In all my running around lately I wasn’t sure exactly when I was going to be able to pick our grapes. I love getting our grapes each year. The kids, like most American kids, have no idea about seasonality when it comes to food. They can have apples in February, bananas by the bunch whenever, watermelons in April with no thought to how unnatural it is to have this things out of season.
However, we only have muscadine grapes once per year and that makes it special. I look forward to juicing grapes, picking with the family, etc. all year so I was a sad when I received this last week.
Our kids and their friends had done the first picking and had made juice. I was sitting in gun smithing school in Troy, NC and had missed it. Oh well. The kids are always so excited for grapes that they pick them early so not a big of a deal. I don’t need green grape juice. It’s bitter!
When I got home, I found that the grapes were just getting good for picking indeed I had not missed anything. That meant that this weekend it was time to get busy. The trouble was, I had so much else going on when would I get to it?
Enter Grandma to save the day. While I was working on the farm, Grandma came over and got all the kids outside and busy picking.
By the time I made it over to the grape vines, they were nearly finished.
Spork and I went back with another pot and cleaned up the grapes that anyone under 6′ couldn’t reach, which ended up being a lot of grapes but nowhere as many as they had already picked.
I still have one and a quarter rows to clean up but this is the bulk of what we got this weekend. All of these will be juiced tonight making everyone, including mom, very happy. Once the juice is gone, it’s gone till next year but while it’s here, it’s awesome.