Preserving the Harvest & Making Grape Juice

I come from a family of gardeners & preservers.  We like to grow food, preserve it, & eat it!  It’s about that time in the garden to start saving produce for a colder day, so I thought I’d talk about preserving the harvest.  My dad’s grapes are also ready & I’m going to show you how I made them into juice for jelly.  As you’ll see below, this has been a light year for me in the preserving department!

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Preserving the Harvest

My mother’s parents always had a huge garden {mini farm} in their back yard.  For some reason, my Pepaw always liked growing peas & beans & gourds.  Oh – and potatoes!  I’m sure he grew other things, but those are the things I remember the most.  He would always let the kids dig the potatoes out by hand after the row was turned with a hoe.  I thought this was a load of fun, but he just didn’t want his potatoes cut with the hoe.  ; )  These kind of memories are what drive me to continue preserving the harvest!

Jars are the number one thing on my list when it comes to preserving produce & storing dry goods.  I prefer a quart sized jar for canning tomatoes & dill pickle spears.  Smaller pint & half pint jars are perfect for sweet pickles & jelly – especially for giving them as gifts!  I store flour, sugar, rice, dry beans, etc. in the larger half gallon jars to help keep out ants & bugs.

Two summers ago, I put up a ton of vegetables, both canned & in the freezer.  This included squash, corn, cucumbers & tomatoes.  My grandmother & my husband’s grandmother kept me busy all summer long!

My husband’s grandmother has brothers that are all farmers & always tip here off to awesome produce deals at the local farmer’s market.  They had a farmer friend that let her {and me} pick over their already picked tomato field.  My goodness – there were tomatoes everywhere!  We filled every nook & cranny of her vehicle with tomatoes.  I had plenty to put up on my own, but she went back several times & managed to can over 100 quarts of tomatoes!  There is one jar of crushed tomatoes left in my pantry, but most are tomato juice.  Those tomatoes were tasty & juicy!

I made right at 10 cookings of pickles – sweet, dill, & hot – which is quite a process from start to finish.  This picture is only showing maybe half of what I canned because most of the sweet pickles went to other people.

You can see a few peaches hiding in there as well.  There was also a watermelon to the right because every time I go to pick up produce for canning, the farming brothers always add a few extras!

Jellies & pickles make awesome gifts at Christmas time!  Last Christmas I use some green Ball jars to hold scented bath salts for the ladies.  My husband is a hunter & he likes to make jerky in our dehydrator, so that made great gifts for the guys – although the gals like it too!

Last summer I put up a lot of cantaloupe & peaches in the freezer.  Grandma’s brothers called & a peach vendor was selling boxes of bruised peaches for a $1!  Most of them were perfectly fine & for $1 we couldn’t pass that up!  Her brothers also made sure I took home plenty of cantaloupes as well.   ; )  This summer there have been no calls from the brothers, but my dad’s grape vine is fully loaded & ready for picking.  That means it’s jelly making time!

Muscadine Grapes

In last month’s gardening post I showed y’all a couple pictures of Dad’s grape vine….

Well, he called last week & said they were ready for picking, so I headed over Friday after class.  The grapes were huge & it didn’t take long to fill two 2 gallon buckets!  One went to my grandmother-in-law & one came home with me.  I’ll be back over this Friday to pick more.    : )

These grapes are a variety known as muscadines that are native to the southeastern & south-central United States.   All the rain we’ve had here this summer has made them nice & plump!  I’m not too fond of eating these raw because they have a thicker skin than table grapes & a big seed in the middle.  I’d rather make juice & jelly with them!

Making Juice for Jelly

The first thing that needs to happen before preserving any fruit or vegetable is washing them.  I just put mine in the sink and rinsed them with cool water while running my hands through them.  Remove any debris, stems, & bad fruit you find.

I posted a close up of the grapes after I washed them on Instagram & many people thought they were Christmas ornaments at first glance!  : D

After the grapes were clean, I dumped them into my canning pot & just covered them with water.  Adding too much water will dilute the juice.  I brought them to a full boil & let them boil about 5 or 10 minutes before turning the heat down to medium.  Then I covered them & let them cook for about 30 to 40 minutes.

I turned off the heat & left them in the covered pot over night to cool.  Then it was time to squish them!  I didn’t use my feet either!  You may or may not want to use gloves when doing this.  Grape juice can stain hands & clothes.  You also may want to do this in an area that’s easy to clean if you’re a mess maker like me…..

I told you those grapes were juicy!  After I was done squishing the grapes {& cleaning my mess} I used a basic colander to strain out the big bits.  Make sure to squish them against the side to get out all the juice.

I eventually had to put the colander over another pot & pour the juice over it to get out the seeds in the bottom.

This can be made into jelly at this point, but it would be more like a jam since it has so much pulp in it still.

I’m going to use a sieve to scoop out most of the pulp.  This did have a handle when I started, but one knock on my trash bucket & it broke off!  I need a bigger one anyway – and a stronger one, apparently!

When my juice was free of as much pulp as I could manage to remove {or because I was tired of doing it}, it was time to put it in a container.

Storing the Juice

I scooped the juice out with a measuring cup & poured it through a funnel into an empty & cleaned milk jug.  I’ll be storing this in the freezer until I have time to make jelly, so I left some head room at the top.

I wound up with a gallon jug plus two quart jars of juice.  The quarts jars are going in the fridge for fresh juice drinking!  These will be good for about a week, maybe two, so I would freeze anything that needed to last beyond that.

I grew up with a vinegar smell permeating the house while pickles were being made by my mother.  There was almost always a platter of cut tomatoes & cucumbers sitting on the table at supper time during the summer.  Meals were also accompanied by hot, homemade biscuits & Mayhaw jelly.  This is why I continue to grow, preserve, & eat homemade whenever I can.  It’s an experience that really connects you to your food!

Make sure to check out the sale at Fresh Preserving, they have some great deals going on jars & supplies!   Hope y’all are having a wonderful Wednesday & I’ll see you here on Friday for my monthly roundup!  : )

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