It's wild harvest time!

[Oldcountryboy]

The trees are loaded with walnuts, hickory nuts, and pecan nuts. Wild possum grapes are abundant. Passion fruit and ground cherries everywhere. Also wild meats everywhere. Seems to be plenty of game everywhere you look.....deer, squirrels, dove, and rabbits just to name a few.

Can't wait to get up early in the morning. Gonna do some still hunting for deer and hope to fill my backpack with lots of forage goodies as well. Hope to find some oyster mushrooms, corrals, or snowballs to stuff in my bag. We'll see what the day brings?

[SLFarmMI]

I have to know -- what is a wild possum grape?

[Patchouli]

Sounds like a good day to come!

[Brighton]

Originally Posted by SLFarmMI

I have to know -- what is a wild possum grape?

My family in the south calls them that too, they are one of a number of wild species of grapes that grow in the south. If I remember correctly then are very small, and while mostly seed are great when made into jelly.

Muscadine would be one I can think of by name.

[Paquebot]

Possum grape is a small one, not a muscadine. Grows from Florida to Mexico and north to Kansas. We don't have it here but have a similar one which is more foxy. Despite that, I've often heard people call them possum grapes. This specific one for Oklahoma would be Vitis cinerea:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_cinerea

Walnuts are a boom this year. I have one tree and managed to prevent the squirrels from getting a full bushel the previous two years. I've already hulled 1½ bushels and not even halfway done with still more on the tree. Average size is perhaps just a bit smaller but there were many quadruples instead of the normal pairs.

Martin

[Brighton]

When I lived in the north I heard people call them Fox Grapes, never Possum Grapes.

[Big Dave]

OCB you make a man enveyous. Hope you get a deer. Went this afternoon did not see one.

[Paquebot]

Haven't checked on my usual wild grape stops but my one Concord produced some of the biggest clusters that I've ever seen and nearly filled a 5-gallon pail. That netted a full gallon of juice. Then off to a friend where I got all of her Concords last year and got 5 gallons of juice. Only was granted about three-quarters of the arbor and got 8 gallons this year. Good harvest of Concords always means the same for the wild ones. Need a good frost to sweeten them a bit. Then use a burgundy yeast when I turn them into wine.

Martin

[1shotwade]

There are a few different "possum" grapes, one of which grow wild around here. We also have a type of muskidine known as fox grapes which are close to concords. Ours ripen in aug. so if you don't get them then,you don't get them.(our concords also ripe in aug.)I have read about "sweet possums" that they say are worth the effort but I've not had that much spare time to pick grapes so small.I can't believe y'all are still getting grapes both north and south of me!

[SueMc]

I can't believe the huge amt. of wild nuts around here either. I've picked up about all the black walnuts and hickory nuts that I'm willing to process plus lots of extras (and acorns) that I'm planting all over our property. The hickory nuts are the biggest I've seen. My friend has a huge, beautiful wild pecan tree that I'm collecting from. She's lived in the same house for over 30 yrs and the last two years is the first time the pecan has produced, I guess due to "climate change".
The pecans are small compared to the southern varieties but they are very good and easy to shell.

[1shotwade]

Hardly anything did good this year around here. Pawpaw,persimmon,walnut,hickory,even the oaks were pretty much bare! Just hanging out waiting for next fall!

[SLFarmMI]

Originally Posted by Brighton

When I lived in the north I heard people call them Fox Grapes, never Possum Grapes.

Are they really tiny, mostly skin and seed and sort of sour? If so, I think I have some at our place. Can you make anything out of them?

[suitcase_sally]

Originally Posted by 1shotwade

Hardly anything did good this year around here. Pawpaw,persimmon,walnut,hickory,even the oaks were pretty much bare! Just hanging out waiting for next fall!

The laws of nature says that Mother Nature can only support so much - the Glut/Starvation Paradox. When one area of the world has abundance it is offset by having nothing somewhere else. I have no mushrooms this year. No slippery jacks, hen-of-the-woods, nothing! Oysters are a spring mushroom around here.

[plowhand]

Originally Posted by Brighton

When I lived in the north I heard people call them Fox Grapes, never Possum Grapes.

That's what I've always heard them called in my little corner of Carolina!

[plowhand]

My pecans aren't any good this year, fell off early.

[k9]

Well?? how'd you do?????

[Paquebot]

Originally Posted by SLFarmMI

Are they really tiny, mostly skin and seed and sort of sour? If so, I think I have some at our place. Can you make anything out of them?

That's them! Lot of oldtimers made wine from them. 16 pounds of Concord will produce a gallon of juice. 16 pounds of wild grapes are only good for a quart. They need to freeze before they sweeten up enough. Then it's about 4 or 5 pounds of grapes per gallon of water. Available yeast in the old days could only max out at about 8% so it was easy to sweeten with a little more sugar to cut the foxiness. I put some like that on a burgundy yeast once and wish that I could remember the exact proportions of everything. Didn't tap into that carboy for 4 years and it was better than anything from France or California!

Martin

[1shotwade]

So Martin,just to clarify,when you say wild grapes you're talking about the tinny possum grapes,not the fox grape which is a wild grape we have that is very similar to the concord?

[Paquebot]

We are not in the range of the true possum grape although some here call them that. They are fox or frost grapes. They look like a scaled-down Concord and can vary quite a bit from vine to vine. I've seen them up to almost 3/8" but usually 1/4" or smaller. Their main fault is that they don't have any more seeds than a Concord but that the ones they have are about the same size as those in a Concord. Doesn't leave much room for juice.

Side story here is that I was hunting coon and dog was air-tracking and trying to find even an old scent on the ground or on any tree. He kept circling and trying to figure out where the coon was. I started shining around and there was a tree with a huge grape vine going up. Light happened to catch a glimpse of an eye and there was the coon. He was probably up there several days and never came down to leave any scent. He was probably too intoxicated to come down! When I gutted him, his diet had been 100% grapes even to the point where the intestines were dyed purple.

Martin

[wwubben]

Wild rice.I wonder if a large crop of wild fruits mean a hard winter?