Nearly all the harvesting in this valley is done by hand. I only saw a single tractor being used to thrash grain and horses were used to pull small wagons.

First the hay is cut using a scythe.

Tout se fait a la main dans cette region. Ils coupent le foin de facon manuelle.

The hay is turned over a few times until it is dry enough to stack.

Ensuite, le foin se fait tourner plusieurs foin afin de bien le secher.

We met this gentleman one morning as he was off to the fields. Notice that his rake is entirely hand made. Even the tines on the rake are carved wooden dowels. All the rakes I saw were made just like this one.

Il est pret a commencer une nouvelle journee. Ces outils sont tous fait a la main.

When the hay was dry enough it would then be stacked against slender poles. As we looked out across entire valleys and saw numerable haystacks we could only imagine the amount of labor that was being put forth before the snow flew.

They say you can only really evaluate your life from your deathbed. I would think that a farmer here could only really evaluate a seasons effort when a soft blanket of snow tuckes this valley to bed for the winter.

Une fois que le foin est bien seche, il est empile sur de minces poteaux. C'est ainsi que partout dans la vallee on peut admirer ces petites montagnes de foin en forme de petits bons hommes.

Durant la periode des moissons, les gens travaillent au champs de l'aube au crepuscule. Probablement difficile pour eux de comprendre que deux etrangers veulent marcher de village en village avec leur sac-a-dos par pur plaisir.

Every man, woman, child and horse were doing back breaking jobs from sunrise to sunset during the harvest. We say little old ladies hoist 50 pound sacs of potatoes over their shoulders and then hike miles back to their home.

Helene did use her skills on a poor old woman with a foot problem.

Since these field were cultivated by hand, the vegetable plots could be heavily mixed with different plants grown right next to one another. This may have helped prevent both the depletion of the soil and insects from getting to thick.

There was no use of pesticide, herbicides or inorganic fertilizers in this entire valley. Everywhere we went people were loading us up with fruits and vegtables. The cucumbers and tomates were the sweetest I have ever eaten. The apples were great too, even if they did have worms.

Dans tous les Balkans, nous avons eu la chance de manger des legumes bio, sans frais additionels. Les gens d'Europe de l'Est ne semblent pas etre suffisament capitalistes pour avoir l'idee d'utiliser du poison(insecticide, pesticides etc..) sur leur moisson. Les legumes y sont tellement meilleurs.

Here is the only time I saw the Industrial Revolution at work. The parked tractor provided the power plant. It rotated a long belt that connected to a drive axel in the thrashing machine.

Wagons would pull up and the grass with grain would be forked in from this end. The machine thrashed the grain from the grass. The grain would then pour from the left side where a man would fill one sack after another. The stripped grass would shoot out the back to be used for fodder.

C'est la seule machine qu'on a appercu dans toute la vallee. Cela nous a soudainement rappele qu'il y a eu une revolution industrielle ici.