Old-Fashioned Grape Juice

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For those of us whose goal is eventual self-sufficiency, harvest time has a way of changing from a joyous celebration of reaping to a nightmarish race against the clock. Anyone who tries to raise and preserve a year's supply of food knows the helpless feeling of watching fruits and vegetables relentlessly mature while the pile of undone preserving and storing tasks diminishes so slowly.

As September approached last year, I found myself—as usual—in just such a predicament . . . for no matter how hard I try to plan my fall work, I always end up with more to preserve than I have hours to do the job. I wanted to cry as I watched a beautiful box of purple Concord grapes grow riper and riper. With my corn at its peak and three bushels of peaches at my feet, I felt sure that the sweet clusters would be good for little else but wine by the time I got to them. Once again, nature's generosity had clashed with my scheduling.

"What are you going to do with those?" my mother asked, pointing at the box of grapes.

"Juice. The kids love juice. But how? I'll have to cook, and strain, and . . . oh, I . . . ." I was truly beside myself. We worked in silence, our minds searching for a solution, until—suddenly—my mother came up with a recollection of "how Grandma did it".

Soon, under Mom's direction, I was quickly gathering my largest spare jars: quarts, half gallons, and gallons. These I rewashed and scalded while a kettle of water heated on the stove.

I then dipped the grapes in cold water, stemmed them, and placed them whole in the clean, empty containers. (Frankly, I guessed at amounts . . . but I'd estimate three quarters to one cup of fruit per each quart of capacity.) A splash of honey—about a tablespoon of the sweetening for each cup of grapes followed the fruit into the jars. That doesn't sound like much, but the Concords had been picked ripe and the results were delicious.

By that time the kettle was boiling. So I set the jars in a pan of hot water, filled each with scalding liquid to within half an inch of its top, wiped the rims clean, put on the hot lids, and tightened them down snugly with the bands. That was all! Within an hour of my mother's bright idea, I had saved the grapes and was back working with the corn and peaches.

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