Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The Harvest is Plentiful

Its Muscadine season.  Muscadines are thick skinned grapes that you have to work to eat.  The seeds are big and abundant - apparently they're healthy too if you can get them down, but biting them reveals a nasty taste.  But the grape meat?  Oh its so good.  Really, its amazing. 

There's a vineyard down over some hills from us that has a bunch of varieties, including these plump beauties.  Our landlord took care of their chickens while they were gone, so she bartered the grapes, opening them up to anyone who wanted to come.To shorten this story (and this post): there's a ton of them.  TonS of them actually.  The harvest is plentiful.

And this is a lesson I'm learning out here.  It takes very little to grow very much.  There's real life out in the country, come and taste it!  The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers really are few.  I get that now more than ever.  We spent an hour on probably 2 vines and didn't begin to get all the grapes.  10 families of 10 wouldn't even put a dent in the abundance of these vines.  The picture above is of our pretty basket, but i was carrying the giant - but less aesthetically pleasing - bucket. 

If anyone wants in, move to the land and I'll tell you where the grapes are. Now to find a muscadine wine recipe...

2 comments:

  1. this one is interesting in that it uses vodka to halt the fermentation at then end and preserve some of the sweetness, but if you forgo that step you'll end up with an even drier wine:

    http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/muscadine-wine-using-wild-yeast-156048/

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  2. If I head out there after college, will you teach me the way of the land? Good Lord knows all I want in life is to live on a farm and be right where I belong!

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