Canning Time

Martin family life was farm life—genuine, largely self-sustaining farm life, with the bulk of the food on the family table coming from either our own farm or the farms of our Chautauqua County neighbors. We recently discussed the cost of food with Father Martin, who reminded us that the entire monthly budget for the Martin family averaged fifty dollars a month! Mother Martin therefore spent a good portion of the spring, summer, and fall putting up fruit and sundry items for the year. Because it’s October, we were remembering how she used to put up grape jelly.

Our cousins had a 175-acre Concord grape farm in Westfield, in the grape belt there along the southeastern shore of Lake Erie. The Concord grape, Vitis labrusca, is named for the Massachusetts town which also gave us the beginnings of the American revolution, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau. Our cousins’ farm was part of the National Grape Cooperative Association which provides fruit for Welch’s Foods. During the year, the fruit from our cousins' farm had to meet Welch’s standards for pesticides, soil conditions, sugar content, and so on. In the fall, when the fruit was ripe and had the right sugar levels, a mechanical picker went through and harvested the bulk of the grapes. Back then, the picker wasn’t technologically able to harvest the last hundred or so feet on each row of vines, so those grapes had to be picked by hand. Each year, therefore, rain or shine, on the Saturday after the mechanical harvest, the Martin family gathered bright and early to strip what the machine had missed before the first frost came and rendered the fruit useless.
We met around seven or eight in the morning for a hearty farm breakfast: pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, and juice. Then everyone, nearly two dozen grownups and kids of all ages, headed out into the fields armed with pruning shears, toting carts and a huge assortment of plastic and traditional wooden bushel baskets. At the ends of the rows of vines sat these huge wooden boxes—each about twenty feet square—holding fruit the machine had already harvested. They were sitting there, waiting for us to clear the last, good fruit; once we were done, a semi would come and haul the fruit off to the processing plant.
Even when it was sunny, there was often a cool autumn breeze off of Lake Erie. More than once, we had to pick in the pouring rain. Picking the fruit was tedious, of course, so we kids inevitably made a game and a meal of it. We’d race each other to see who could pick the fastest; we’d drift off into daydreams while we picked the slowest; we got into grape-throwing fights. As the morning passed the kids’ mouths and faces and hands turned purple from the juice in the skins (even with black grapes, the juice from the pulp runs clear; you have to press the skins to extract the color). We stopped for lunch, then returned to finish the work. By late afternoon, we were tired and sore and sick of eating grapes, but for our help, we were able to take home about six bushels of grapes in clusters.

The next day, back at our house, we fought over which one of us kids got to work the 2-quart food mill, our home kitchen version of the huge presses at the Welch’s processing plant, while the others picked the grapes from the clusters by hand. Once the juice was pressed, Mother Martin would get to work making jelly, about seventy-five jars or so. The kitchen filled with the syrupy smell of grape juice, sugar, and lemon, and the steam rose from the gleaming surfaces of the Mason jars waiting for the cooked jelly. When she was done, we kids helped carry the jars downstairs to the basement (yes, more than a few jars met with catastrophe over the years), but we remember with great affection the sight of those shelves of brightly-colored canned vegetables and fruits, jams, jellies, juices, sauces, preserves, pickles, and relishes. Mother Martin passed this May, so in her memory, and in tribute to her, we present a version of her grape jelly that doesn't require the trouble we went to each fall, back on the Westfield farm.

Ingredients
3 cups Concord grape juice. (Note: you can use 3 cups of store-bought grape juice.)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon unsalted butter (this is what gives Concord grape jelly its sheen)
1 envelope pectin
4 cups sugar

Sterilize a dozen pint-sized canning jars, rings, and lids on the hottest cycle of the dishwasher (without soap), or submerge them completely in boiling water for five minutes.
While waiting for the jars to sterilize, bring the fruit juices, the butter, and the pectin to a rolling boil and stir constantly for 1 minute. Gradually add the sugar, continuing to stir until dissolved and skimming off any foam that comes to the surface.
As soon as the jars are sterilized, remove them with canning tongs, and fill each one with jelly mix, leaving approximately 1/4" space at the top of the jar. Using tongs, and working quickly, place the inner lid and the ring on the jar. Secure each ring; you can do this with your hands as long as they’re clean. Set the sealed and covered jars in several inches of hot boiling water for five minutes to set the seal (this time, the jars don’t need to be submerged). Remove the jars, and check the seal by pressing on the center of the lid with your finger. If the metal makes a clicking sound, the seal isn’t set; close any loose seals with a layer of melted paraffin. Allow the jars to cool overnight, then store in a cool place until ready.