Sunday, September 2, 2012

Harvest Time

When we moved here, my youngest son thought we were moving to a farm.  So he was pretty upset when we landed in a tiny rental house with a tiny backyard and no space or opportunity to plant anything.  Our ultimate goal is to buy a farm so we can grow our own fruits and vegetables and "live off the fat of the land."  I am constantly amazed by the wonderful gardens that people plant here!  I love to see and taste the fresh produce and can't wait until we find our spot here in Idaho so we can start planting and harvesting ourselves! 

While we don't have a garden at our current residence, the owner of the home did plant some grapevines.  Last year when we moved in they were just an overgrown mess and because we didn't know what to do with them, when fall came we just trimmed them back and cleaned up the mess.  In fact, I was pretty worried that my husband trimmed them back too far!  Some of them looked like nothing but dead stumps and I was pretty sure he had killed them off. 

But, come spring, the shoots appeared and the grapevines went CAH_RAY_ZEE!! I was thrilled to see how quickly they grew and climbed the trellises.  It was even more exciting to see the grapes appear.

About the beginning of August, we realized that the vines were so out of control and thick that we needed to trim them back some, so we did what any novice grape grower would do...we Googled grape growing and figured out how to trim back the vines correctly so we would get the best fruit. 

Here are the results of our efforts:


 
 

We only had a few of the green and champagne colored grapes, the Concords are producing profusely and we should have quite a few more if we can keep the birds away from them!  The Hubs is gonna juice this batch and I think I'll make some Concord Grape jelly from the next batch!  I'll share the pics when we make the jelly, it should make for a good story, since cooking is not my strength and I have never made jelly before!

I absolutely LOVE how easy it is to get things to grow here in Idaho.  Just another reason to feel...at home in {Boise}.

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