon... (right?) Plus I get to eat tons and tons of delicious grapes. (Wine grapes are like the kind you get at the store... only way sweeter and way better!) You haven't lived 'til you've taken a full cluster, lowered it in its entirety into your mouth and pulled of every single berry, slowly crushing them all with your entire mouth, juice dribbling down your chin... (Counterpoint: pressure washing tanks in the dark with a cold, dry wind blowing all the water onto your bare face and hands, extracting all of the warmth from your body totally sucks.)