Young Farmers take a trip

Every year, the Farm Bureau District 9 Young Farmers group tries to get together and go on a tour of an agricultural operation in southwest Indiana. Last year, we visited New Generation Dairy in Gibson County.

This year, we headed to Perry County, on the other side of our district, to visit Blue Heron Winery and Phil Etienne’s Timber Harvest.

We got a very nice tour of the little winery.

Blue Heron Winery uses stainless steel tanks to age all their wine.There are sculptures and pictures of herons hiding all over the winery.We got a chance to get up close and personal with some of their grapes, and we had a chance to taste some of their more popular wines.I brought home a bottle of their On Deck Red. I also meant to get a bottle of their cherry wine, but I grabbed a bottle of blueberry instead. That’s okay, I like blueberry, too!

And did I mention the view? They are high above the Ohio River and have a great view of the river, and Kentucky on the other side.One of the other features this winery has is the Celtic Cross.This sculpture was carved out of a natural rock formation. It took the sculptor 11 months, working dawn to dusk, 6 days a week.

You can see where they did some excavating to uncover more of the rock (below the dark diagonal line, the rock was buried in the hillside). The rock had an odd leaning shape, so the base of the cross “stepped out” of the rock to match the natural angle. There is some beautiful detail in the sculpture. We also went to a timber yard. This wasn’t as exciting for me (I wanted to go try some of my wine!), but the boys seemed to like it.I guess anytime you are dealing with huge power tools, the boys perk up and pay attention. We ended the day with a picnic and some grilling in part of the Hoosier National Forest. This was one of those weekends that was ridiculously hot, but in the forest, in the shade, by the lake, with a frosty beverage, it didn’t seem all that bad!