April 2009 - Ohio Wine and More Ohio Wine and More

Archive for April, 2009

Last Sunday’s Fun

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

One Awesome Bike!!

Bikes always gather here

Just had to give a shout out about the way cool, good time I had on the bike last weekend. Only put on about 300 miles but still hit some real nice twisty turns down around Leesville and the Atwood lake region too.

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Buds are breaking! Weeds a shaking! & A View from the Tractor Seat.

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

Sea of Yellow

LaCrescent wine grape buds are breaking

They said it was supposed to rain today so I got out early and started mowing in the vineyards. I needed to chop up some of the wood they cut off during pruning and get a head start on the grass too. The front vineyard photo has a good view of the buds on the LaCrescent breaking and starting to show some color. This is good and bad, its good they survived the winter so well, its bad if they all get out here too early and we have a late killing frost. This variety is a hearty variety so it usually does well we just always worry about any fruit with too many emerged buds too early.

Our older vines are in the back. We never seeded grass in this block and it shows.

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More than wine and grapes are getting planted at Maize Valley!

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Kay Planting Sweet Corn

Here comes the sun!! WOW what a couple of days of awesome weather eh!! Looks like rain on and off this week so now is the time we are getting a lot of different things done on the farm. Purning grapes, pruning apple trees, plowing working ground and planting all at the same time.

This early sweet corn is a bit of a gamble because it is prone to frost if we get hit in mid to late May like we often do. But we have to roll the dice because if we miss it this High organic black muck soil produces some awesome sweet corn. Plus it can really accumulate heat units rapidly compared to our high ground soils and really move the crop along to early maturity and have great flavor and high quality.

See how much rain we get but we hope to get out and finish up “unhilling” and uncovering the graft unions on some on our last vineyard field block later this week.

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Video of some last spring season vine pruning

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Finishing up the winter pruning

Here is Todd Vaughan the Wine Maker at Maize Valley doing some late season vine pruning. He is finishing up some work on our French American Variety “LaCrescent”. It is hearty white grape that is good to temperatures down to about 20 degrees below zero F.

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Todd “Z” winemaker in the vineyard

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Todd getting our vines ready to Rock and Roll

Hey check it out Todd our winemaker is almost done with our spring grape pruning. Actually Todd has been great doing almost all of the field work this spring. I killed the weeds, he knocked down the hard work of cutting the wood! I actually shot a bit of video with him working with a little of the how-to’s but it did not want to load so I hope to have that up next week.

Basically what Todd is doing is cutting back some of last years growth and getting ready for this years blooms. We waited a bit longer this year to do some of this work because it got so darn cold last year we were not sure how much “die back” we had so we waited till closer to bud break, now we hope they slow down because we are not out of the woods yet for a frost ane we don’t need those tender little buds hanging out without a coat on!!

Stay tuned for the video,

Later

FunTSAR

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How sweet it is……..er, Wine I mean

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

As you may have seen I am on Twitter. Many people ask what is that? How do I use it? What good is it? Well I use it to search out things I am interested in or need to better understand as a farmer, business person and owner of a winery with what you might say is “ADHD”!

We have over 20 different types of wine on our racks at Maize Valley. From fruit wines to grape, from dry to sweet.

Most “wine drinkers” are really suprised when talking about wine with them when I tell them that sweet wines make up over 75% of our sales. Then you get into a long discussion about the why’s and why not’s etc. and what the different chacteristics are that make up wine it is good to find resources to refer to. I have found one such resource.

Now I could steal their work and post it as something I found out but I would rather just say hey, check this out and hope you learn something from it. Our blog is called Wine and More and I just can’t get it all done and do the work around the farm too!

So check out “The Wine Whore” @ http://www.winewhoreblog.com/2009/04/are-you-sweet-on-wine.html

Read and enjoy!

Dude….Sweeeat!!

FunTSAR

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Rich Top soil and High ground too, plus some wine info…. WOW

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Galen's boys picking up rocks behing my house

Freshly plowed ground ready for sweet corn seed

As you see we are getting ready to plant, Kay my father-in-law has been busy with Galen and the crews getting ready to start putting some seeds in the ground.

We do no-till, minimum tillage, and conventional farm techniques at Maize Valley. For the early vegtable crops we go pretty much conventional or the “old School” plowing and working the ground. We do that because that helps to warm the soil up and dry it out and that is really important to us early in the season. We go to farmers’ markets and for our own market our season is so short we have to try and get a crop to market as soon as possible.

We do plant “winter cover crops” such as winter rye as much as we can till it gets too late in the fall. They help hold the soil in place over the winter then we either let them grow up and bale the straw, or we plow them under as a “green manure” to add organic matter back to the soil. But you can’t let the rye get too big where you want to plant sweet corn because as the rye gets bigger it releases a chemical into the soil that is harmful to sweet corn! So when you hear about “chemicals” always get the rest of the story as a famous person used to say, mother nature has some too!

I also have a neat link in here I got off of twitter about the Ohio wine history, be sure to check it out.http://www.thesecondglass.com/features/they-make-wine-there-ohio

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Animal Rescue of sorts

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Pork Chop enjoying breakfast

Chip Chop and Pork Chop getting Breakfast

You may have seen our lovely pigs on the website, There names are Chip Chop and Pork Chop. They came to us as sort of a “rescue of sorts”. Last summer a gentleman over the hill had a bit of trouble with the law. As a result he got to spend some time away from home. When he left on his “unscheduled vacation” the group of animals he had at home got left behind. Some of the people who came to help involved in “animal wellfare” found value in the chickens and other marketable and useful animals but these two pigs did not get any love and were just let go.

Well they lived right next to the vegtable fields of the “Hartville Swamps” and being summer they had quite the selection to chose from but the local produers did not like it so much, so they got ran off. I got a phone call late one Sunday night wanting to know if I wanted A pig. After twisting my arm I agreed and loe and behold one turned into two upon arrival and the rest is history.

These guys are so ugly they are cute and have found a home at Maize Valley’s Petting Pasture. The pics here show my wife Michelle giving them breakfast. They prefere white bread over wheat, and saved the Blue berry pie for desert.

Todd and Jessie were out in the vineyards yesterday tieing and pruning hope to have more about that later.

I gotta go get something done today! Awesome weather and I hope to get enough done so I can go out and ride the VStrom some this weekend.

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Here comes the sun!

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Do you eat small birds?

Maize Valley Destination Health“. Part of Ohio Wine and MORE is the fact that we are much more than a winery. We are a agricultural destination and part of that is production of healthy fresh grown produce. Time is one resource none of us can make more of and by taking care of our health we can make the most out of what we have. Stay in touch as we help to create a destination that is real and balanced in respect to helping live a more “time capturing” experiencing of life. I am not talking about being a bark eating, tree hugging, bug squishing extremist or anything. I mean health and exercise that fits well into your life and can become part of your lifestyle on a consistant basis that makes sense and is fun.

We are working with the great folks over at Aultman Hospital in Canton Ohio to merge our strengths to create a unique destination for health. Say tuned for updates.

Hopefully we can get back out into the vineyard tomorrow as the clouds part and finish up pruning on the later grapes. Lots of meetings coming up, planning for our Celtic/Beltane Fest. our 5K race, the Civil War Re-enactment. etc. etc. etc.

Later

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