Our goat Jack is uncertain about this offering from my wife Gena. It’s funny to me that the goats love both the vines and the green grapes but do not care for the ripe muscadines. I guess we’ve finally found something that our goats will not eat.

Saturday morning as I mowed the front lawn, I made frequent stops along the edge of the woods to grab a treat. The muscadine vines that fill the trees alongside the yard are heavy with grapes and they are delicious.

Later that afternoon after we fed the goats and filled their wooden spools with privet we had clipped, which for our trio of ruminants seems to be the equivalent of peanut M&M’s, we made our way over to pick a bowlful of the wild grapes.

“Tastes like childhood,” G said after eating one of the plump purple delicacies, and she was exactly right. All morning during my mowing and snacking, I had been having the same thought. The muscadine’s texture and taste, the way the outer skin pops to release the perfectly sweet pulp into your mouth, always bring to mind thoughts of childhood for me. It seems that the same is true for my wife.

The farm originally belonged to G’s grandfather, Billy Hull, and the hills that rise from the edge of the lake to our house were once covered with a small vineyard of scuppernongs and muscadines. Over the years, the trellises that held the grape vines became overgrown to the point that they had become more of a thicket than a grape arbor.

Trees, briars, and privet had begun to take over, so before we began the remodeling of our house, we made the decision to clean off the vines and create a blank slate for the future. The sad part was that it meant losing the grape vines that had been a part of the farm for so long.

G reminded me during our muscadine memory session that Big Billy had even transplanted some of the grapes from the farm in Louisville to her childhood home in Meridian. It seems that these Winston County grapevines wrapped around the greater part of her life.

Fortunately, they still do. When we cleaned off the old vineyard and lost our grapes, Mother Nature had a backup plan. As it turns out, the woods that surround the lake and our house are covered with wild vines that seeded from her grandfather’s original grapes. Our tastebuds are thankful, and our enjoyment of the Labor Day weekend was greatly enhanced by the purple beauties.

For me, the grapes recalled an old white Willys Jeep truck and a Sunday afternoon trip to the woods with my dad. The old, dented, well-worn jeep was nothing fancy. In fact, it was rusty in spots, but it was a four-wheel drive and in the mind of a young boy (and, now, a grown man) four-wheel drives equal fun and freedom, especially when that fun and freedom involves mud.

If memory serves, it had been a hot, dry summer but we managed to find some wet spots deep in the woods to test out the capabilities of the Jeep. It seems that the thrill of playing in the mud never truly leaves a boy and that afternoon is proof positive of this theory.

We eased off into a deep, muddy rut in the woods and proceeded to bury the old truck to its axles. We were stuck, and with no winch we were left with one option for transportation—what our British friend’s call “shank’s pony.”

Walking out of the woods back to the main road, we had the good fortune to come across a vine loaded with muscadines. The memory of looking up through those yellow, golden, and green leaves as we shook the vines is what I always think about when I eat a muscadine, even today. We filled our bellies with grapes that afternoon and, after that, I don’t recall that the walk out was too bad.

At some point during our perambulation a kind soul came along to give us a ride home. Honestly, I can’t remember how we rescued the Willys from the bog, but I do remember those muscadines, they were fantastic! Come to think of it, I’ve never had a bad muscadine or even a bad muscadine memory.

My childhood friend Trey Humphreys makes muscadine jelly each year (my nephew Billy swears it’s the best jelly he’s ever eaten) and I often wonder as I eat that jelly if the grapes he picks are the ancestor grapes of those I ate that day with my dad stuck in some mudhole on Ole Blue Hunting Club.

Memories are priceless commodities. Author Ray Bradbury speaks to this in the intro to his book “Dandelion Wine.” “It became a game that I took to with immense gusto: to see how much I could remember about dandelions themselves, or picking wild grapes with my father and brother, rediscovering the mosquito-breeding ground rain barrel by the side bay window, or searching out the smell of the gold-fuzzed bees that hung around our back porch grape arbor. Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don’t they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers.”

Like Bradbury’s bees, muscadines have a taste, and, as G so aptly stated, it’s the taste of childhood. Until next time, here’s to muscadines and great memories, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.