I haven’t spoken with you since the end of June, seems like a long summer ago. As usual, I wonder where it went (along with my cell phone and car keys). Fall, early fall, is here. The night time low temperature was 45 degrees on the 13th. The deep blue fall sky (football sky?) is still not here; too early perhaps. In case you’re wondering, the deep blue sky of fall occurs when cold fronts push clean air south from Canada. The real cause is something called “Rayleigh light scattering”—too complicated for me, look it up for yourself. The local ridge tops are beginning to color and the silver maple in the front yard is as usual the first of our true hardwoods to have its leaves begin to lose their color and drift down to the lawn.
My wife and I don’t “can” much anymore. We haven’t for years, since we downsized the garden in favor of more lawn for the kids to play on. We have, however, decided to this year make grape jelly from the Concord grapes on our backyard vine. I tried wine several times and the efforts were a disheartening failure. Ah, but the jelly has been delicious! Last year we got virtually no grapes. We left them for the birds. This year the crop was splendid. They were almost fully ripe when the rains came in early September. Five days and twelve inches of rain later I inspected the grapes. They had survived to a degree: I estimated the loss at fifty percent.
I picked the grapes on a Monday morning and separated the good ones as I picked. That turned out to be the easy part. As I picked and separated my wife rounded up the necessary pots and pans for the grapes and one very large pot for boiling the glass jars prior to using them. A second large pot was used to smash the grapes in after cleaning them in the kitchen sink. I used my bare hands (yes, I washed them) and a potato masher alternately—this was fun! Then the resulting mush was boiled to extract the most juice. Here’s where things got goofy. (I swear my mother did this by herself and made huge quantities, although memory is a chancy thing.) After boiling, the next step is to strain the boiled pulp through cheesecloth separating the solids from the juice. Man was the stuff hot! Not once but twice the cheesecloth escaped my grasp while my wife was pouring the hot liquid through. This, of course, resulted in the solids returning to the juice which meant we had to start over. My wife was now also “hot” at me. We finally partially tied the cheesecloth to the pot and I successfully held on (for dear life).
Finally, grape juice and on we go. The grape juice is combined with sugar and pectin and made to boil for another five minutes. At the same time and on a neighboring stove top eye, the cute little half pint jars are boiling away. The jars are to sit on a wire cradle so they can be neatly dipped into an out of the boiling water. Naturally, the cute jars were too small and fell through the cradle into the boiling water where I had to retrieve them without scalding my fingers. If I may, a word on the aforementioned mix: Each batch must be kept small: six cups of juice to seven cups of sugar (no wonder jelly is so good) and a few ounces of pectin. I don’t know what pectin is exactly but it makes the juice solidify into jelly. (Someone was really smart somewhere in the past.) Once again the mixture was boiled. It’s then poured carefully into each waiting (cute) jar. A lid, also heated, so that it will seal well and a screw top ring were added to each jar. Then, back into the boiling water the jars went. Finally, the jars were removed and there they were cute little jars of jelly. We’ve tried the fruits of our labor, and boy are they good! (I recommend carefully choosing your tools and weapons during canning. Something other than a soup spoon and a cloth oven glove for getting the jars in and out of boiling water…)
In addition to a prolific grape crop, our garden was excellent this year. We had only one brief dry spell all summer and the endless rain certainly stimulated most of the vegetables. I picked six huge bell peppers yesterday. The okra is still producing well also. A few tomatoes still are ripening. I picked and ate my last blackberry while I mowed lawn last week. They bore fruit for six weeks, but alas the twin rain storms that struck the end of August and beginning of September brought more rain than could be accommodated. Also succumbing to the rain, were my small cabbage plants which rotted. These losses are small compared to the flood loss of people’s homes and businesses. Our local farmers lost significant corn acreage in the storms.
The bluebirds I introduced you to earlier in the summer raised two broods of young. They made an abortive start on an apparent third hatch, but apparently changed their minds and now seem to be gone. They are not truly migratory and may just have retreated into the deeper woods. The small walking sticks that I saw in April are now impressively quite large. Toads, very large toads, are everywhere. Apparently the very wet summer was prime toad weather. I warned our Chihuahua to be careful out there. Our son’s young dog decided to pick up a toad in her mouth recently. Pennsylvania toads are not poisonous, but the dog did get quite sick until it emptied it’s stomach throughout the house. Beware the toads. . .
Guess that’s it for now. Enjoy the fall, my personal favorite season.
-Papa Perry
