Our grapes...

Our property has about 50 foot of mature concord grape vines. The vines haven't been truely cared for in at least 15 years and p the past 5 years became completely over grown. In the fall of 2009, D did an amazing job tearing out all the weed trees and brush that was over taking our grapes and we can actually see the vines now. This winter we hope to get around to trimming the vines back properly, but I was hoping to still make grape jelly this year. On September 3rd, the grapes were starting to ripen, but weren't quite ready. On Sept. 9th, they were looking good, but we were going out of town on a rare family vacation and didn't get a chance to pick them, and by Sept. 17th, they were mostly on the ground. Of course, I didn't know there weren't enough when I told J we could make grape jelly, so when we went out to pick and discovered a lack of grapes, we quickly loaded up on our bike and went to the market where we had seen black grapes on sale the day before. After buying our grapes and loading up our bike, we trekked home to make and can our jelly.

First, we got out the trusty juicer from the basement. Upon reading most jelly recipes, they usually call for straining the fresh juice before making jelly. I thought this was crazy, considering all the good fiber and nutrients you are probably straining out to take the lovely, thick fresh grape juice and turn it into something comparable to Welch's. So we simply boiled down our grape juice, to help sweeten the jelly a little, added some lemon juice and pectin, packed it hot in our jars and processed them in a water bath for 10 minutes. The results are a very scrumptious grape jelly!