You Can Grow That at the Beach?

Last weekend, I spent the weekend celebrating my friend Tony's 40th birthday. We went down to the Jersey Shore to visit his friend's beach house. The weather was absolutely perfect. I could really live here!! I love the beach. My wish one day is to have a beach house. That would be a dream! If only beach houses weren't ridiculously expensive. 

At our friend's beach house, they had the most stunning Bartlett pear trees.  Two in fact!  Look at the beauty of this tree!  I was so shocked how well this tree was growing in mostly sandy soil!  Our friend said this tree has been here for over 40 years!  There were so many pears on it, too bad none were ripe yet or I'd be eating these!

Some of the branches almost reached the ground with the weight of the heavy pears.  Makes it easy to harvest these!

Aren't these just gorgeous?  Our friend said that they get much bigger.  I asked him how these pears tasted when they were ripe, and then he said something that really shocked me.  I seriously almost fainted when he said the following, "I don't know. Mimi, I don't even like pears. I never eat the pears off this tree."  I was like.... "WHAT!?!"  I was like, oh my goodness, pears are my favorite.  I said if he let me come back to harvest all the ripe pears that I would make pear jam, pear tart, baked pear, I would seriously have a pear extravaganza.  I said to him, please don't let these pears go to waste, I'll definitely come down to harvest them.  I'd be too sad if they weren't eaten.

Not only did they have the most amazing pear trees, they also had the most amazing grapevines!  Check out how their grapevines have covered their entire back fence!  Totally amazing!!  I asked him what type of grapes these were and he didn't know.  He said when he was a little kid, his grandfather planted the pear trees, the grapevines, and had a huge backyard garden.  I said to him, "Wow, that is so cool. I would have loved to meet him.  I think we would have been really good friends!!"

I hate you squirrel. I declare war!

Yesterday, I took this photo.  I was so excited because the Glenora grapes were finally turning purple in color.  I was totally anticipating eating these.  They weren't quite ripe yet so I patiently waited.

Then today, my husband said, "we have no grapes left".  What?  What?  My only guess is that it was a squirrel since these vines are 4 feet off the ground.  Not a single red grape left.  Whatever it was ate every last red grape off this vine.  Notice how it left the green ones untouched?  Ugh!  And I didn't even get to taste one.  So.  Very.  Annoyed.

At least we have Cayuga green grapes left on one of the other vines. As of today, none of these were eaten.

In an effort to prevent squirrels from eating these, we put bird netting over this grapevine and stapled it to the 4x4 posts.  Do you grow grapes?  Have you ever had this problem with critters eating them before you do?

Grapes Progress Report

To my surprise, the one thing in the garden that is growing so rapidly are the grapes.  Ten days ago, it looked like this.  This week, it has more than doubled in size!  This is our first year with grapes on the vine, so this is all very exciting to us.

At this rate, I wonder if they will be ready to eat by end of July??  That would be so awesome.

There are at least 15 grape bunches growing on this vine alone.  It's wonderful how prolific it is this year!  This vine is the Pink Reliance, of our 4 grapevines, this variety is growing the best.  It is much larger than the other vines and has the most bunches.

Need to Learn How to Make Wine

The grapevines are doing really well.  We put them in last year, and they have more than doubled in size.  I'm hoping to harvest some of the leaves to pickle so that I can use them for stuffed grape leaves.

Here's a closeup of 3 of the plants.  We are growing 4 different varieties.  Pink Reliance seedless, Cayuga a green grape, Glenora a red seedless, and Concord.

All the plants were 1 year plants when we planted them, so technically, this will be year 3 for them.  And to our surprise, 3 of the plants are growing grapes!  The only plant that does not have grapes is the Concord.   I'm a bit bummed by that since I was hoping to make Concord Jelly.  Hopefully next year.   I can't wait until the others are ready to eat.   I'm so curious as to what they will taste like.  Hopefully they won't be sour grapes!  The hubs wants to learn to make wine, he says that's why he wanted to grow grapes.  I like snacking on them.  Do you grow grapes for wine?  If so, what type of grapes do you grow?  Do you have a good wine recipe?

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!