Making Raisins

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

See how sticky-glazed my fingers are pulling these raisins? I had to lick-polish the camera lens when it got doused in the photo shoot.

After putting up several quarts of applesauce (thanks for the Gravensteins, Lilly!), several more of peaches, and a half gallon of ratatouille last weekend, it’s no wonder that my next note to myself read: Pick raisins make grapes.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to load nine 15” square dehydrator trays in the Excalibur with grapes? To really fill them up so that the black box weighs as much as a Golden Retriever? It takes a few hours. Then the fan and heater go to work and slowly, slowly, slowly raisins begin to form. That part takes days. I’m grateful at least I don’t have to sit there and wave a palm frond at them.

Heading to my desk, I felt sure the raisins would take another 24 hours. Then Seda said, “Shall I check those, or have you got them?” I’d only just checked them. But then, if I was wrong and they turned out like brown pop rocks without the pop … well, it would be on me. So I checked them once more, and to my surprise (and horror, to be frank; I didn’t have time for this), dozens of raisins in the middle of the trays were done.

Now here’s the part I want to share, the transformative part, so get ready. There is no way, I thought, no way I am going to sort through every raisin and pull off the ones that are dry. That is too much work. But, clearly those ones in the middle of the racks were getting crispy, so … at least take those off?

Working with fruit is such an honor. Look at me, silently complaining about the time it takes to care for harvest. Can you imagine what the grapevine thinks of that? Through the coldest winter, she hunkers down, preparing to surge forth into bloom. The vine patiently waits for bees to dance ecstatically among her flowers and then plumps up sweet green grapes behind them. Collecting the morning dew, those grapes mature to a delicate depth of flavor across the long days of July. And come August, the vine offers up translucent, sugary globes to all living things. What a wonder!

I stood for an hour and a half, correcting my course, as I remembered how to respect a living thing. I remembered this with my fingers, not my head. The awareness came quietly. I could not tell at first which raisin was too wet and which just right. I picked through them once, twice, then three times, as my hands grew nimble and sticky. My sorting fingers had begun to think like grapes, like birds, like bugs. In the practice of sensing, they had come to know the grapes, to know which was ripe and ready without a thought.

To know. Isn’t it a sweet thing? Isn’t it one of the best parts of being alive? To have the sense that something is. To navigate around it and dance with it, deeply understanding your role and its role. To love in relationship with purity of focus, appreciation, and care. “Knowing” is a celebration of confidence more than accuracy. This flow is not so much about being “right” as feeling connected with all. That’s making raisins.

How does working with animals, vegetables, and minerals fill you with bliss, inspiration, and knowing? How do you savor this after the experience itself is behind you?

Hit reply and make a guess as to how many raisins we made.