Monday evening was the annual grape harvest at Mom's house. The early hot weather in June had left the crop a bit sparse. We also probably harvested a week later than we should have.
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| Two and a half of the four and a half buckets of grapes |
I went over to Mom's around 3 pm to get a head start on the picking and and found that she had finished picking in her yard and was working over at the neighbors. By 5 when the rest of the family arrived we had picked all but a couple of areas. Those areas required a ladder so we let Tim and Chris pick those while Bryce and I went to pick up the pizza at Costco. We enjoyed pizza on Mom's back deck. It was a beautiful evening.
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| Processing juice on the north deck. I hardly even make a mess anymore |
I took home 4 and a half buckets of grapes. About half of what I normally do. Tuesday morning I started processing. When I had finished Wednesday afternoon I had made 31 quarts of juice. Mom and her neighbor each took 6 quarts and Valerie and I split the rest.
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| The first eleven quarts of vintage 2015 |
We currently are working on finishing the last few bottles of 2013 that are in our pantry so we really didn't need a big crop this year. We'll have to work on reducing our stock of juice this coming year.
