by Jo Schaper

My first grape harvest is in, and I ate the whole thing in one sitting. All five Concord grapes. I couldn’t be more pleased.

By August, serious farmers and side yard gardeners have one thing in common: they talk a lot about the weather and the prospects and results of the harvest.

Talking about the heat did nothing to break it this year. Even the occasional thunderstorms streamed water hot enough to boil eggs, which was a good thing only if you wondered what happened to the hail. Easy. It melted on the way down.

But back to grapes. As long as I can remember, I’ve been a fan of Concord grapes. At my mother’s parent’s farm, grapes fueled my first environmental farming lesson. Concord grapevines trailed up the seven foot fence surrounding the chicken yard. While modern agronomists and food safety experts would probably blanch, there, in their side yard, was an entire food web consisting of grapes, chickens and people.

People fed the chickens, which fertilized the grapevines. People watered the grapes during summer drought. Chickens ate the grapes on the inside of the fence. People got the grapes on the outside of the fence for eating, jelly, jam and homemade wine; eggs laid by the chickens, feathers for ticks, and ultimately the chickens themselves. Kitchen scraps, grape seeds and stems, pressed grape skins and pulp left over from the jelly making went back to the chickens. And the cycle started over again.

Somehow, I got it into my head at a young age that grapes made the world go round, or at least a small part of it.

You cannot buy real Concord grapes in most chain grocery stores. Swollen with succulent juice, and thin-skinned, they don’t ship thousands of miles very well without splitting. For many years after my grandparents had departed, August and September meant at least one trip to St. James, Missouri, where sturdy Italian families carried on my grandfather’s tradition of grape juice, jelly, and sweet wine.

In the last few years, the grape stands started dying out. The younger generations found more money in raising fancy grapes for sale to local wineries which have become as thick as ticks in June. Commercially grape jelly production has declined as different palates crave peach-habanero, or guava preserves. Concord grape futures seemed threatened. It became obvious I had to do something.

In Spring 2008, with no more background in vinticulture than eating lots of grapes, I bought two Concord grape stocks, and planted them on one end of the tomato patch. (Home-grown tomatoes come from the other side of the family. They haven’t “made” much this year, even though tomatoes allegedly like hot weather.)

Until last fall, we did nothing but water occasionally. Last year we cut back the vines, but not severely. This spring both plants went gangbusters. Lacking a chicken yard, we put up grape trellis and have encouraged the plants to grow around it.

This spring, to my delight, both plants flowered and formed tiny green grape sprays. Shortly thereafter came another visitor my grandparents knew nothing about: Japanese beetles.

Japanese beetles like grapes almost as much as I do. More, actually, because although certain Greek dishes are cooked in grape leaves, I’ve never been tempted to consume them as vegetables. There are probably as many myths about how to get rid of these pests as how to get rid of chigger itch. In the long run, outliving the adult pests, sacrificing a few grape leaves to bug-chewed lace, and putting ziplock bags on the developing grapes while spraying seems to have saved the plants.

While we weren’t looking, something got one of the grape bunches. Not sure what, probably birds, or, just my luck, maybe raccoons. Something that flies or climbs fences for sure. The stems remained, but no grapes. The other bunch, consisting of five ripe grapes, was the entire harvest for 2010.

This fall, we’re cutting the vines back severely for the first time. If we’re going to have to share our grapes, we need to be sure there are more to share.

It’s an adventure, but my grandpa would be proud.