Better late than never! Good crop of grain. Makes sense to plant it dense for soil improvement/compostable mass.
The survival garden book I got from Bountiful Gardens, advised 75% of the garden to be “compost” crops such as grain and corn.
Weather is very unusual here too. We are getting good results for quite a few plants this year. Others not so much, but it’s all better than last year, when we had a great and beautiful garden that we had to just let burn up because our rain barrels didn’t have enough water past May except for the perrenials and fruit trees.
My granny never used pectin. She always made a blackberry and grape combo gathered from the wild. A few green grapes helped to thicken it. It was never solid or what you would call firm. Just a little thicker than molasses, and so so spreadable and yummy. That’s the way I truly like it.
You can do apple jelly without pectin, especially if you also cook the cores, which have as much of even high pectin content than the skins.
As for grape jelly, I still have a couple of jars of wild grape jelly stored away that was made in 82. Still good; still sealed: wild grapes from northern California. Picked them and made a ton of no added pectin jelly while we were staying with my father, after Mom’s funeral.