Grape Jelly

Today we are making Grape Jelly at our house. This is our 10 year old grape vine, which has given us a bounty of around 15 pounds of grapes this year, after the birds of course.

What beauties! We washed. cleaned and juiced all these to make 12 and 1/2 pints of jelly.

These are concord grapes and they were so juicy and sweet this year. We had a lot of rain and they were larger than I think they have ever grown! These grapes have seeds in them so they take a bit of processing to get them into jelly.
Here is my very non-traditional way to extract the juice. I use my Champion Juicer! This is no typo! My mother used to boil and hang everything in the jelly bag, press it through a jelly sieve to separate the juice from the seeds but that all seems like a lot of work to me, and besides mom didn't have a Champion back then. Once I get the juice, I measure 4 cups of it, add 1/2 cup of water and put it on the stove to boil. When it comes to a boil, I add 7 cups of sugar and bring it to a rolling boil. Using liquid pectin, add it and cook it at a rolling boil for exactly one minute. Remove from heat and hot pack in jars with lids from the hot dishwasher (she didn't have one of those either) and turn upside down for 10 minutes. Turn them rightside up and place them on a tea towel making sure that they are not touching each other. Tell your kids to come in and listen for the 'POPS' so that we all know they are sealed properly! When completely cooled, wash, label and store in a cool, dry place.
Now just do that a couple more times and you have all this!

As youngest son and I were out picking these grapes this morning, I saw several that the birds had knocked on the ground. That fruit that became separated from the vine had no chance to mature into anything edible.

This verse came to my mind:

'I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.'

John 15:5

May we all live to abide in him. Blessings, Suzie