Fred & Pam’s 2022 Update for friends

The big picture: Pam and I, all our kids and grandkids are healthy, employed if they want to be and doing well in life.

Son Dan remains in Honeoye Falls. He moved to a different and better apartment this year, as his previous one underwent a total overhaul. He continues growing his computer service business, and serving as chair of the Town of Mendon Zoning Board of Appeals.

In 2021 the big news for daughter Adele and family was another flood putting a couple feet of water into the first floor of their house. Second time in 18 years. Well, this year their big news is that will no longer be a concern for them. Nate started a job at Transonic in Ithaca in September. They moved to the house near ours that they bought a few years ago in anticipation of moving here ‘someday’. And wonderfully their house in NJ sold quickly, with the closing December 6.  It was a whirlwind transition as the job offer came in mid-July with a start date requested even earlier than Sept. 1.  It was a very busy 6 weeks getting the NJ house ready and on the market and moving enough by Sept. 1 to ‘survive’.  The next few weekends they moved the rest.

Adele continues home schooling Peter 15, Lydia 13, and George 11.  They’ve gotten connected with a home school coop group for various subjects. She’s found music lesson instructors so Lydia can continue learning the harp, and the boys in piano. Lydia is able to play on a local Christian school girls basketball team, and the boys look forward to possibly playing sports there come spring.

It’s great having Adele and Nate and the grand kids about ¼ mile away, and being able to see them regularly. This now means all our kids are within about an hour’s drive.

Their new address is 7942 Footes Corners Road, Interlaken, NY  14847

In the picture below, Nate & Adele’s house is on the right, nestled in the trees left of the road, and our house up at the center top. And yes, that’s a grass runway and an old hangar about in the middle. I’m still dreaming of flying again before I get too old! And just above Nate/Adele’s house on the right is the 1.5 acres of Rkateseli vines that were planted in 2021, a few weeks before the picture was taken. More coming in 2023.

Joshua finished the course work for his Masters in Special Education over the summer, and is now working at the Rochester School of the Arts teaching several classes of 8^th grade math. He continues his weekly Sunday 1-3 PM classical music radio show at WXXI in Rochester, as well as being the bass section leader in the choir at St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Pittsford.

Noah remains full time at Damiani Wine Cellars along southeast side of Seneca Lake. He moved to Geneva this summer. When not working at Damiani’s, he’s busy promoting our 7 current Airy Acres Vineyard wines, as we started selling wine much more this year, after an Open House at the vineyard on August 6.

Left to right below is Noah, Josh and grandson Peter.

And here’s Josh, Pam and Peter

Pam and I remain involved in much the same activities. Fred is kept very busy in the vineyard from around April thru September (this webpage will give you a sense of the vineyard work), less during winter. He joined our church leadership board this year. He continues leading a discussion group (teens this year!) in the Between the Lakes Community Bible Study class that Pam leads, and does a variety of computer/tech support for the class.  Pam continues as the class Teaching Director, which means overall leadership and preparing weekly teachings during the 30 week class from September to May. The class has about 50 women and men engaged in Zoom and in-person discussion groups, studying Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers this year.

The vineyard – we started with our first planting of 3 acres in 2015 and now have expanded to 18 acres. We’ve also grown beyond ‘just growing grapes’ to selling wine made from our grapes.  In addition to continuing to sell grapes to local wineries, we also had 100 cases of wine made from the 2020 harvest. Planned to have about 500 made from 2021 harvest, but an unexpectantly large 2021 harvest resulted in 1,200 cases from 2021.  700 cases of whites and a Rose were bottled in the spring of 2021 – which will be followed by about 500 cases of reds from the 2021 harvest to be bottled in January or early February. So we’ve grown faster than expected. We now have 18 acres with 8 vinifera grape varieties, and will plant 3 more acres spring 2023. The tasting room construction was delayed to 2023. You can learn more about our vineyard adventure at this website. As the our wine sales grow, Noah will become the Tasting Room & Marketing Manager for Airy Acres Vineyard, and son-in-law Nate will take over managing the care and feeding of the vines.

Our 2020 Cabernet Franc and 2020 Riesling both won Silver awards in the 2022 New York Classic Wine Competition.

This next picture is an Open House we had on Aug. 6 to ‘kick off’ selling wine from the barn, until the tasting room is built. We did scheduled tastings until the weather got too cold. Thanks to some radiant heaters we still do a few over the winter.  Call if interested. Starting around May 1 2023 we’ll be open something like 11AM-5PM Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The only 2022 picture I found that included most of the family is below, taken when we harvested the Chardonnay. Left to right in the picture below: Grandson Peter, Fred, Adele, Nate, granddaughter Lydia, Mike Emrick (in back row, a good friend who helps in the vineyard sometimes), grandson George in front with Pam behind him, Tom March (another good friend), Dan in back row, Ellen Cook (Pam’s cousin for whom helping with a harvest was a bucket list item), and Ellen’s husband Stuart. Son Josh took the picture; Noah was working at Damiani’s that day.

A local library got a grant to create an online history of the Finger Lakes craft beverage industry (mostly vineyards/wineries).  She interviewed the current owners of several area wineries, and we were fortunate to be included. You can see the video here – and learn about the history of our farm and why we started the vineyard.

One of the blessings of living in rural farm country is being ‘surrounded’ by the beauty of God’s creation. We especially enjoy seeing a variety of wildlife, including deer, raccoons, feral cats, fox, coyote, turkey, hawks (and a rare bald eagle), all sorts small birds at the feeder, geese (including snow geese) … and in particular the osprey that come each year to the nest on a power pole at the end of our driveway. This year we got a couple ‘up close’ pictures!

And the snow geese sometimes visit the fields in front of our house!

Also, if you’re ‘RV people’, we are a Harvest Host site. Check it out.

On of the blessings of the vineyard is connecting with friends we haven’t seen in a while because of their interest in wine or the simple beauty of the Finger Lakes area. Here are a couple examples.

As some of you know, our daughter Adele’s name came for a lifelong friend of Pam, Dr. Adele Greene from Australia. Back during Pam’s high school years this Adele was a foreign exchange student that stayed at Pam’s house for part of her U.S. visit. They’ve stayed in contact ever since. Dr. Adele along with her husband Chris (another doctor), brother David and sister Sue visited us for a week in October on their month long ‘family’ vacation. Dr. Adele wanted to be here for a grape harvest (weather didn’t cooperate) and also for Pam’s birthday on Oct. 25. Pam had a great time sharing with them some of the beauty of the Finger Lakes. Pictured below are Adele’s sister Sue Westerman Rothnie, brother David Westerman, husband Chris Bain and Adele Greene Bain.

For us, Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, and His subsequent years of earthly ministry culminating in His death, resurrection and return to heaven, as faithfully recorded, in the books of Matthew and beyond in the Bible, by those who personally witnessed His life here . Those receiving this update are a mixture of those who also share in this joyful celebration and those who may not.  For anyone interested in learning more about Jesus, Pam (585-301.1812, pam@bassettes.com) or I (585-727-3328, fred@bassettes.com) would be honored to chat with you about any questions you might have.

2022.12.27 Addendum: There are a variety of religious celebrations at this time of year. One, Christmas, is called Christmas because of Jesus Christ, and perhaps Linus explained it well to Charlie Brown in 1965, a show that won a Peabody and Emmy for outstanding ‘children’s’ programming.