I have a vineyard...

Um... well... actually I have a Vine in my Yard... which I guess one could stretch the concept of that into a Vineyard...

one could...

maybe...

if they felt stretchy...

 

 

 

 

Anyway, so there is this grape vine growing on an arbor attached to the shed.  According to my neighbor Mrs. B they are concord grapes and are suppose to be very, very good!

We were quite excited earlier this summer as there were all these wonderful little green grape clusters starting to grow.  I had visions of grape jam and jelly.

But look what happened during the summer...

 

Some of the grapes in all the clusters went and shriveled up?  This was not at all fair!

I've been keeping an eye on them and it looks like what ever happened didn't happen to all the grapes.

I decided to harvest what I could the other day - not an easy task because the vines are very over grown with a lot of dead vines.  I was showered with debris as I was moving vines around and snipping clusters out.

As I was cutting out clusters I thought - 'gee it smells just like grape jelly here'.  Well - Duh? I guess I just expected they wouldn't smell that good until they had been cooked up.  It really was yummy smelling.

 

Pretty aren't they?

I cooked them down and strained them through a jelly bag... I knew I wouldn't have enough to get 4 cups of juice out of these so I added some apple juice as they were cooking.

The juice is suppose to sit in the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours so that you re-strain and remove any tartrate crystals that form.  I had to go and look up what a tartrate crystal was and why I needed to be concerned about it.  

 So what do you suppose I could make out of this lovely fluid?

Grape Jelly?  Grape Candy?

Do you know what the difference is between Jelly and Candy? 

I'd say about 10 minutes...

Yep - cook it a little too long and you get candy...

 

No this isn't slow motion photography... it was that thick.

 

 

 

To salvage it I dissolved the 'candy' in apple juice and re-cooked it back to the jelly stage... and canned it again.

From this years harvest I have a couple small jars of Grape Jelly Grape/Apple Jelly Grapple Jelly.  But next year... I'm going to have lots of grapes and make lots of just plain ole Grape Jelly and Jam.