Machines (raisin sorting machine)

The machine is the valuable tool of raisin growers. Before the machine came - it appeared in the 1960s - the process of its first sorting raisin it was done manually as the older ones remember very well. They licked the raw material of the raisin, filling the sieve and waiting for the breeze. When the wind was good there was a production line, so some filled the sieves, others carried them and gave them to those who were licking. The lychnism wanted arms for the light "tremor" so that the wrist falling from the sieve with the help of the wind could be cleaned.

At first the machine operated with a crank manually. He was then connected to external petrol engines and finally became self-sufficient with his own electric motor.

In the beginning, not everyone had it, and many borrowed it for a price. Today most raisin growers have their own car.

The machine is a wooden construction which looked like a box measuring about 130x100x200 cm. At the back outside there was a boat. It had an opening at the bottom for the raisins to fall into the sieves. Inside the box there were three sieves (crucibles) with slope and with different holes each. They were raised at the back so they leaned forward. Inside, there was the mechanism with wide wooden wings ("impeller"), which rotated with the help of mechanical movement. The whole construction was heavy enough ("immovable") to be stable and not to move ("dance") at the time of use.

Its operation was simple. They threw the raw raisin fruit into the boat, which fell into the first sieve. The machine moved the impeller, which created an air wave, while at the same time the sieves began to move. With the wind the stalks and the lean ("without much honey / tzoufios / koufios") fruit were carried away and thrown to the ground. The good fruit with soil and small stalks fell from the large holes of the first sieve to the second. Then it passed to the third and from there it was collected clean. The soil and small stalks passed through the sieve holes and ended up in the ground.

From there the good fruit, the small one - because he did not manage to grow and produce a stone - and the second largest one are transferred to the merchant or the cooperative, at different prices each.

When one wanders around Aegialia, from dawn to dusk a chorus of sweet wooden sounds will come to your ears from everywhere. "Taka-taka-taka-taka". It will be raisin growers who with their machines closed the cycle of production of raisins, the once "black gold" of the Peloponnese.

PS Many thanks to Michalis Karvelas - the tireless fighter of its promotion currant -, for his bibliography and information.