Fall Harvest

Yearly, my family has a tradition of picking fruit around the countryside. We harvest apples, pears, peaches, anything else we can find, and my favorite: grapes. Now these aren't just any grapes...these are concord grapes, wonderful, intoxicating concord grapes. I really don't think anyone can understand what I mean until they walk between two rows of ripe concord grapes, stop, close their eyes, and take in the sweetness. It is beyond words. Somehow, my parents became acquainted with a vineyard owner by Keuka lake. This family would allow us to come and pick grapes for the same price they charged Welch's (around 11 cents a pound). Being the food storers that we were, we would pick hundreds, and probably thousands of pounds yearly.

I have incredibly fond memories of walking through the rows of grapes, dressed in a work jacket too big for me, carefully picking big, beautiful bunches of ripe purple-blue grapes. We weren't just picking, of course. Each year I ate enough to make myself sick. We would pile up each box as high as it could go, somehow get all of the grapes to fit in our two cars, climb onto the back of the car, and ride over to the vineyard owner's barn. He would pull out an old, rickety scale, and he and Dad would carefully weigh each box, tallying up the final bill. While they did this, us kids (me and my little brothers, primarily) would run around in the barn playing "lava" as we climbed on the huge grape-picking tractors.

Then, with the bounty piled up in the cars, we would squeeze in and head home, another wonderful year of grape picking over. The harvest lasted for about a week each year though, and while Mom made grape pie filling and grape juice, we ate as much as we could. I remember bringing some grapes to school for lunch one day. One of the girls in my class asked to try a grape...she took one taste of it, and spit it out. She couldn't believe I actually ate grapes with seeds in them. I couldn't believe she didn't think it was the most splendid thing she had ever tasted. To each his own, I guess.

A few days ago, I realized we hadn't gone grape picking this year yet... and it was late in the year. The family we picked grapes from growing up is changing hands, and the tradition of picking there yearly is coming to an end. In desperation, I called up every u-pick place in the fingerlakes region, and everyone had the same response to my question: "picked clean through!" It looks like there won't be any grape picking this year. Sad day. Luckily, I have enough grape pie filling for the coming year, so we'll survive. Next year, I'm getting on it early. One NY fall without grapes is quite enough.