Leaf Out

An early May sunrise slowly burns morning fog from the lake.

Guiseppi, one of our resident mute swans, reaches his long neck up into a newly leafed-out willow tree.

Just yesterday, it was colored with gold catkins. Today brings fresh green leaves.

He strips the tender new foliage from a weeping bough, and dips his spring salad into the water before eating.

Unlike geese, who grub voraciously through the turf for victuals, swans will only accept food submerged in water.

After a winter of sustenance pulled from sediment at the bottom of the lake, Guiseppe seems invigorated by his meal of fresh green leaves.

Those of us who tend the vineyard know just how he feels.

All winter long, we tromped through snow, pruning dormant brown vines. Spring brings mud, and the promise of new life.

And so May has dawned, and brought with it, welcome warm temperatures.

The soil warms, and welcomes the new vines  we nudge into it.

After a brutally cold winter, and a relatively cool and wet spring, the growth we see all around us in May is welcome, and rapid.

As if on cue, our earliest budding grape variety, Marquette, broke bud on May 1st.

Marquette block, North Vineyard, May 1, 2015

Each day, additional buds unfurl, slowly clothing the North Vineyard in fresh green foliage.

These warming afternoons will bring rapidly elongating shoots. We'll likely see several inches of new growth a day later this week, as temperatures climb into the eighties.

Elsewhere on the property, our later budding varieties continue to slumber. Swelling buds will continue to break open over the next several weeks.

In the fence rows and the orchard, blossoms abound.

Honey bees luxuriate in golden pollen, in apple blossoms that change from carmine to pink to white as they open.

Every year, all of this happens.

But the sequence is never precisely the same. 

Although this spring seems cool and damp, our Marquette vines broke bud nine days earlier than they did in 2014.

Bred in frigid Minnesota, it's as if our vines couldn't stand to miss a single May afternoon of pleasant Canton sun. I think Giuseppe, as well us we who tend the vines, feel exactly the same way.

Farm

For those of us who work at Gervasi Vineyard, one of the great pleasures of our workplace is the setting itself. There is an intrinsic beauty to this property, one of the early farms settled on the Stark County frontier.

After springs were dammed to create a lake to power a sawmill, these acres were carefully tended first as a dairy farm, then a tree farm, and most recently a vineyard.

As far as I know, we are the only working farm remaining in the city of Canton.

It is a diverse and varied agricultural terrain of gentle slopes, still and flowing water, historic farm structures, evocative new architecture, meticulously groomed landscape beds, highly managed vineyard rows, fallow fields, and wild fencerows teeming with wild flowers, brambles, and apple trees.

We not only get to enjoy this beautiful property in all seasons, but those of us who work here also get to experience it with our guests each day, some seeing it for the first time.

Occasionally, we also have the opportunity to hit the road, and take a small piece of our Canton vineyard with us.

On Friday, May 1, it was my great privilege to visit with some exceptional students, and their dedicated teachers, at Archibald McGregor Elementary School, right here in Canton, for Farm to School Day.

Arriving at the corner of 17th and Vine Street (aptly named, I thought), McGregor anchors one of those old Canton neighborhoods of red brick streets and two-story wood frame homes.

The Timken Company's historic and state-of-the-art Harrison Steel Plant rises over the neighborhood.

Stepping into the school's sunny yellow hallways, there was a buzz of activity.

Teachers and students, many dressed as farmers for the day, made their way through the hallways. The school's energetic principal greeted visiting parents and grandparents, offering farm-themed books to the kids to take home with them.

Part of the Healthy Schools Initiative, I was one of two farmers there for the day, sharing the gym floor with Ann Taub, a Stark County organic vegetable farmer.

I toted vases of grape canes from our vineyard, blossom-laden branches from our orchard, and some baby grape plants nurtured over the winter in our greenhouse.

Ann had baskets of fresh herbs and vegetables, and two of her chickens.

Anne shows a fresh sprig of parsley from Grassy Treeland Farm

All through the morning, classes of kindergartners through second graders made their way to the gym for their assembly period.

Ann and I were peppered with excellent questions.

Photos courtesy of Canton City School District

Ann talked about how small organic farmers grow very healthy and chemical-free produce, available for purchase at local farmers markets.

She explained that the chickens not only provide fresh eggs, but help to fertilize the vegetable fields, and consume any produce that may be past its prime for human consumption.

The chickens may have been a little nervous...

I talked about how fruit is grown, and all the many colors and varieties of grapes that can be grown right here in Canton, Ohio.

I have to confess, I was a little nervous, at first, about sharing a stage with chickens!

I wasn't sure how the kids would respond to vases of grape canes and tiny potted grape plants, newly leafed out.

I shouldn't have worried.

The kids seemed to love hearing a little about what happens at the only working farm in their own hometown, and seemed just as enthusiastic as I am about the miracle of newly emerged grape leaves, and the beauty of an apple tree branch decked out in blossoms.

The kids did a great job with their farmer outfits...

Even the plastic grapes I brought to represent the varied colors and flavors of grapes that can be grown right here in Canton (stand ins for the real ones that won't show their color until August) elicited some great questions and conversation.

...as did many of their teachers.

Energized by my visit, I wasn't quite ready for it to be over. 

After Ann and I loaded up our props, and I said goodbye to the chickens, I strolled around the neighborhood for a bit. 

The bright May sun illuminated streets of red Canton paving bricks. 

I paused to appreciate some Bartlett pear trees on the schooolhouse lawn, dripping with extravagant blossoms. 

Somehow I'd missed them on the way in (nervous about the chickens, I suppose.)

Pear blossoms on the McGregor School lawn.

Looking at the school, and thinking about the creative, energetic teachers I had just met, I couldn't help but think our old farm in Canton isn't the only parcel in the city that glows with the radiance of decades of nurture and care. 

I farm. 

They teach. 

It never occurred to me until this bright sunny first day of May, how similar our vocations really are, and how much like a farm a school really is.