The Grapes Of I Need A Hot Bath

---

My husband runs a youth small bore competitive marksman shooting program. Phew, that was a mouthful, try saying that with a mouth full of almond butter.....Anyway, one of his volunteers is a marvel of a man. Conrad, is almost 90 years old, but you would never know it by glancing at his countenance. He exudes vitality and honestly has the appearance of a vibrant creature in his sixties.

The man skis almost everyday during ski season!

I still snortle when I recall what he said to me the first time I met him, "Did you know that you ski for free after you are 80?"

Indeed...LOL

Anyway, Conrad and his amazing wife dwell on this beautiful little patch of domestic homesteading bliss in a gultch on the edge of Coeur d"Alene, Idaho, and every year he graciously allows us to come pick all his surplus fruit.

Some years it's apples, some years it's grapes, and a lot of years it's both.

For you see, he and his wife don't need the abundance of fruit their vines and trees yield, in fact, yesterday his wife begged me to go out and pick more because she was too dang tired to deal with any more but couldn't bear to see any of the gorgeous grapes go to waste.

I was beyond happy to oblige. They both know that we feed half the neighborhood most of the time. Well, the half under 18.

And with that explanatory explanation offered, yesterday morning was grape day, so of course it was pouring the rain and snow.

Growing up in Southeastern Alaska and Southwestern Washington left me impervious to rain. Seriously. I spent most of my youth in a state of soggy dampness. I didn't even know dry feet were a thing until I spent my adulthood in Idaho.

So as I popped out of the car and launched a beaming smile at Conrad, I didn't even notice the soggy snowflakes and big fat rain drops.

But I sure did after picking grapes for a bit in the deluge.

It was a blistering thirty-seven degrees Fahrenheit out, and even though I had on a pair of gloves and was using a pair of pruners to harvest the grape bunches, my hands quickly became little icicles.

That didn't stop the hubs, Conrad, and I from picking a hundred pounds of the most beautiful Concord grapes. Though I did have an issue with Conrad being out in that squall with us picking grapes. I mean, I know the guy is vibrant, but it was cold, and damp, and he was giving us the grapes, I didn't expect him to help us harvest them too!

So when he suggested coming in for a nice hot cup of mocha, of course we obliged. His wife M was in whipping up a batch of cookies and I immediately got distracted by their heckin chonker of a cat Skittles.

We spent the next half hour warming our hands and innards with steaming hot cups of mocha and talking story about our lives. Conrad and M spent their working years up in the Sierra Nevadas, as he was a forester. I love hearing stories about their pet racoon and how they used to do things back in the day.

And even though I had plenty of grapes, I went out and picked about thirty more pounds because M asked me too. There is going to be so much wine, jelly, and juice around here that all are going to be grape giddy in these parts!

I mean, I think our kitten Pork was already suffering from the delighted delirium, just look at the creature trying to destroy my daughter's carving pumpkin.

But I gotta jet, I have grape puree straining for a jelly making sesh, that and I have a couple apples to eat as Conrad also stuck a bag of those in my car and I am just beyond obliged to sink my teeth into at least one😉

---

And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's not capable of frostbite and hypothermia iPhone.

---