The mustang grapes sprang from the earth wild.

A tiny seed leaf sprouted at the base of a tree.  It stretched into a slender vine and clawed up the tree and divided and wrapped around every branch to the top and reached across to the next tree until a stand of oaks strained to lift a forest of wild grapes.

Old trees that defied drought and storm and flood buckled beneath the grapes.  At night a tremendous branch would snap under pressure of vines and echo on the lake like a pistol-shot.  Sitting up in bed you would know these grapes are wild.

An animal planted the seed.  A bird or coon or other friend of the farm brought grapes from elsewhere to enjoy here, in the shade.  It sat in the tree above that spot and dropped a single seed and the sowing was wild.

These grapes always had music.  The herons choked a rusty-throated song all day over the grapes.  Cardinals and cooing doves slipped among the branches beneath screeching steel-jawed hawks, and each their layered song into the vines.

At night a symphony pulsed from the shadows:  frogs and coyotes and crickets and owls and every bug-eyed insect in the forest lifted their song up to the grapes and the bright stars beyond.  In all the long hot nights, the music was wild.

I delayed the harvest many times.  I knew I must cut down the vines to save the trees.  However, as the canopy of green clusters turned purple, thousands of grape skins and seeds littered the ground.  So, I first let every musician of the forest take their pay in grapes.  This food is for the wild at heart.

Finally, I could wait no longer.  A storm rose in the gulf and I had to take the grapes or lose them.  Your gentle and wild at heart farmer climbed the trees in the rising wind and let down the vines.  I brought them home to render jelly while lightning flashed on the windows.

 Go to fourstringfarm.com under “Recipes” to find out how to make jelly from wild mustang grapes.