Page 31 - Fikardou_ebook

Village Layout House of Katsinioros House of Achillea Dimitri Petrou kai Pavlou Church Yiannakos Tavern Old School The old Wine Press

Occupations and traditional living

The men of the village engaged in tasks such as ploughing, harvesting, and
threshing. The women in turn wove the family’s clothes with the looms.
The farmers would start the first plowing, the so called niasman, in November. A lit-
tle later they ploughed for the second time, rendering the field ready for sowing.
The fields were cultivated with the old-fashioned wooden plough drawn by oxen or

mules or donkeys. The work was slow and laborious for both the animals and the
farmer. Threshing was done with a threshing board (doukani) on the circular stone
paved threshing floor (aloni) overlooking the village; grain was harvested with sick-
les. The limited amount of cultivable land did not favour the use of modern machinery.

Small scale viticulture was the main occupation of the inhabitants. The cultivators are at the
same time the producers of wine and home made zivania. When the large wine-press fell out of
action, the grapes were pressed exclusively in the houses, in the corner of a ground floor room.

Apart from wine and vinegar, grape juice is also used to make
sweets such as soutzoukko and kiofterka. The villagers made
the most out of every crop. From figs they produced the fa-
mous fig-cakes (sykopites). Most of the products consumed were
produced in the village itself and in this sense Fikardou pre-

sented a rare, almost primitive, phenomenon of self sufficiency.

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