Two weeks to go until I buy no more food... for a year!

As my counter top gets filled with jars full of canned grape juice and my freezer starts to fill up with all sorts of food, I am feeling this immense sensation of pride, satisfaction, safety and happiness.  It's hard to explain the effect that this amount of food freedom has on one's bliss.  I am by no means ready for the winter, not having harvested nearly enough to sustain me all winter, but it is within reach.  I still have time to harvest all the squash in the garden, the greens, the wild stuff.  There is also the food I'm leaving to overwinter in the fall garden and the greens I'm going to grow on my counter in the dead of winter.  I want this to be a testament to the fact that anyone can do this.  I am the laziest gardener I know, and am busy doing lots of other things, yet I will be able to grow enough healthy food for one person for a year. (Hopefully).  

This week has been the best harvest and prep week so far.  I was having issues with my concord grapes ripening this year.  The one thing I thought was a sure thing was the grapes.  Of course, there is no guarantee with anything you grow.  So, I waited as long as I could and let the grapes sit on the vines, tasting them every day with just with a little less disappointment each time.  Then, 4 days ago, I went out and noticed lots of grape skins on the leaves and what looked like someone had eaten the inside of the grape and spit the skins out.  I can only imagine what critter was out there doing this, so I decided, ripe or not, these grapes were going to be grape juice soon or I'd lose them all.

47 quarts and 7 pints later, I have my grape juice.  I ended up with about 2 bushels of grapes off the vines.  Not super sweet, more tart, but the juice tasted very refreshing anyway.  And there is nothing that smells as good as concord grape juice from scratch.  My mom used to make this recipe from our grape vines at home.  We had grape vines growing up through apple trees on the side of the property where I grew up.  It was like a secret garden and we used to actually swing on the vines.  There was one shaped like a fainting couch sort of and it would swing.  Great fun.  Plus, apples to throw at my brother and his friends or, you know, make cider.  (I won't tell you what we mixed with the mashed up apples when we flung them at my brother but it had something to do with neighborhood dogs.)  I hope you're not reading this Brett.

So, today has been the first day that it's felt like fall.  The temperature is only in the 50's and I am all over the garden figuring out which thing to harvest first just in case we get a frost tonight.  I still have peppers and tomatoes so I might start with them.  I already blanched a whole batch of turnips and greens and put them in the freezer this morning.  So, it's only noon now and I have so much to do.  So I will resume blogging tomorrow.