The grape season is the happiest of the year. It begins late in July and reaches well on towards the rainy season, the first of November, or possibly even to the first of December. It includes the time for ripe figs, pomegranates, quinces and almonds. Comparatively few of the grapes are turned into wine except on foreign initiative. The Jewish colonies that have come into the country make considerable wine. A native spirit called ‛araḳ is made from refuse grapes. A grape molasses, dibs, is made. The fresh fruit is consumed in large quantities. Donkeys loaded with box panniers of grapes go as far as Jaffa, thirty-five miles from the grape regions. Hebron and Râm Allâh are famous for their grapes. Râm Allâh is ten miles north of Jerusalem, and Hebron (el-Khalîl) nearly twice as far south of the city. The Jerusalem market is kept abundantly supplied with fresh grapes from these two places. Whole families go to live in the vineyards during the season of ripening grapes.
A very important manufacture from grapes is the raisin. The business is growing and the raisins are exported from the country through Jaffa. The grapes, when picked from the vines, are washed, given a bath in a mixture of lye-water and olive-oil, and then spread out on a cleanly swept space of ground. The lye makes the skins tender and the oil tends to keep off insects. The siroccos of September are of great assistance in raisin making, though not at all good for the unpicked grapes, as they are apt to turn them into raisins on the vines. The favorite raisin of the country is that made from the little seedless variety of grapes from es-Salṭ, east of the Jordan. These grapes go by the name banât eshshams, that is, daughters of the sun. The next in favor are those of Hebron, where the larger varieties of grapes, reddish and white, are raised, and where the raisin making has been carried on for some time. Third in quality, perhaps, come the raisins of the Râm Allâh district, including Jifnâ, Bîr ez-Zayt, Silwâd, etc., where the industry has but made a beginning. In this district the grapes are usually greenish white or white, that is, somewhat similar to the Malaga variety. Native business men of Râm Allâh go about the district paying from two cents to three cents a pound for the raisins, subject to a discount of ten per cent for waste. The German contractors provide wooden boxes for packing the raisins. Women and girls are engaged to sort them, as they are brought into Râm Allâh from the country around, at a daily wage of from seven to twelve cents. Something less than a third of a cent a pound is paid for camel transport to Jaffa, to which must be added the charges at that port. On board ship the German contractors pay for the completed consignment about three cents a pound, possibly a little more. The native vine owners think that they are discovering that the early picking of the grapes for raisin making prevents waste and saves the strength of the vines.
After the season the vines should be pruned and the vineyards plowed and dug over, once in early and once in late winter.[[150]]
In vineyards and fig-orchards one will notice the stone huts called ḳaṣr,[[151]] plural ḳuṣûr. Between seasons, when they are not in use, they swarm with hungry fleas. Near each of them is a tiny sunken pit, walled on three sides, which makes a little fireplace. A similar pocket makes a hiding-place for dry figs which are left here under slight pressure beneath a flat stone. The latter place is made to look like the ground about by covering with small stones so as to mislead thieves. Such a hiding-place is called a mikhba. Most of the fig crop is dried for later use. The smaller varieties are most suitable for this purpose. The fruit is picked into small baskets and spread out on the ground. Sometimes the fruit is crushed by the hand to hasten the drying.
The olive crop is ready late in the autumn. The trees are beaten[[152]] with long poles by the men, while women and children gather up the berries from the ground. Seldom is care exercised to select and sort the best of the berries. They are piled in heaps inside the house, where they often become heated through, thus producing an inferior quality of oil. The berries are first put into a circular stone bed, where they are crushed, seed and all, by a sort of millstone set on edge and run like a wheel around a central pivot by a shaft. The crushed mass is then put into gunny sacking or coarse baskets and carried to the press. The oil-presses have always been very primitive, bungling affairs, but of late iron screws are being introduced.
When the grapes have all been picked from a vineyard the sheep and goats[[153]] are turned in to eat the leaves from the vines. The flocks are allowed to feed in the wheat and barley-fields, also, after the harvest. Goats and sheep are very often seen together in flocks.[[154]] Their keepers, who are their inseparable companions through the day, take care to secure safe folds for them at night. A party of us were at Teḳûa on the 30th of December, 1902. After examining the ruins we turned our attention to the modern aspect of the place. The caves and recesses about the ruins were used by shepherds, who were living there and caring for large flocks. As the sheep and goats came home late in the afternoon, the little lambs and kids, whose tender days forbade their accompanying their mothers to pasture, were hungrily awaiting them. There were about sixty of these young ones skipping about. When the plaintive cries of the little ones were answered by the motherly calls of the returning elders there was considerable excitement and motion on both sides, until by some mysteriously hidden sense families were united and all was quiet again as supper progressed. A few days later, on our way in from Mâr Sâbâ, we saw the newborn of the flocks in the desert places where animals were browsing. The shepherd usually carries the newly-born in from the fields.[[155]] Very rarely is one missed. Once, in the valley called Wâdy el-‛Ayn, between eṭ-Ṭayyibeh and Dayr Dîwân, I traced a little kid by its bleat, and seeing no flock about carried it home in my saddle-bags, hoping to rear it; but, missing the peculiar quality of the new milk of its mother, it did not survive many hours. Sometimes, in order to curb the inordinate appetite of a young kid for the milk, the shepherd puts a little bit in its mouth, made by two pencil-like sticks and secures the ends by cords crisscrossed over the sprouting horns.
THRESHING
A THRESHING SCENE IN THE OLD POOL AT BETHEL