The sun has risen. The dew has lately evaporated. Jenny leads the charge into the garden. We’re talking tomatoes, potatoes, okra, watermelons, all the good things you expect to find in the height of July in a North Texas garden.
Wait, what’s this? The boys investigate. They discover the muscadine grape, so delightful to the goats and cows on the other site of the fence, has bunches of grapes now fully ripe. They begin picking them, because what else do you do with bunches of ripe grapes shrouded in leather skins?
Next thing you know, Jenny is pulling kids around in the Honda quad to pick more ripe grapes from other pastures. Then she switches vehicles and pulls out, finding Robert returning from hours of fence repair and barb wire stringing. “We’re going to the store, get in!” …”Why?”…“We’re making grape jam and need stuff for it.” …”do you know how to make it?” … “No. We’ll figure it out. Let’s go.”
So the merry band moseys over to Wally world and finds that no one can walk out of Wally World without dropping $300 in things you forgot you needed, even if it’s only partly grape jam supplies. Turns out, inflation waits for no man.
The next day, some friends come over with experience in vineyards. They point out a great heap of ripe grapes hanging above the shop roof, and within an hour the three oldest have coordinated the movement of ladders, the gathering of collection buckets, and the acquisition of additional ripe grapes.
A few days later, Jenny is busy in the kitchen with the first born acting as sous chef. Great heaps of sugar, piles of sanitized glass jars, a vat of boiling water, and many, many mashed grapes fill the kitchen. After hours of diligent work and learning with the Claude AI, there’s a stack of jam on the counter.
It’s dynamite. The store grape jelly is like saltine crackers vs a bacon cheese burger in comparison.
The boys are plotting for next year. Turns out the goats are salivating for the grape fall, because they were aggressive in picking up the dropped ones. Jenny is researching different canning solutions. The hot fresh biscuits for dinner stand as worthy thrones for spoonful’s of grape jam. The AI is lurking in sorrow, for it alone has not tasted the canned fruit of the vine.
Bonus: We had one of those dinners that catches us off guard, so you get a influencer style picture. Every food item on the plate was sourced from the homestead (watermelon, pork bratwurst, beefsteak tomatoes, roasted potatoes)
