We have made several trips to an elderly gentleman's farm to help him harvest his grapes. He grows a few varieties of muscadines and two varieties of scuppernogs ( the green colored grapes).
This venture is best undertaken in the cooler part of the day as it gets quite warm even under the canopy of the grape vines.
Our first trip yielded one gallon of huge muscadines that were squeezed and turned into grape juice which was then used to start a batch of wine- new experience for us.
Our second trip- we came home with 2 gallons of grapes. One gallon of small, dark muscadines great for jelly and a gallon of scuppernog - also for jelly. Our farmers informed us that we would get more juice from the grapes if we froze them first and then let them thaw before using them. So..... now the grapes are resting in our freezer until I have the time to deal with them.
You can see in the photo the different colors of the grapes. These are muscadines and we were searching for the darkest ones- they looked a lot like olives. The grapes will ripen over a period of 30 days. This style of grapes are picked individually-unlike the bunch style grapes we commonly see the in the supermarket.
A prerequisite of making juice is watching the I love Lucy clip where she is stomping the grapes. Click here to view the video clip.
What a great picture of 'Ms. L'...look how big she is getting, too!
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping to BUY some grapes for my grandmother's grape-walnut jam this year. The birds ate every single grape off my Dad's (now sister's) arbor.
I've never tried making wine!! Let me know how it turns out, okay?
What gorgeous grapes. I did not know that freezing them first produced more juice and how nice to be able to put the juicing project "on the shelf" until it is convenient and it helps too! Thanks for sharing that. I have friends who bottle grape juice and have made beautiful labels. I did my own labels for some flavored olive oil. Check out my post on it to learn what I did.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cute photo! How nice you can get those grapes!! My mom grows some but not muscadines. I am an I Love Lucy fanatic, and we just watched that episode this summer. The girls will just put the DVDs in while they play sometimes. About the fabric, I will try pretty much anything in the wash first. I've been experimenting with fabric for napkins because I want something that will wash and not need ironing for everyday.
ReplyDeleteI hope the photo is enlarged, framed, and hung on a wall in your home. It is spectacular. Just bought two large boxes of the last of the wonderful Porter peaches today. Yum! Thank you for stopping by my blog. Visit any time. Cherry Kay
ReplyDeleteHow cool is that? Great picture.
ReplyDeleteI love that episode of "I Love Lucy"!