As you know by now, Union Grove Farm, where I live, is about to go into the freeze-dried grape business in a big way. But who, you are no doubt wondering, invented freeze drying in the first place?
No, it wasn’t NASA, which is finally back in the business of sending men and women into outer space, and even to the moon. You are probably not old enough to remember, way back when they did this sort of thing more or less routinely. (Yes, children, it really happened! I watched it myself, on my own black-and-white TV set.) True, the advent of space flight spurred a boom in freeze-dried foodstuffs, such as dry ice cream: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, which you could buy at the Goddard Space Flight Gift Shop. What marvels we knew in those days!
But freeze-drying is actually an ancient art, pioneered by the Incas, who lived in the high Andes and were smart enough to forsake the sweltering jungles below them which were filled with malaria-carrying mosquitoes and other pests, including natives adept at such arts as poison arrow shooting and head shrinking.
Up there in the clear mountain air, the Incas built a huge empire and fed themselves on potatoes and llama milk. I do not believe, however, that they combined the two and thereby invented au gratin potatoes, my favorites, which, according to Mother Google, were invented in France in 1788, hence the French name. The French did not invent French fries, however. I think that was done by Roy Kroc in Fresno, CA in 1954 or so, just a few years before the beginning of the space program.
You see how this all fits together?
The Incas used an ingenious low-tech form of freeze drying. They planted their potatoes way up high on the mountains, where you could freeze them simply by pulling them out of the ground and exposing them to the ambient air, which was several degrees below potato freezing temperature. Then they took them down the mountain, not all the way to malaria-land, but far enough for the next step in the process, which was squeezing out all the potato juice, leaving the spud as flat as a potato pancake.
It also left them only a fraction of the weight of the original potato, which meant they could be shipped long distances with much less cost and effort, especially for the llamas. This, in turn, allowed the Incas to expand from their original base to a vast high altitude empire stretching from Bolivia to Columbia. This was a tremendously successful political feat, at least until some spoilsport Spaniard named Pizzaro showed up and ruined the whole party.
The Inca system won’t work for grapes, so Union Grove Farm is resorting to a more high-tech system which uses sophisticated machinery to freeze, squeeze, dry and package its incredibly delicious and nutritious Superhero Freeze-Dried Grapes, which will be available worldwide once the 2026 harvest is in.
The person in charge of all this, post-harvest operations, is a pert and clever young woman with, of course, a degree in Art History. Her name is Jen James, and if you are from the Detroit area, you may remember her as one of the famous James Sisters: Caitlin, Julie, Jessie and Jenny, inventors of DROUGHT brand raw fruit juice.
After selling more than a million bottles of this delightful and colorful organic refreshment, the sisters made a successful exit from the company and today work mostly as consultants and project managers in various fields, often collaborating because they possess many complementary skills.
Jen, the youngest, is busy preparing for the late summer Union Grove harvest. As she explained it to me, “Once the grapes come off of the vines, it’s go time. Those two to three weeks demand logistical precision on all fronts to make sure we’re getting the ripest fruit into the freeze drying process.”
She got to Union Grove because she had recently purchased a home in the area, and stopped one morning at the Blue Heeler Coffee food truck, which as followers of these pages know, is a noncontroversial outgrowth of Union Grove Farm. Greg was in the back making donuts, but Meredith waited on the unsuspecting Jen. In her engaging but somewhat nosy way, Meredith found out about Jen’s past and the more she heard, the more impressed she was. So it was arranged for Greg to give her a farm tour.
Now it was Jen’s turn to be impressed, and what impressed her most was the sheer extent and complexity of the project. She told me “what was being accomplished by such a small, hard working group was pretty remarkable.”
She got a taste of the post-harvest process last year, but the 2026 crop will be more than thirty times that size. An immense scale-up. Pick, wash, freeze, dry, package, ship.
“Once you go through all that,” Greg says, “with freeze drying, unlike marketing the fresh grapes, where you inevitably have a huge waste factor, you get a product that has an extended shelf life. But until the Magilla is complete, you have nearly no shelf life at all, so the pressure is really on.”
But Jen has worked it all out: schemata, machine inspections, redundancies upon redundancies, the whole operation.
It’s going to come out just perfect. I’ll bet you. I’ll bet you a Peruvian potato, with a bottle of Drought brand grape juice chaser.
If you’d like to take a tour (including the freeze drying facility) of Union Grove Farm like Jen did, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/regenerative-farm-and-vineyard-tour-tickets-625236678737?aff=oddtdtcreator.
And I’ll let you know as soon as it’s possible to order your Superhero freeze-dried grapes. I promise.
