Foraging Adventures!

I spoke too soon on my previous post: it turns out that wild grape season is not, in fact, over on Nantucket. The vines on the Middle Moors are out of season, but the ones around Sanford Farm are still laden with fruit.

Not only that, but there is a much greater variety of grapes growing on that walk than I'd previously realized.

There are the "regular" dark purple wild grapes, which are much like Concord grapes except slightly tarter and with thicker skins:

There are coppery-red grapes (which, sadly, look much better than they taste; these had an unappetizingly grainy, pulpy interior and not much flavor to recommend them):

And there are scuppernongs: large yellowish-green grapes with bronze blushes and brown speckling. Although scuppernongs are well known and beloved in the Southeast, I hadn't realized they grew this far north, and I certainly never expected to find them flourishing around a clearing in Nantucket. As far as I can tell, scuppernongs only grow around that one clearing. The vines are impossible for me to distinguish from those of the dark purple grapes, which is why I didn't realize there were any scuppernongs on Nantucket until we visited at a time that the fruits were ripe on the vines.

But there they were, waiting to be picked.

And, of course, the dogs got to have lots of fun on their dog version of the hike.