# Muscadine Preserves



## chandler48 (Jun 5, 2017)

Wife and I put up 18 jars of Muscadine Preserves yesterday. Muscadines normally are ripe around Labor Day. Quite late this year. Will probably have enough to make about 5 gallons of wine.


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## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

Looks like you are buying lids wherever you can find them at a decent price. I still have 4 or 5 hundred new lids and have started reusing lids and one piece tops for water bath canning. No problems so far.


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## Bud9051 (Nov 11, 2015)

Never heard the name "muscadine" so Googled. Being originally a native American grape it made me wonder if a grape patch we ran into many years ago might have been them. We are farther north than the range they list, but either someone long ago established that area or they were wild. We called them "slip skin grapes".

Bud


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

Muscadine preserves has to be my all time favorite preserves, but wild muscadines are as rare as hens teeth around here. The white tame ones are easy to find but are nowhere as good as the wild ones.

True story: While in Navy boot camp, a fellow from Alabama and I were talking about hunting muscadines. One of the fellows from up north asked us what gun we used. I said "what", he asked again, we both laughed and said muscadines are wild grapes. We were amazed to learn a lot of the fellows had never seen them or heard of them, we just thought everyone knew what they were.

We were also amazed that so many fellows had never seen a cow or a pig or seen corn grow. One fellow thought a pig was the length of bacon. It was a learning experience for all of us. lol


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## chandler48 (Jun 5, 2017)

@wooleybooger , yeah we have a stash in our basement storage room and I just grab what I can. Several hundred jars and lid/ring combos. That's after I sold 600 jars last year. Just kept accumulating them.

@Bud9051 they are also called "fox grape". The really wild ones are little smaller, but these are cultivars we planted and the average grape is a little larger than a quarter and when they are ripe, they are solid black and succulent. We also have scuppernongs, but they are golden in color and don't have the tannin that the red/black grapes do.


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## BayouRunner (Feb 5, 2016)

My favorite! Looking good


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## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

I never heard of them until two minutes ago.

"Muscadines are vigorous, deciduous vines growing 60-100 ft. in the wild. Botanically, they differ in significant ways from other grapes and are placed in a separate sub-genus, _Muscadinia_. In contrast to most other grapes, muscadines have a tight, non-shedding bark, warty shoots and unbranched tendrils."



MUSCADINE GRAPE Fruit Facts


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## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

BigJim said:


> Muscadine preserves has to be my all time favorite preserves, but wild muscadines are as rare as hens teeth around here. The white tame ones are easy to find but are nowhere as good as the wild ones.
> 
> True story: While in Navy boot camp, a fellow from Alabama and I were talking about hunting muscadines. One of the fellows from up north asked us what gun we used. I said "what", he asked again, we both laughed and said muscadines are wild grapes. We were amazed to learn a lot of the fellows had never seen them or heard of them, we just thought everyone knew what they were.
> 
> We were also amazed that so many fellows had never seen a cow or a pig or seen corn grow. One fellow thought a pig was the length of bacon. It was a learning experience for all of us. lol


 I remember visiting my Dad's Great-Uncle & Aunt. We slept on a feather bed & saw a chicken run headless down the road after. . . well, you know. I was only 6 but, that memory is so vivid. It must have been in the South. Butter-churn butter and an outhouse.


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## chandler48 (Jun 5, 2017)

Nik, it was a way of life. I remember sleeping in a large feather bed with cousins in the winter. We had probably 6 hand made quilts over us. We physically could not move due to the weight. We were young. I remember waking up to snow on top of the blankets that blew up through the cracks in the floor boards. Nothing better than raw milk straight from the cow. Churned butter was awesome.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

chandler48 said:


> Nik, it was a way of life. I remember sleeping in a large feather bed with cousins in the winter. We had probably 6 hand made quilts over us. We physically could not move due to the weight. We were young. I remember waking up to snow on top of the blankets that blew up through the cracks in the floor boards. Nothing better than raw milk straight from the cow. Churned butter was awesome.


That was some really wonderful sleep though. I hated to get out of bed on a real cold morning, I always waited until dad had a good fire going in the fireplace. Even then, your front would get hot and your backside would be freezing, had to keep turning around and around. lol

When we moved to the city, we couldn't get fresh milk like back home, it was really hard to get use to city milk. Later on I realized that fresh milk always tasted like the cow's breath. If it ate onions we just took a bite of onion and the milk was fine but bitter weed, no way I couldn't handle that.

I hated churning butter, we didn't have a churn, we made butter in a gallon jar rocked back and forth real hard.


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## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

BigJim said:


> That was some really wonderful sleep though. I hated to get out of bed on a real cold morning, I always waited until dad had a good fire going in the fireplace. Even then, your front would get hot and your backside would be freezing, had to keep turning around and around. lol
> 
> When we moved to the city, we couldn't get fresh milk like back home, it was really hard to get use to city milk. Later on I realized that fresh milk always tasted like the cow's breath. If it ate onions we just took a bite of onion and the milk was fine but bitter weed, no way I couldn't handle that.
> 
> I hated churning butter, we didn't have a churn, we made butter in a gallon jar rocked back and forth real hard.



My mom told the same story. . . they stayed in bed until the fire was going. . .
I think she missed it. She would warm our nightclothes by the fire. She did turn on the heat before we got up.


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## chandler48 (Jun 5, 2017)

There was no "turning on" of the heat in that house. It was all by fireplaces, cooking stove, and pot belly stoves in each room that used coal. I remember standing in front of the pot belly stove, basically hogging the heat, when my grandpa reached out and grabbed the leg of my jeans and twisted them. The hot part of my jeans contacted my raw leg and it burned!! Never hogged heat again.


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## Bud9051 (Nov 11, 2015)

I remember we had oil fired heat but our house had no insulation. Air was so dry I always took a big glass of water upstairs with ne at night. When I needed a drink I often had to break out the ice on top.

Old bed was a swayback so when I rolled into bed I fell into the valley. Pulled the pile of handmade quilts over me and there I stayed for the night. Mornings were an experience. Can't say I miss that.

Bud


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

All we had was the wood cook stove and a fireplace. One old house we lived in had a dog trot. Living room and kitchen on one side and bedrooms on the other, with the dog trot or breezeway in the middle of the house. A dog trot is a breezeway or open hall way about 8 feet wide, through the house open to the weather on each end. There always seemed to be a breeze through there no matter the temps outside. Getting from that warm bed in the morning across that breezeway to the fire place was fast. When a mule walked through the breezeway at night, it sounded like the house was falling apart. lol

We could see the chickens under the house through the cracks in the floor. When Mama swept the floor, it always fell through the cracks. Mama made a paste out of flour and water and glued news paper on the wooden walls to keep the breeze from blowing through.


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## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

BigJim said:


> All we had was the wood cook stove and a fireplace. One old house we lived in had a dog trot. Living room and kitchen on one side and bedrooms on the other, with the dog trot or breezeway in the middle of the house. A dog trot is a breezeway or open hall way about 8 feet wide, through the house open to the weather on each end. There always seemed to be a breeze through there no matter the temps outside. Getting from that warm bed in the morning across that breezeway to the fire place was fast. When a mule walked through the breezeway at night, it sounded like the house was falling apart. lol
> 
> We could see the chickens under the house through the cracks in the floor. When Mama swept the floor, it always fell through the cracks. Mama made a paste out of flour and water and glued news paper on the wooden walls to keep the breeze from blowing through.


Well, no wonder you work with wood! 😊


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## chandler48 (Jun 5, 2017)

@BigJim you described my grandparent's house to a tee. We called them "shotguns". One hallway down the middle to an open porch with rooms on either side and eventual bathroom on the end. Wow, what photographic memory can curse you with.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

chandler48 said:


> @BigJim you described my grandparent's house to a tee. We called them "shotguns". One hallway down the middle to an open porch with rooms on either side and eventual bathroom on the end. Wow, what photographic memory can curse you with.


We didn't have a bathroom inside, our home was two rooms and a path.


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## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

BigJim said:


> We didn't have a bathroom inside, our home was two rooms and a path.


 I bet you didn't have a 5ft. dia. hand dug well in direct line from the door to the outhouse. Only a piece of corrugated metal over a low wall. Well _was_ slightly up hill.


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## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

Amazing, muscadine preserves thread breaks down to a discussion of shotgun houses, outhouses and wells.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

Sorry, I kinda get carried away sometimes...ok a lot of times. When I think of muscadines, it just reminds me of times many years back, and how that was a different world then than now.


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## wooleybooger (Feb 23, 2019)

BigJim said:


> Sorry, I kinda get carried away sometimes...ok a lot of times. When I think of muscadines, it just reminds me of times many years back, and how that was a different world then than now.


It's OK all in fun.


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## Nik333 (Mar 1, 2015)

@BigJim, you said it made for great sleep. . . theres new research that says we sleep better when colder.


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## BigJim (Sep 2, 2008)

Nik333 said:


> @BigJim, you said it made for great sleep. . . theres new research that says we sleep better when colder.


Maybe that is the reason I like it cold in the bedroom, old habits are hard to break. lol


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