John looked like he’d thrown on a wacky Halloween Costume – a baggy, hooded wet-suit and a pitchfork. With a little imagination, the crushed berries could be taken as blood smears, and he’d get best prize for scary. 
The huge, ambulatory press machine arrived at sunset. John had just opened the top lids and bottom hatches of the tanks after moving 120 hectolitres (12,000 liters) of juice into the receiving tanks. With the juice gone, the marc falls to the bottom and carbon dioxide fumes emanate powerfully, so at every pressing someone brings a story about a death caused by asphyxiation: somehow they neglect to observe the rules about the lighted candle and a clear passageway for oxygen. Mostly these accidents happen in the old style tanks where the worker descends into the vat and pitches the marc into barrels that he hauls up to the top with a pulley system. Without the lighted candle to signal the disappearing oxygen, they faint and are submerged under the mound of slippery and heavy grape skins.
Makes for good Halloween shivers, but I’m glad we have nice new steel tanks with two openings for air.
Before John climbed in through the little hatch he had to clear out a hundred kilos of berry skins to create an entry. Inside, he gave off occasional exclamatory shrieks about the carbon dioxide as he sliced away at the pancake and set to the task of pitching it out the door.
Robert worked from the outside to pull as John tossed. When they finished the first tank, they moved to the second. A long process of pitching and pulling as night came on.
By the time John removed his suit, I was ready to light my jack o’ lantern. A shame our farm is so far from the village; I imagined the delicious little horror of a red stained man with a lop sided grin – offering fistfuls of candy to the local trick or treaters.
