July 4th means...

[Brute 23]

Never knew July 4th was grape picking time in some places. Learn something new every day!

It's kind of a general rule of thumb for us. It can be plus or minus a couple weeks depending on the weather.

 

[Brute 23]

We are trying to get more fruit trees and different things. My grandparents use to have peach and pear trees and Dewberry gardens and it all got lost to grocery stores. The produce in the stores now has no flavor.

 

[greybeard]

Never knew July 4th was grape picking time in some places. Learn something new every day!

When it's peach pickin' time in Georgia
Apple pickin' time in Tennessee
Cotton pickin' time in Mississippi
Everybody picks on me

When it's roundup time in Texas
The cowboys make whoopee
Then down in old Alabama
It's gal pickin' time to me
(Jimmie Rodgers-1932)

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

Yes the fruit in stores now has no flavor. Peaches hard as rocks never like a sun warmed peach. They pick fruits so green now so it can ship. Plums stay sour. I had a seedless watermelon from the store yesterday. It was ripe red almost out to the peel. Tasted like watermellony nothing.

And the varieties of table grapes are all seedless now because people are too lazy to spit out the seeds.

Remember Muscat that taste like honey and smell like flowers? Black Ribier, green Ladyfinger, Red Tokay grapes? Gone forever. But I found a guy in Oregon who's father planted a vineyard of every wine and table grape known to man. The son sells cuttings by mail to people so anyone can root and grow these. Here is the vineyard I planted. Forty vines -7 different kinds of muscat.

 

[gcreekrch]

Organic, all natural, non-gmo, no added hormones, wild, mustang grapes raised on wildlife manure, rural rain, and sunshine.

We get quite a few in the pastures here. They grow up in fences and in the trees. It's funny how they become ready in different pastures, even vine to vine.

It was a good year. We were pulling clumps or 6, 8, 10 +.

It's fun because we go to both my mom and dad's family places. They talk about picking them with their grandparents as kids and now they are picking them with their grandkids.

But hores should moan……..

 

[Ky hills]

I've been pickin some wild blackberries. Pretty good with ice cream.
Peaches are also in season here too, may go up to a orchard and get some.
Those local ones are a lot better than the green ones shipped in.
Had a white peach tree in the front yard but it came down a couple years ago.

 

[Travlr]

I've been pickin some wild blackberries. Pretty good with ice cream.
Peaches are also in season here too, may go up to a orchard and get some.
Those local ones are a lot better than the green ones shipped in.
Had a white peach tree in the front yard but it came down a couple years ago.
View attachment 46596View attachment 46597

We planted blackberries and a boysenberry this year. So far the bushes (vines?) seem to be doing good.

 

[Mark Reynolds]

To me... the 4th of July is a time to reflect on how diligent men under the thumb of a Monarch with no regard for those he was ruling, came together to craft a nation from the depths of exploitation. Intelligent, well educated, wealthy men in most cases, that managed to keep the least in mind as they invented a Democratic Republic, giving a voice to those that only ever knew a ruler. Self determination and individual freedom, instead of being ruled.

Whenever I look at the grave markers in a military cemetery I cogitate over the lives lost in order to assure the freedoms to make our own choices and to question those that would force us to live as they dictate.

And I remember taking my own oath of enlistment, and how little I understood what I was saying at the time, and yet how important those words have become over time.

Freedom is not just a word to be bandied about as though it means, "Only if you do and think as I do". Freedom is not free.

 

[Mark Reynolds]

Jelly, jam, wine?

I bet the answer to this is : "Yes!"

 

[Brute 23]

I've been pickin some wild blackberries. Pretty good with ice cream.
Peaches are also in season here too, may go up to a orchard and get some.
Those local ones are a lot better than the green ones shipped in.
Had a white peach tree in the front yard but it came down a couple years ago.
View attachment 46596View attachment 46597

Those look great.

Our wild Dewberrys are ready in the spring but it was pretty dry this year when they needed it so they didn't really make. They were too small.

 

[Dave]

I told the wife this morning that it is a good thing I was working for a government agency when I retired. It makes today a paid holiday.

 

[Dave]

There was a time in my life when July 4th meant Cowboy Christmas. How many rodeos can you get to this week. A couple thousand miles in a pickup driving all night and getting on a bronc or two everyday. Oh to be that young again.