Tag Archives: grapes

The Farming Story Part 4: Prohibition, Depression, Floods, and War

As in the Civil War, so in World War I. The young farm hands went into uniform even as agricultural demand boomed. (We were helping feed France and Britain, as well as ourselves.) There was local agitation to create a Farm Bureau, which as we know was effective, and the Farm Bureau quickly set up tractor workshops. Farms mechanized, BUT the war ended unexpectedly in 1918. Farm prices crashed, and many farmers were now left struggling with time payments on their equipment.

*Then, at the same time, Prohibition came in! This closed the wineries and ruined the grape growers. We think of the Great Depression as starting in 1929. But for many farm families it started ten years earlier, in 1919. With widespread use of the motorcar, community and economic life began to dry up in the hamlets. They had had their own stores, schools, doctors, churches, undertakers. But who needed the little store in Coss Corners or Harrisburg Hollow when you could drive to Bath… or from Perkinsville to Wayland, Bloomerville to Avoca, Hornby to Corning? The rich man of Risingville now ran a shabby little shop in the sticks, with an outhouse in the back, and a kerosene lamp on the counter.

*This is the period in which thousands of Steuben people joined the Ku Klux Klan, which then as now exploited fear and turned it into hate by telling lies about people who are Not Like Us, and blaming THEM for all the trouble.

*When the Great Depression truly set in, one bright star locally (besides the evaporation of the Klan) was the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Charles Fournier came from France to revive Gold Seal with up-to-date practices. Taylor, which had eked its way through the dry years, expanded its operation, and new wineries opened. Every Labor Day growers and buyers met in Penn Yan to hammer out “the grape deal,” establishing prices that would be paid that year.

*This is also the period in which County Agent Bill Stempfle took the lead in reviving and modernizing potato production in the mucklands, bringing in growers from Maine and Long Island who were grateful to find lower land prices, and whose intensive farming practices could offset worn-out land. And, of course, there were New Deal programs to help the farmer.

*BUT this is the period in which the bill came due for almost 150 years of short-sighted land use practices… especially when catastrophic floods struck in 1935, 1936, and 1946. The ’35 flood, which killed 44 people regionwide, was in many ways far worse than the ’72 flood. One Avoca sharecropper in 1935 received as his share for the year one calf. Avoca became a pilot program for New Deal soil conservation practices. From this period we get diking and re-routing of the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers, the Almond Dam, the Alfred Dam, tree plantations, drainage ditches… much of the work carried out by Civilian Conservation Corps lads from their main camp in Kanona.

*When the New Deal started, 10% of American farms had electricity. When it ended eight years later with the advent of World War II, 10% of farms did NOT. However, that 10% included Steuben County. R.E.A. got about 50 miles of wire strung before the needs for another world war cut off their materials. But demand for farm producrs, once again, went up… even as, once again, the prime workers were siphoned away.

The Farming Story Part 4: Grapes, Dairy, and Potatoes

The 1860 gazetteer told us that Steuben folks annually produced over 1.5 million bushels of grain; 60 thousand tons of hay; more than a quarter-million bushels of potatoes; almost 300 thousand bushels of apples; 2 million pounds of butter; and 200 thousand pounds of cheese.

*So what’s missing? Grapes. The 1860 gazetteer gives grapes exactly three sentences, in a footnote, saying that in 1857 Urbana had 30 acres in vineyards, and double that the following year, with about 2000 acres suitable for the purpose.

*Eight years later the county directory shows 117 related opreations… vineyards, wineries, boxmakers, etc. – in Urbana along, plus 36 in Pulteney and 15 in Wayne.

*Folks started experimenting commercially with grapes just as an Ohio grape region was wiped out by blight, leaving immigrant workers and winemakers from Europe available. This may help explain the European feel of the earliest wineries. Grapes and wine became a very big deal in Steuben, Yates, and Schuyler Counties, with Hammondsport and keuka lake being the heart of the region.

*Another feature of late 19th-century agriculture in Steuben was the appearance of small creameries and cheeseries scattered across the map, and often run as co-ops. As ever, the original producer got the least out of his efforts, while those higher up on the chain got more. These small operations were a way of keeping some of that in the community.

*Tobacco too became a noteable product at this time.

*Likewise we experience the advent of Grange, or the Patrons of Husbandry. (Francis McDowell of Wayne was one of the eight original founders.) While out west Grange was an active political force, here in the northeast it often served more of a social purpose. But Grange worked hard to educate the farmer and improve practices, AND it fought a decades-long battle for Rural Free Delivery. Until that was well in place, a little after 1900, the only way you could get your mail was to go to the post office and ask for it. It’s hard for us to recognize how isolated the farm family was. R.F.D. helped change that.

*The second force for education was the Steuben County Fair. It’s been continuous since before the Civil War, when the new Ag Society took it over, and bought the curremt sire while the war still raged. In the next few years the first permanent facilities went up, notably the gatehouse, the fair building, and the track. Hornell, Troupsburg, and Prattsburgh also maintained annual fairs for many years.

*And, of course, there was Cornell University, thanks to the Morill Land Grant College Act, providing federal support to help each state create a college for the teaching of agriculture, mechanics, and the useful arts.

*By 1900 or so there were over 8000 dairy farms in Steuben County, and Steuben was the second county in the United States for potato production. But the small family farms on the hilltops had become uncompetitive, and people started walking away from them, not even attempting to sell because there were no buyers. Many of these were eventually taken for taxes, and formed the basis of our vast system of state forests and state game lands.

Finger Lakes Wineries: A Pictorial History

Folks have been making wine commercially in the Finger Lakes for 165 years. Wineries have waxed and waned, come and gone. Some have been small backyard mom-and-pop operations… or “boutique” wineries, if you want to get hoity-toity about it. Others have been huge employers and major tourism magnets.
Emerson Klees has been making wine for 35 years, and writing books about our region for twenty. Blending both varieties, his latest work is Finger Lakes Wineries: A Pictorial History. Here he covers wineries past and present in 110 pages of well-captioned photos, plus more text bringing the total page count to 160.
Much of the book covers Keuka Lake – unsurprising, given the historic nature of the work. But an entire chapter is dedicated to Widmer Winery in Naples, and the last two chapters – covering the time from Repeal of Prohibition to the present day – range all across the region.
I look at a LOT of old photos, and I was excited to find plenty in this book that I’d never seen before. One full-page 1880 image shows men and horses cutting the caves four stories deep at Pleasant Valley… it’s remarkable how sheer they’ve cut the face of the rock. In other photos men strain at a grape press, heaving on a bar that seems to be an undressed tree limb. Men riddle champagne bottles, or cap, wrap, and pack at Gold Seal. A horse-drawn wagon is laden high with filled grape flats for Empire State Wine Company in Penn Yan.
A lot of what I see in the course of my work is nineteenth-century images, so I was intrigued to inspect photos from the mid- to late-twentieth century showing, for instance, machine corking; large apparatus for pasteurizing; conveyor belts; and hydraulic presses. Governor Hugh Carey, Governor George Pataki, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy glide through the pages.
From time to time I guide tour buses through Naples on the way to Canandaigua, and I enjoy telling the passengers the Widmer’s story, which gets its own chapter here. Widmer’s has a beautiful setting, and adds a special sparkle to Naples. Mr. and Mrs. Widmer moved from Switzerland in 1882, and set about planting grapes even as they were building their home. There’s one story Emerson doesn’t mention, but which his pictures still illuminate. Mr. and Mrs. Widmer wanted expansion capital at an early stage, so they went to banker Maxfield for a loan. Since he had his own winery, he turned these new competitors down. The Widmers thrived anyway, and in 1940 their son had the great satisfaction of buying the Maxfield Cellars and folding it into the business his parents had begun and built.
Several of the wineries have their own interesting stories or offerings. Eagle Crest in Conesus was founded by Bishop McQuaid to supply communion wine for Catholic churches. Ray Fedderman in Prattsburgh was the first African American vintner. Earle Estates brews mead (a honey-based alcohol) as well as wine. At Cayuga Ridge, enthusiasts may lease, tend, and harvest ten, twenty, or thirty vines.
Of course there are many familiar faces, for the story of the wineries is, like all the other stories, a story about people. The Taylor family is here, from Walter through Greyton, Fred, and Clarence down to Walter S. So are the Franks, from Dr. Konstantin down through Willy and Fred. So is Paul Garrett, who watched his family name die out and created Garrett Chapel to preserve its memory.
Also valuable, especially for us non-specialists, is a TWENTY-PAGE appendix briefly describing grape species (some with regional names such as Aurora, Steuben, and Cayuga White), plus a ten-page glossary of grape and wine terms. The whole thing makes a very useful and enjoyable introduction to Finger Lakes winemaking. Thank you, Emerson – again!