This particular bottling party was focused on grapes! There are several families in our ward that have grape vines and wanted to learn how to bottle grape juice. While 2 different processes were used the steamer was the more efficient process and seemed to process the quickest.
Here Michelle is explaining the way to prepare the grapes for process. A quick rinse/wash and strip the grapes from the vines and put them in the strainers.
(This is a grape...)
This was the first wave of women to arrive at the party and they were put straight to work getting the grapes ready. We had some more apples as well so a second table was set up to prepare apples for bottled slices and applesauce.
We ended up with 6 stoves fired up simultaneously to process the grape juice as quickly as possible. (It certainly goes much faster with 6 stoves instead of just one!)
Once the juice was ready they drained the juice put it in bottles. The did the applesauce and slices processing on different stoves at the same time. It still took until after 5:00 pm to finish the processing and clean up the bottling tools and stoves.
After the three bottling parties these woman bottled over 300 quarts of fruit:
Apple Sauce - 64.5 quarts
Apple Slices - 46.75 quarts
Pears - 83 quarts
Nectarines - 55 quarts
Peach Jam - 12.75 quarts
Plum Jam - 2 quarts
Grape Jam - 3.75 quarts
Grape Juice - 42 quarts
White Grape Juice - 9 quarts
Total: about 320 quarts (80 gallons)!
