when life gives you grapes...

We've lived in our house for 4 and a half years now, and every fall we say, "we really should have gotten the grapes off the vines before the birds ate them all...maybe next year." So this year we actually did it. Over the last month I've been watching every few days to see if the grapes were being thieved by the flocks of birds living in our neighbors' trees. When I checked on Tuesday I decided it was time to harvest. I really didn't think the grapes had reached their full maturity yet, but I figured it's better to have slightly sour juice than no juice at all. It was actually VERY fun to harvest the grapes. Even more fun than pulling carrots from a garden or picking apples from a tree. I loved pulling leaves back to find hidden clusters of plump, purple grapes! Justin's grandma used to have a small vineyard and she had all the equipment we needed to turn our grapes into grape juice. Which is good, because we wouldn't have known what to do with them otherwise.
We all enjoyed "the harvest."






What MJ was doing while we picked grapes...

This is what was going on outside while we were "juicing."


The juice starting to flow..

The fruits of our labor! (actually, the 'juice' of our labor) I've never seen prettier juice.


All in all, it was a really fun thing to learn. I can promise that if we live in this house next September, we will definitely do it again. :)
Interesting side note: The grape vines at our house were planted {roughly} 40 years ago, by Justin's Great-Aunt Hazel and Great-Uncle Darrell. They came from a transplant of grape vines that Hazel got from Great-Grandpa Bryant... SO, the vines in our yard actually grew at Justin's Great-Grandpa's house almost a half century ago! It's cool to think that we're the 4th (and 5th) generation of Brimhalls/Bryants to harvest from these vines.