The Pickings Were Slim...

...but we picked anyway.  Because when our grapes ripen, we treasure each one, remembering some lean years and some plentiful ones.  For instance...
2012 - decent (8 gallons total, as recorded here)
2011 - fantastic!
2010 - dismal (I can't find a post specifically about it, but the 2011 post mentions this)
2009 - essentially none :(  (the year of the unexplained grape hiest)
2008 - I can't find any record of this year's harvest
2007 - not sure how many quarts of juice canned, but definitely some (Jeff and my mother did most of the work this year)

This year, with our abundance of rain, the grapevine was big and lush, with branches stretching to the ground on nearly all sides of it.  My hopes were high.

A little too high, as it turns out.  The harvest itself was decidedly NOT abundant, and we're not sure why.  Maybe we should have been more conscientious about pruning the vine last spring?  Maybe it was just an off season for the vine?

In any case, we eagerly picked what we could find (and by "we," I mean Jeff and the boys).  :)

 David loved being up on the ladder to reach the highest parts of the vine.

Jeff did a lot of the harvesting, too, for which I was very grateful.

Tobin and Shav did a lot of admiring-of-grapes-in-the-bucket.  :)

Do you know what Josiah's favorite drink is?

Hot grape juice.  Have you ever...??  :)

I'm sad to say that Josiah's supply of hot grape juice for this coming winter won't be nearly as plentiful as he would like.  I made grape juice today; and from all that was harvested from our vine, we only got 6 quarts of juice.

6 QUARTS!!  Compare that to the 17.25 gallons we canned two years ago!

It's disappointing, to be sure; but at least, it's not as bad as the grape-less year of 2009!

Is it too early to start praying for a better grape harvest next year?  :)