Although I wanted to be at quite possibly one of the best agricultural fairs in the country, the Common Ground Fair, I decided I'd better take it easy and stay home today.Finally, after many weeks of limping and 2 painful cortisone injections, my plantar fasciitis (sore foot or tendonitis) is finally beginning to feel better. Or maybe I should phrase that less terrible. The fair is wonderful, but would mean miles and miles of walking and when not walking, standing, so I opted out.
Instead, we did some yard sale-ing and then work in the garden. Our pumpkin vines were pretty much dead from powdery mildew, brought on by the stress of drought, so we harvested them, a mix of New England Pie and Winter Luxury. The Winter Luxury pumpkins have a russetting on the skin, and the NE Pie tend to be smaller and bright orange. We picked a few more tomatoes, including this beautiful Amish Paste, next to my Felco pruners for comparison.
They are very large for a paste tomato. We also picked a few ears of multicolored corn, which we grew for fun and fall decor. We hang the prettily-colored ears with the dried husks, and use the stalks by the front door.And then we looked at the grapes.
There seemed to be a lot. We thought, well, why not. We've been here six years and hadn't harvested any grapes. This year, what with the new grape arbor and what seems to have been a good grape year weatherwise, we should at least do something with them.
I helped, but Dan being taller did more picking, with me emptying the pail. We picked a lot of grapes. They were for the most part, gorgeous. When picked over and washed, we must have had 30 lbs. of grapes --they nearly filled my laundry basket/party tub.
We made juice for grape jelly, 4 batches, using 14 lbs. of grapes, and are in the process now of making quarts of grape juice. At this moment, we have 7 quarts in the canner and are heating the water for the syrup of a second batch of juice. Jelly will be
processed tomorrow morning.I'm not sure I wouldn't have been better off at the Fair.
2 comments:
MMMMM....Looks delicious. Where will you store all that juice and jelly. It won't all fit in the fridge. Do you use the barn and how is your cellar for storage? Mom
Hi Mom,
We've already tried some of the juice. Oh, my, it's incredibly delicious! I think we're going to store the juice in the closet in the laundry room. The jelly we'll store in the pantry. The cellar is iffy considering the spring floods.
Dan
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