As a young woman I did stuff like this — harvesting, canning, drying food, even cheese-making. But now that my (grown) children have learned that food doesn’t grow on shelves at the market, I’ve been content to leave such activities to the commercial system and young protégés of Martha Stewart.
I should have known my grandmotherly equilibrium would be challenged when I first noticed in early summer that our grape arbor was crammed with tiny clusters of baby grapes. My husband, Larry, and I marveled. We planted these succulent table grapes about thirty years ago, and every fall we jealously savor each little green globe of sweetness. We’ve never before had more grapes than we could eat fresh.
But this seemed almost like a joke. Hundreds of bunches of grapes growing on our 8 x 10-foot arbor. Perhaps the glut was caused by the new soil amendments Larry instigated this year. A passionate organic gardener, he calls his new formula “rocket fuel.”
“We’ll have a grape-picking party,” I told someone who admired the garden.
But you don’t harvest the grapes in late summer, when you might consider inviting friends to a garden party. The fruit of the vine needs a good frost or two to set the sugar. So when the grapes were finally ready to pick last week, it was too cold for a party. Plus it was urgent to pick them now.
So Larry and I brought out two ladders and set to picking. I assumed after a few minutes our work would be done. Then it dawned that this would take awhile. At first I clipped the stems with scissors, but then I found I could just give a little yank and the bunch would fall into my hand. Often a grape would pop and spray me with sticky juice. It went on and on.
My emotions went from being surprised and a little annoyed, to gratitude and awe. The dropping of grape clusters into bowls, pots and brown grocery sacks eventually became a meditation on sunlight, soil, earthworms and water.
I thought of the expression, “I heard it via the grapevine.” Of course, in the olden days the grapevine was your Internet café: you and your friends, moving along slowly, picking, picking, picking, picking, picking. You might as well gossip to pass the time.
But I hadn’t planned very well for the next step. The grapes were all picked (almost – we left some for the birds and squirrels mostly because we were tired). What now? I’d have to bring out the five-gallon canning kettle. I consulted my old Joy of Cooking, whose binding is held together with duct tape, and informed myself on the process.
What? You have to separate the grapes from the stems? Are you kidding? That’ll take forever!
We carried all the sacks and bowls and pots into the garage, where they’d keep cool but not freeze solid. And I scurried to the store for canning jars.
I didn’t think to schedule grape juice production into my workload this week, but there it was. I had to move quickly to preserve this unexpected crop.
A 10-year-old neighbor girl and her friend stopped in for a visit and were fascinated to see me sliding and squeezing grapes off their stems. They asked if they could help crush them. So each one took the potato masher and pumped up and down in the big bowl of green grapes. I scooped out a little cup of the fresh juice for each of them to sample. There. I’ve done my job again of showing children where food comes from.
The production line — de-stemming, crushing, cooking, straining, pouring into canning jars, hot water bath processing — spread out over five days. But today I’ve just completed the last of about thirty honey-colored quarts of juice.
The final note has to be about taste buds. All I can say is that my tongue considered itself Rip Van Winkle, asleep for a hundred years, until it was awakened by a tiny glass of homemade grape juice. It’s not cloyingly sweet like store-bought. It’s sweet and tart at the same time. The tangy flavor explodes in your mouth.
It’s as though a wanton Mother Nature is saying, “Stay close to me, sweetheart, for a good time!”
Am I the only person who wonders how they get the stripes in the toothpaste? Those perfect little stripes — whether you squeeze, like a good person, from the bottom, or like a lowlife slob, from the middle or top of the tube — still those little red and blue soldiers slide out in perfect formation to battle the nasty plaque ravaging your teeth.
