Pruning the grapes

It's March, and that means it's time for pruning grapevines in Michigan. We have a half dozen grapevines, both white concord and purple concord.

Since we moved to the farm in November 2003 we hadn't pruned ours, which is why they looked like this:

But even with such a tangled mess, last fall I picked a large cooler-ful, plus a bushel basket of grapes and still left some on the vines. However, half the grapes were wilted or dried, which we believe is because of the lack of pruning.

Don and his dad canned grape juice, both white and purple, and Don periodically makes jelly out of the juice. Sometimes we enjoy the luxury of just drinking the juice with breakfast.

Yesterday, Don and I tackled the chaos of our vines. Each vine needs to be left with several branches with ten or so buds. Untangling the dead wood from the live, finding what is worth keeping, and trimming just the right amount is confusing.

Here's the result. We'll see this fall if we get many grapes!

Here's one of the sweet amethysts (grape jelly) Don made:

I remember a sermon I heard as a young person in which the pastor said the husbandman cuts back the vine to almost nothing, and likened it to our own spiritual vitality. It looks as though nothing good can come of such drastic pruning. But it's out of great emptiness that productive growth comes.