“Fall 2013” is just about done for us! It has been a long time since I sat down behind the keyboard to make a blog post. I left you back on March 8th 2012, a lot happened since then. That year we had a bumper grape crop and bust of a corn maze. In 2013 we had just the opposite. If you watch the video I posted from the last post those grape buds made it just fine, then the fears I had in 2012 hit us in 2013 and we lost over 95% of our grape crop. The good news is the corn maze had the best crop ever which made for an awesome maze and a overall great “Fall”!
I took this picture of a full moon rising over they vineyard Friday May 28th as I left the corn maze field after working ground to get ready to plant it the next day.
![Bad Moon Rising Bad Moon Rising](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130524_205028_351-300x169.jpg)
That was not a welcome sight to me knowing what a sky can do like that when High pressure weather patterns arrive in late May. I figured we’d have a bad frost but no idea HOW bad. When my wife left the winery at 11:30pm that night there was already a light frost on the window of her vehicle.
![Grape vines morning after a freeze Grape vines morning after a freeze](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130525_082635_030-300x169.jpg)
The feeling a farmer gets when they look at a crop like in the one in the picture above is hard to describe. There are a lot easier ways to “make a living” but I wouldn’t trade what I do for anything. You just sorta learn things like this happen and you try and maintain a “long view” and find the positive. My father in law also lost 17 acres of sweet corn that night, but he took a gamble on trying to put some corn out in “low ground” that grows awesome crops and got burned.
![Close up of "fried" grape vines Close up of "fried" grape vines](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130525_082857_902-300x169.jpg)
The “Big Picture” you just keep telling yourself and keep on swimming as Dory would say (aka Finding Nemo). That same day I took the pictures of the fried grapes I loaded the corn planter and got busy planting the 2013 corn maze. We had already started getting fall campfire/corn maze reservations back in April and I needed to start getting ready.
![Loading the Corn Planter Loading the Corn Planter](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130525_155917_1391-300x169.jpg)
I like to plant the corn a bit later than you normally would so that it stays green as long as possible into the fall season for purposes of the maze. This worked well this year and I will get back to that with future blog posts just on how we do the corn maze.
![Looking over the hood while planting corn Looking over the hood while planting corn](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130525_175515_410-300x169.jpg)
The corn maze growing season really had its ups and downs. I have done a lot of work to the corn maze field and it paid off this year. We fixed some drainage problems and have been on a steady annual program of applying cow manure to help with both fertility and organic matter.
![But the sun came up each and every morning! But the sun came up each and every morning!](https://www.maizevalley.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/IMG_20130531_062355_612-300x169.jpg)
But the sun came up each and every morning! One of the reasons I do what I do is this is my view from my “office”. People work all year to get to a “place like this”, I live it everyday. Besides all the “normal” stuff we do we also embarked on a other special projects designed to make our fall destination a one of kind place and over this winter I’ll try and review the year both in projects and all the special events we do.
Thank you for stopping by, I hope you enjoy your trip to our farm as I cover some of the things we do.