That is not a typo in the title, I have had 3 grape days...literally. On Wednesday morning a few friends (and the 6 preschool aged children we have between us!) and I headed out to get some grapes at our garden. We didn't really know how much to pick to get enough for what we wanted to do. We picked a lot! And most of the kids did great.
It took me three days to juice out all the grapes in my steamer juicer. We filled the juicer 9 times! It holds about a 5 gallon bucket of grapes on each fill. The grapes yielded poorly on the first few batches, but I think that for some reason letting them sit overnight in boxes made them give more juice. We had a little more juice than I was anticipating, well not too bad maybe only 2 extra gallons! I think we ended up with 13 or 14 gallons of juice, which resulted in:
11- half gallon canning jars
16 -quart jars canning jars (though 11 are the for the gals who helped pick!)
7 -pints of jelly
3- half pints of grape/honey jelly
2 - 32 ounce pitches in the fridge for drinking now
1 - 3 quart container in the freezer
1 - 9 X 13 pan of jell-o
1 - fruit leather from some of the pulp, it is OK but the flavor isn't worth the effort
1- 1 quart juice container for my sister, because I am tired of grapes!
I will say that again, I AM TIRED OF GRAPES!!!!! But they're done. phew!
Also in the middle of all that we were given 2 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes. Can't let them go to waste, so they became 6 quarts of tomatoes sauce. I am really ready to be done with canning season.
Just a note from Jeff here. Any History buffs check out archives.org. I've been listening to WW2 news broadcasts. WOW! Respect your grandparents and all that.
3 comments:
I really admire your canning skills, I'd love to can with you sometime! This morning my Mom is coming down with her canner and we're putting up applesauce which we do every year. We also usually do peaches but were too busy and missed peach season this year which I'm pretty sad about. Nothing beats canned peaches except for maybe apricots!
I can understand why you are ready to be done. That is a lot of grape juice. Good for you!
Way to go!!!! Grapes grow good up here too. We might get a few concord starts.
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