fall bounty

This was a good year for our kind of grapes.

I hear that the mild summer was not so good to the wine grapes, but mine were good.

It was the biggest crop we have had. Right now there are 80 quarts of new juice on the shelves. When I realize that is 20 gallons, it seems more! Add that to last years juice which we haven’t started to drink yet! We are still drinking 2006 juice.
Whatever we do this winter we will drink grape juice.

Maybe I will make some grape jelly. I have done jam, but not jelly.

While I was juicing the grapes, Miriam was shelling corn. I bought seed that was sold as an old indian variety of corn for flour. The stalks were 9 feet high, the ears were long, the colors are many: red, yellow, white, black, blue and shades every way.

Neighbor Terry took it to his place of work (he works at a large corn seed producing company) and got them properly dried, which is important if you are going to keep them in storage.

It was not easy shelling the corn, so as I have come to do I looked on line for a “corn sheller”. There was an old article from Mother Earth News about a guy who made his own corn sheller.

He used a hunk of 2 by 6, made holes with a chisel and put nails in to the center to shuck the kernels when the cob was twisted.

It seemed to me that a hunk of ABS pipe would work just as well. The ears were quite uniform in size, so I found a hunk of 2” pipe, drilled 4 holes and put in screws.

Wow what a difference, and the kernels, for the most part, slid down the pipe into the bucket.

We ended up with about 5 gallons of corn kernels. But since it is multi colored, I am wondering what color the flour will be! Next week I will find out.

I like corn bread and corn dodgers and I put a good bit of corn flour in our pancakes and waffles. Now I can have corn flour from my own place, to go with my grape juice!

My tiny farm amazed me this year.