Blue hands and purple fingers By Pat Gibson

First you have to gather the grapes. This involves getting a ladder, several buckets or sacks and lots of tick repellent. You can use a commercial product like Off or 6 12 or dust yourself with powdered sulfur. I met a man once who would put flea collars around his ankles but that is a little extreme. Then you find the grape vines. This is not hard since they grow all along the road sides and up the draws near the creeks. If you don't know who owns the place where the grapes are growing, you should ask before you pick. Some folks get pretty upset if you clean out their grape patch. (I'm telling you this jelly is good!) I've seen people picking on the highway right of way, but I'm not sure I want grapes that grow in all that car exhaust. You may want to take along a pair of pruning shears since the stems are pretty tough.

You can just pick the grapes, but that takes longer and you lose some of the juice that way. Don't worry that some of the grapes are still a little green. If you have a few green grapes, you don't need as much commercial pectin to make the jelly. When the rains have been good in the spring, the grapes may be as big as those red ones you can buy in the grocery store. Pick until you get tired, but pick at least a grocery sack full.

By the way, keep an eye out for snakes. Birds like to eat grapes and the snakes sometimes get into the vines looking for a meal. When you get as many grapes as you want, haul them back to the house or your car and pick off the ticks that weren't discouraged by the repellent. (No matter how good the stuff says it is there are always a few ticks that didn't read the label.)

When you get the grapes home, wash them off in a sink full of water. They'll float and you can throw away the bad grapes and trash that you have gotten mixed in with the grapes. Don't worry about getting the stems off, you can juice them with the stems. Also the juice and the stems can be irritating on your skin, so the less you have to handle the grapes, the better. After you have washed the grapes, put them in a big pot and cover them with water. Put them on the stove and simmer until the skins start to pop. Let them cook a while and then cool. Then the fun starts.

Get several packages of cheese cloth or old thin cotton sheeting and strain the grapes thorough the cloth. Now there are several schools of thought on this process. Some folks say to let the juice drip out of the cloth and not squeeze so you have very clear jelly. Some folks say to squeeze so you get the most juice. I always figure, I want to get it over with and get as much as I can, so I squeeze.

This is also a very colorful process since the grape juice stains. Don't make grape jelly the weekend before you have to go to the big wedding or you have to pour tea at the ladies' club lunch. Also, don't wear your good white jeans or tennis shoes. Your oldest clothes and rubber gloves are right in style here. After you get the juice extracted, you have to let it sit for at least 24 hours. If you don't do this, you will get crystals in the jelly. You let the juice sit and the next day you can see the crystals in the sediment at the bottom of the container. Big glass jars are the best for this step.

Now at my house, this is all the farther some of the juice ever gets. The crew likes to make grapeade out of the juice. They dilute the juice half and half with water, add some sugar and enjoy. I won't go into the process of making the jelly since any grape jelly recipe will work. If you don't want to mess with this mess, then get some jelly from New Cannan Farms over in Henley.

There are lots of other things you can make jelly from that grow around here, but that's another story. 

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