Archive for the ‘Things to see at Maize Valley’ Category

Getting Ready for 2009 Car Cruise In Season

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
Brett helping Dad clean up "Barbara Ann"

Bar, Bar, Bar, Barbara Ann, yea that’s my car’s name. I am just 45 years young, but the Cadnum brothers who lived across the street from me growing up were a few years older than me and they were always those “cool older guys” a kid looked up to growing up. They always had cool cars from Chevelle SS’s to Z28′s to Impala’s so I just got started lovin the sound of a heavy cammed V-8, the smell of burning rubber, and the feeling Torque gives you as it shoves you back in the seat as the front end lifts up leaving a stop light. In short as they said in Top Gun “I feel the need, the need for speed” and no matter bikes or cars I gotta scratch that itch now and then.

Now I work a lot so I don’t get to cruise much and I use my car as a daily driver in the summer as much as possible. So I figured why not start a Cruise in myself. With that in mind we started the “Cruisein the Vines” car cruise at Maize Valley. EVERY Thursday evening from May 14th till September 24th we kick it out with crusin tune courtsey of Top Down D.J.’s great door prizes, 50/50 drawing, special cruiser food prices, wagon rides, barrel train rides, and later our pumpkin cannon shoot watermelons once in season. Yea we are a Winery with ADHD but we sure have a lot of fun too! We get between 50 to 300 cars depending upon the weather and time of year.

Our cruise, like most things we do, is a little different. We get as many if not more “specatator” cars as we do rods. Many times it is a cruiser’s family with grandkids and such who come out because we have such a mix of things for people to do for many generations. That way I like to think that grandma and grandpa can share their loves and hobbie with their whole family instead of just seeing a tarp covered car in the garage at Christmas.

We take wagon rides through the vineyard and surrounding fields and talk about the crops and what is growing around the farm too. And as I mentioned earlier when we get some plentiful ammo the cannon comes out and all the “gear heads” really love it. It is just as one sponser put it “Stupid Fun”. I’ll be telling you more about the cannon as the year goes along, think discovery channel type stuff.

This past weekend I got my ride out and duster her off for use this summer. My son Brett is Autistic, but when I said please go get the vacume to clean out the car he was “ON IT”! She has a lot of use on her anymore but still gets lots of looks and is fun to drive but most of all my kids love her!

At Maize Valley, We Make Great Wine…FUN!!

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.

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

Galen's boys picking up rocks behing my house

[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Freshly plowed ground ready for sweet corn seed"]Freshly plowed ground ready for sweet corn seed[/caption]

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

Animal Rescue of sorts

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Pork Chop enjoying breakfast

Pork Chop enjoying breakfast

[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Chip Chop and Pork Chop getting Breakfast"]Chip Chop and Pork Chop getting Breakfast[/caption]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.

One of our native american flower beds

Monday, April 6th, 2009
One of native american flower beds

One of native american flower beds,
originally uploaded by FunTSAR.

Last Saturday I took a quick shot of one of our Native American Flower beds we planted last spring.

The idea here is to get some perenial flowers growing. The plants we put in were growing in the Midwest and if we can get them established should last till the next ice age with a little bit of care.

It is quite a challenge to get them started and it is not cheap either. We have some plants coming back this year we just hope they can out compete the non-native weed species that have taken over the area.

If we can get them going it is just one more reason for you to come and see why Maize Valley IS the place to BE!