Canning for Hours and Hours!

At the family farm, like any homestead, they do a LOT of canning. This is one of two shelves in the cellar. Isn't it amazing!! They are well stocked for the winter. Among the goodies, are peaches, tomato sauce, pears, jam, pickles, dilly beans, beets, chicken, chicken stock, and turnips!

This is the cupboard in the kitchen!  Nothing like canning organic food!  Nutritious and tasty.

At the farm, there are some things that they don't grow. One of them is grapes. So they buy from other farmers. The in-laws bought 4 bushels of concord grapes to make grape juice and grape jelly. I've never canned grapes before, so this was a new experience for me. The taste of these grapes were so sweet and delicious and the smell was intoxicating. Wow!

Processing 4 bushels of grapes is a lot of work. First, the grapes are washed in water.

Then we pick off all the grapes off the stem. This takes forever!

For some jars, we pile the grapes in to make concentrated grape juice for Jelly. When the grapes are in, top off the jar with about 1/2 cup of boiling water.

This is what it looks like after it's been processed with a boiling water bath. Isn't the color just amazing?  So rich!

After we finished the jars of concentrated grape juice for grape jelly, we moved onto making grape juice for drinking.  For this recipe, in a quart size jar, add 1 cup of grapes and 1/2 cup of sugar.  Fill with water and process.  

This is just some of the many, many jars we did. We did 65 quarts in total. How long did that take us? A whopping 8 hours! Let me tell you, when we were finished, I never wanted to see grapes ever again!