MEDİNE MAMEDOĞLU

Amed– September is the beginning of the grape harvest season in countries of the Middle East. In the Sextê (Eskiocak) village of Amed (Diyarbakır), the villagers make many grapefruit products such as grape molasses, churchkhela, and grape juice after they pick grapes in their vineyards. This year, the villagers complain about the reduction of yield of grapes compared to last year due to heat weather in summer.

They wait hours to boil grapes

Yüksel Bahadur, one of the villagers who stoke up the fire to boil grapes, tells us they can only make grape molasses this year due to poor yield. Women work in every stage of making grape molasses; they pick, boil grapes, and make grapefruit products. “We begin to pick grapes in our vineyards 15 days after the end of summer. After picking the grapes, we crush grapes and boil them. We have to watch the boiling grapes for hours. We stoke up the fire until we get grape molasses. After making grape molasses, we put them in bottles, and then we can consume them whenever we want.”

Women work in every stage

Yüksel Bahadur cleans up while telling us how they make grape molasses; “We first pick grapes in the vineyards. Then, we boil grapes to make grape molasses. We consume grape molasses or sometimes we give them to people in need. Grape molasses are good for health. Women work in every stage of making grape molasses. We get tired but we like making grape molasses.”

They work more to make churchkhela

Remziye Altun begins to make churchkhela after picking grapes in her vineyards. “We make grape molasses and churchkhela. We first thread walnuts onto a string, and then we dip them in thickened grape juice and dry them in the shape of a sausage. We store them to eat in winter.

Poor yield due to heat weather

The women of the village make grape products for years. But they complain about the poor yield of grapes due to heat weather in summer. Remziye Altun also complains about the poor yield of grapes and she says, “The yield of grapes reduces every year due to rising temperatures. We had a better yield last year. We don’t know what will happen next year. But the yield is decreasing day by day.”