Archive for the ‘Spring time things to do’ Category

A quick recap of the 2013 “Growing Season”

Tuesday, November 12th, 2013

“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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.

Wordless Wednesday: Equipment work

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Prepping equipment for spring work

Prepping equipment for spring work

Shop work on the farm, Come Monday it’ll B alright! :-)

Monday, March 7th, 2011
1952 Ford F5 Farmers' Market Truck in the shop for winter repairs

1952 Ford F5 Farmers' Market Truck in the shop for winter repairs

At Maize Valley We Make Great Wine…FUN, that is just “how we roll”! And these trucks are a big part of how we do actually “roll”. I found this truck in warehouse about eight years ago with 3,343 original miles on it. We used it here or there around the farm and parades etc. for a while till we really “put it back to work”. You see this truck travel thousands of miles a year again now in the summer attending area farmers’ markets and wine festivals.

Last summer when coming back down I-77 from the Cleveland Garlic Festival I just heard something “not-right”. More just a feeling I had in my gut. I couldn’t find anything but a few weeks later it gave my brother some starting trouble then one day on the back from a market in Akron it just about quit. He limped it home and there it sat.

Old School simple

Old School simple

We were only running on five out of six cylinders, and figured we broke a valve. It was near the end of the season so we got by but were not looking forward to the work or expense of fixing this. So today I got after it in the shop to try and start to get a idea of what we needed to do.

Well this was a Monday and I pulled the valve cover off to find that only a push rod had come out of adjustment and slipped out of its seat….SWeeeeTt! I popped it back in, tightened it down and she ran great! Even a blind nut can find a Squirl some daz!

Got Pipe? Farm drainage and other stuff

Monday, April 19th, 2010
Field Tile helps make the soil moisture just right

Fixing a wet spot in the "Triangle field"

Got Pipe? Sometimes You Need IT!

Got Pipe? Sometimes You Need IT!

Every few years we try and keep up with that “overhead” work that pays in the long run and this is one of those jobs. It isn’t cheap to put in drain tile but it pays you back in the long haul. Sometimes in better yields sometimes just making a field usable in the first place. Plus it helps for just overall better plant health in both wet and dry years by helping to balance the air/water ratios in the soil.

One reason for Ohio Wine and More to post this is that before you plant a vineyard especially in Ohio you really need to be sure your soil is well drained. With the exception of very few locations especially with the advent of so many new wineries going in across the state most locations are going to need to have a machine such as this one come in and do the prep work. In most cases for vineyard establishment you need to put the drain tile in every 8 to 10 feet to achieve maximum benefit and return on investment. It costs about $1.00 per installed foot so when you are talking ten’s of thousands of feet it can get a bit expensive!

Round Bales and Haunted Corn Mazes go together??

Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Baler kicking out Round Bale

Baler kicking out Round Bale

New Holland Tractor and Baler

New Holland Tractor and Baler

Round Bale just after being made

Round Bale just after being made

Getting ready for our fall Agri-Tourism and overwintering the animals starts now. My father-in-law Kay made over 48,000 small square bales last year and we do a few big round bales for the kritters in the winter and also for our fall harvest festival activities.

We have a small piece of land in the back of the property I have been stuggleing to make use of over the years. Last fall we planted winter rye to just sort of get something growing instead of weeds. Next will be sorghum, then we will carve a haunted maze into the crop.

All that starts now with getting the ground ready by killing the weeds and getting ready to plant the sorghum. So instead of just mowing the rye and grasses that grew up, I decided to bale them and get some use out of the light crop. Keep in touch as we show how we follow up with this piece of land to turn it from a weed patch into our haunted attraction.

We are bringing back our haunted maze by popular request. When we opened the winery there was just too much work to do and something had to give. Thousands of folks visit us in the fall from Mom and Dad families to corporate groups to church gatherings. So many of them asked us to BRING BACK YOUR HAUNTED MAZE we have found a way in 2009.

We do a truly scary and fun haunt, not a gross and gorey event. The Haunted maze is a seperate maze from the larger Trivia based adventure. People come out laughing and crying we never know which one starts first? I have sweated my butt off in so many hay lofts over they years I finally figured out a way to make baleing Fun!

At Maize Valley We Build Memories to last…….A Lifetime!! At Maize Valley We Make Great Wine…FUN!!

Here is how we get started. First I show Ben Sherman using his mower to mow our ditch banks, it is the same machine we used to mow the field be baled.

Pumpkins, Peppers and a whole lot more.

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
70,000 Peppers waiting for a home

70,000 Peppers waiting for a home

Pumpkin seeds in planter box

Pumpkin seeds in planter box

Yea, we are much more than just a winery, or a vineyard. We (Actually mostly Kay) still farms about 700 acres +/- a few, that is down from 3,000 acres a few years ago. But now we have crops that are much more intensive to produce and take more time and attention. Peppers and pumpkins are just a few, they planted watermelons last saturday too! They fly really good out of my pumpkin cannon, maybe that is why one variety is called “cannonball”??

The peppers you see above number just under 70,000 plants Kay told me. They are ready to be planted and go in the ground much like the tomatoes I showed in previous posts. We sell wholesale to vendors, to restaurants via Fresh Fork Markets. We also attend farmers’ markets in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Alliance, and Greentown. Links can be found on the lower right corner of the page for these locations, look under “Farmers’ Markets”.

You can also find them at our own farm Market, and in and on some of our entrees’ in our winery cafe’. New this year will be a line of canned peppers called “Pappy’s Peppers” named after my father-in-law, Kay Vaughan. That way we keep those green pepper flavors in the right glass container.

The videos will show the path a pumpkin seed takes to go from Bag to Jack-o-lantern. Much like the corn maze video I will try and follow this crop from start to finish.

Vineyard vine update, buds, suckers and more

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
View down the row of our front vineyard

View down the row of our front vineyard

From the vines to the wines, we are getting busy! This time of year lots of things are starting to happen outside. We don’t have a real long growing season so the plants that live here need to get busy and get a lot done in a short period of time. Right now these plants just want to grow, sometimes too much.

A vineyard needs to be “Trained” into what you see it just doesn’t happen. We go over our vines as many as 6 times a year or more when they are young. The older they get in some respects the less work they become. Sort of like kids, well I guess that isn’t true either. Anyhow the work is just different when they are young and you are trying to get them on the right track in life….. gee maybe they are like my kids???

Here are a Couple short vids about what we are doing out in the vineyard right now.

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Work in new vineyard

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

It was a LONG and COLD winter in Marlboro Twp. aka “Hartville” Ohio. We hit 18 below zero for more than a couple of days in a row and got hurt in the vineyard. Being new to this we took our time doing our summer work of unhilling our grafted root stock vines and are still finishing up some of that now.

A grafted root stock is a fruit plant that has a different root stock than upper part or “Scion”. The reason for doing this is a desired fruit plant (or in our case grape variety) might have a root system that is not well suited for the location or has vigor issues dealing with dieases or the like. So you put a root stock on that helps to avoid the disavantages and allows you to grow a plant that you have a market for. This is also done in apple trees and a lot of ornamental plants as well. Learn more about grafting by following this link

The disavantage is that in colder climates like Ohio’s you have to protect that graft “Union” between the stock and the scion from extreme weather conditions. We do that by hilling the soil up onto the union thereby mitigating some of the effects of that winter weather has on the grafted plant. There are other methods such as wood bark and staw mulch undergoing research and are being used in limited fashion as well. They are much easier to use but the jury is still out on how well they protect and there is some concern about pathogens growing in an organic medium around the base of the plant.

In the video we show Thad Metzger a High School Science teacher at Louisville High School helping us out by removing the soil from the union and seeing how we can through the winter. The variety he is working on is called Traminette. It is a French American Hybrid white grape well suited for Ohio. It is similar to a Gewurztraminer in many ways and makes a nice light, clean slightly sweet wine.

More Spring Planting Work and video

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Tractor seat view from the 4050

Tractor seat view from the 4050

Kay and crew planting some onion seedlings

Kay and crew planting some onion seedlings

Sorry if the “Wine” info” has been a bit lacking as of late but right now we are heavy into our spring planting sorta stuff if Chaa’ know what I mean down on the farm. Yes we are an Ohio Winery and we are working on the grape vines, but right now we have some of the other stuff that makes our Agri-Tourism destination special needing tons of attention!

I was headed up to have a meeting with my new “Maze Master” yesterday (Tell you all about our way cool corn maze later) when I spotted my father-in-law Kay planting Onions so I mashed the breaks on my big ole’ F-350 Super Duty, swung her around like a fine, nimble sports car (well not really) but anyhow I got back and took a few pics and shot another short video. Let me know if you like these little snippets of our spring work on the farm. I try and keep them pretty simple=(boreing?) but I know bunches of folks don’t know what we do on the farm or how we do it so I am throwing it out there. I know one thing people love to come visit us and taste our wines and eat our food entrees’ so these blog posts and videos are the story behind them.

We are a working farm, a muscular agricultural-tourism destination, we are not a reality show but rather actuallity. We do what we do to keep the farm in the family, provide income for ourselves, and enjoy what we think is a way cool way of life. I really don’t make this stuff up. I know all over the web there are tons of people doing stupid stuff just to get on youtube or digg and re-work data to tweet, etc. All I am doing is giving you our story, and when I have time Mamm, the facts, just the facts!

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

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
Sea of Yellow

Sea of Yellow

LaCrescent wine grape buds are breaking

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.