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Sep. 19th, 2005 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickPlease to be flipping here to review adventures with grapes. There *will* be a quiz.
I'm sure you all turned to last year's entry on the business with the grapes so this will be a review. A five gallon bucket of grapes (in bunches) makes approximately a three gallon bucket of plucked grapes. It takes a reasonably dextrous person an hour to sort through and pluck from stems a five gallon bucket of grapes. I know this because I timed myself at it this evening.
This amount of grapes, smashed and cooked and strained for the juice, makes about four liters of juice. (I put the rendered grape juice in the fridge until tomorrow or the day after when I'll have time to transform it into jelly. The containers I had to store it in were denominated in liters or possibly litres. That's why I have liters instead of the other unit.) A liter, I'm told, is 4.2 cups. Making with thearith math, I have 16.8 cups of grape juice.
Since the grape jelly directions say to use five cups of juice per batch of grape jelly, we can see that we're going to have three batches of grape jelly and a nice glass of grape juice for me! This is about the yield I got last year, so that's all to the good. (This is why I kept notes last year. I LIKE knowing shit like this because my life actually includes things like five-gallon buckets of concord grapes.)
This year the grapes were from our own grape vines, the one beside the building and the group of them up on the hill. Now, we are not farmers (we raise rents, not crops) and our land isn't very farmable. (That's why we managed to buy it for thirty dollars an acre. Shit don't grow on it.) However, mostly for the amusement of my grandmother, we have grape vines. We don't much nuture the grapes. Sometimes we prune them, if someone is feeling ambitious. They might get sprayed once, or they might not. Anyway, under our systemic neglect, the grapes mostly do not make very many grapes. Some years they make none. Some years they make enough to do something with. And then, for reasons that elude me, some years it's quite a good year for grapes and they make more grapes than I really want to pick. That's what happened this year. There were more grapes than I wanted to pick. I picked as many as I felt like and then I quit. I refuse to feel guilty about this. I am NOT going to go to hell for not picking all the grapes.
Anyone want any grape jelly? It's pretty good.
I'm sure you all turned to last year's entry on the business with the grapes so this will be a review. A five gallon bucket of grapes (in bunches) makes approximately a three gallon bucket of plucked grapes. It takes a reasonably dextrous person an hour to sort through and pluck from stems a five gallon bucket of grapes. I know this because I timed myself at it this evening.
This amount of grapes, smashed and cooked and strained for the juice, makes about four liters of juice. (I put the rendered grape juice in the fridge until tomorrow or the day after when I'll have time to transform it into jelly. The containers I had to store it in were denominated in liters or possibly litres. That's why I have liters instead of the other unit.) A liter, I'm told, is 4.2 cups. Making with the
Since the grape jelly directions say to use five cups of juice per batch of grape jelly, we can see that we're going to have three batches of grape jelly and a nice glass of grape juice for me! This is about the yield I got last year, so that's all to the good. (This is why I kept notes last year. I LIKE knowing shit like this because my life actually includes things like five-gallon buckets of concord grapes.)
This year the grapes were from our own grape vines, the one beside the building and the group of them up on the hill. Now, we are not farmers (we raise rents, not crops) and our land isn't very farmable. (That's why we managed to buy it for thirty dollars an acre. Shit don't grow on it.) However, mostly for the amusement of my grandmother, we have grape vines. We don't much nuture the grapes. Sometimes we prune them, if someone is feeling ambitious. They might get sprayed once, or they might not. Anyway, under our systemic neglect, the grapes mostly do not make very many grapes. Some years they make none. Some years they make enough to do something with. And then, for reasons that elude me, some years it's quite a good year for grapes and they make more grapes than I really want to pick. That's what happened this year. There were more grapes than I wanted to pick. I picked as many as I felt like and then I quit. I refuse to feel guilty about this. I am NOT going to go to hell for not picking all the grapes.
Anyone want any grape jelly? It's pretty good.
