My mother, who grew up outside Boston, loved telling the story about one of her early visits "up home" to visit my father’s family in rural Whitefield, Maine.
This happened in the 1940s. By then, Mooneys had been farming along the Hunts Meadow Road for more than a century and were well accustomed to harvesting what nature provided as well. strawberry flavour jelly
That June day, my grandmother sent her soon-to-be daughter-in-law into the field to pick wild strawberries, but not without first carrying on about how plump and sweet the berries were that season.
If Grammy Mooney was setting up this city girl for a country surprise, she succeeded.
The only strawberries my mother knew of before that day were the big, bland-tasting cultivated ones sold in markets. Now she stood among these clusters of delicate berries at her feet, thumbnail in size.
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For decades to come she would recall that moment for us: “All I could think of was, these people have never seen a real strawberry before!”
But she couldn’t deny how much better tasting those little berries were.
I remember that story each autumn when an atavistic urge draws me into the woods and along hedge rows to harvest wild things for the table: grapes for the best of tangy jelly and juice; tree mushrooms (“chicken of the woods,” and “hens of the woods”) for extravagant side dishes; venison for a winter supply of steaks and roasts and sloppy Joes.
But it’s wild grapes that kick things off, a pursuit where efficiency relies on a vital tool: a bicycle.
I ride during good weather for exercise, but starting usually in September my rides take on a second purpose: reconnaissance. And early on I let my nose lead the way.
If you’ve ridden along a south-facing stretch of bike path or small roadways or walked the edge of a field in September, you’ve probably been walloped by that pungent sweet aroma of Concord grapes.
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Coming around a corner on a bike and hitting that wall of fragrance signals one thing for me: time to pick.
I bicycle by the places where I’ve harvested grapes before and can pretty much tell how thick the grape crop will be by how strong, or how lacking, their smell is in September.
Several varieties of wild grapes grow in these parts. Their viny, big-leaf foliage can all look similar, but their fruit can range in color from deep, dark purple, to blueberry blue, to maroon red.
Grape vines seem to be everywhere once you start looking for them. But just because you see a bushy patch of vegetation blanketing a fence row doesn’t guarantee you’ll find fruit.
Grapes grow best when exposed to warm sun and where air circulates around them. So, look up.
Often they dangle in clusters (much smaller in size than their cultivated cousins) while clinging to the limbs of adjacent trees.
Locating the grapes early is step one. Step two? Wait.
I don’t pick them until I’ve tasted them over a couple of weeks or more, knowing that the longer they stay on the vine the more intense the flavor for jelly.
Even the ripest wild grape is often tart off the vine, particularly the tough skin that slides easily off the ball of jelly in your mouth. But just under the skin lies a layer of sweetness that grows more intense the longer the grape is on the vine. The sweetest grapes come after the first frost, but I usually can’t wait that long.
It’s hard to curb your enthusiasm to harvest when you’ve discovered a treasure trove. Illogical worries settle in: Will someone else find my grapes? Will the town come by and prune back the vines? Save yourself the anxiety. Go get them. It’s a short season.
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My fervor for fall foraging concerns my family members at times.
They worry I’ll get recognized emerging from roadside thickets by people they know.
I've used this to my advantage and now have an experienced seasonal crew who have determined it best to help me get my grapes in ... and get me out of sight.
A few years ago, while parked under vines heavy with fruit, I had my wife, one daughter and her friend all picking grapes while standing in the bed of my pickup. What a haul.
All you really need, though, for one batch of jelly is about 4 pounds of grapes. That will make eight 8-ounce jars of jelly.
The process is easy. (The web is filled with recipes all pretty much the same.) It comes down to cooking the juice out of the grapes and then adding enough sugar and store-bought pectin as the juice boils to sweeten and thicken it into jelly.
Start by washing your grapes, then pour them into a big pot and put them over high heat on the stove.
Add just a little bit of water to cover the bottom of the pot so the grapes don’t burn.
As the grapes start to steam, crack open a good beer and salute the new season.
Stir the grapes occasionally for about 20 minutes, and then use a potato masher to crush the grapes, releasing their juices.
Use a ladle to dump several cups of the sloppy grape mass – loose skins, seeds and everything – into a strainer. Use the ladle to press the juice through the strainer holes and then discard the rest. Repeat until your pot is empty and you've collected all the juice.
In my eagerness to make great quantities of jelly (I end up giving away most of it), I sometimes try to make too much at one time.
Limit each cook to 8 cups of juice or less, or it won’t firm up correctly.
And here are two recommendations: Use less sugar and more pectin than most recipes call for.
Some recipes call for 7 cups of sugar for 8 cups of juice. That’s really too sweet for me. You can get a nice, tangy jelly with 4 cups of sugar.
Also, since firmness depends on the pectin (I use the powered kind from the grocery store) I cover my bet and use more than most recipes call for. If you don’t use enough, your juice remains syrupy, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing on a stack of pancakes.
My grandmother, who made and sold her own butter from the cows on the farm, canned her harvested fruit preserves. I don’t. Sugar is a preservative, and each jar will last weeks in the refrigerator – if it hangs around that long.
By then I’ve usually eaten or given away most of my jelly and am out looking for more grapes while they last.
My grandmother would find that humorous, and perfectly understandable.
apple cinnamon jelly Contact Tom Mooney at tmooney@providencejournal.com.