If this is posted in the wrong category please advise.
My fascination with growing muscadine grapes has led me down the path of over planting. For me this plant has been easier to get a large reliable crop almost every year so I just kept planting what worked well. I now have about 280’ planted. My original thought was to donate the extra fruit to a good cause and to friends. I never wanted to sell the fruit but lately I have been thinking that it would be fun to trade fruit for items I don’t grow like pecans, vegetables, or even meat products. I would like to keep this simple and only trade or swap locally. I’m not looking to do this with other forum members so I can keep it simple but I would like to know if any of you do this and how well does it work. Any input is welcome. Thanks.
Another possibility… my county has a couple of wineries. Both of them make several specialty wines… using fruit other than grapes… to make special desert wines… peach wine, blackberry wine, raspberry wine… etc and those are some of their most popular… sell out quick.
If you could trade a bunch of muscadine fruit for a few bottles of muscadine wine… again long shelf life… probably lots of folks would like to trade with you for some muscadine wine.
Easiest way to trade is to show up at the farmers markets and just ask if anyone is willing to trade.
I think you could extend your 280. Just build onto your current set up and do another row higher up. Would need a ladder and good pruning, but not more space.
Locally there was a swap that happened end of October or first thing in November. Some individuals who grew a lot, lots of farmers and commercial people. Veggies, meats, dairy products, books, jams, some one made soup, someone else baked bread and had starters. A local CSA farm held this, poor marketing, more word-of-mouth and friends-of-friends. Now that they have moved on, I don’t know that it would continue. Last year (2020) it went much smaller, I don’t even know what happened in 2021.
This sort of thing is really useful, but requires some effort, and a place to hold it. There were people who had frozen fruit from earlier in the year, but that much fruit needs another solution. Maybe finding a winery or u-pick for trade, if you don’t know people this would work for. FYI- people did trade wine and other alcohol, but this is questionably legal if authority got involved. Just following up to another suggestion.
