Making Grape Juice!

We recently went to Shurtleff Vineyards in Payette, Idaho and picked our own grapes. I have always loved grapes straight off the vine, they taste NOTHING Like the grapes you get at the store. I was excited to eat them. But we heard that you could make your own grape juice, and since Parker drinks juice like it's going out of style, we thought it was a good idea.

By the time we made the one hour drive from our house to Shurtleff it was almost sunset, so we hurriedly pulled out our five gallon buckets and began picking bunches of grapes. I expected it to be hard, but it was SO EASY! I wish it had been light enough and that we had not been in such a hurry and we had gotten pictures at the vineyard. It was BEAUTIFUL and it smelled amazing!

We picked 36 gallons of grapes! My Grandma Carpender lent me her steamer/juicer, and we spent the next week picking grapes off the vine, cleaning them, steaming them and sealing the juice in jars. It was a lot of fun, and amazingly it takes JUST like the grape juice you buy at the store, maybe even better! I am very proud of Eric and I for becoming domestic and being so financially savvy. We spent $15 dollars on 36 gallons of grapes and $30 on jars and in turn we got over $200 worth of grape juice! DELISH!

TWO 18 Gallon buckets of grapes! These three LARGE bowls made up about 1/4 of one bucket!

The first round of jars for caning!

Pouring the grape juice into the jars

!