For years after her husband died, Florence Jones pruned acres of vineyard by herself with hands almost as old as the gnarled, twisting vines with which she grew up.
But when a broken hip prevented the Hanover Township woman, 76, from clipping the concord vines this season, she turned to other Chicago-area grape growers and vintners for help. A group trimmed Jones’ vineyard last week during the prime of pruning season, and it plans to clip and spray through spring, to give her at least one more crop and preserve a piece of history.
Jones’ family has operated the vineyard east of Elgin since 1924, when her grandfather planted the vines during Prohibition. Grape View Farm is the state’s oldest-known continuously producing commercial vineyard, said grape and wine officials.
“It’s remarkable to be around this kind of history,” said Prairie State Winery co-owner Maria Mamoser of Kingston, who organized volunteers with her husband, Rick.
Jones will sell the grapes, used mainly for juice and jam, at her “U-pick” farm this fall. Rick Mamoser plans to buy the remaining concords to make a sweet red wine for the Genoa winery.
“Maybe the vineyard can stay productive for many years to come,” said Mamoser.
The vineyard harks to the state’s wine-producing heyday. In the early 1900s, the state ranked in the top four in grape production and produced 25 percent of the nation’s wine, said viticulturist Imed Dami of the Illinois Grape and Wine Resources Council.
Then came Prohibition, when many vines were destroyed, followed by the introduction in the 1940s of 2-4-D, a herbicide that damaged grapes, Dami said.
Combined with harsh winters and disease, which limit the average commercial life of a vine to 25 to 30 years in Illinois, old vineyards are rare here, Dami said. The longevity of Jones’ vineyard is promising for growers, he said.
“These are pieces that are just wiped out,” said council enologist Stephen Menke, who came from Champaign to help with the pruning. “They’re gone now–they’re covered with houses.”
Jones’ farm stayed in the family–she still has the $442 check her grandfather wrote in 1924 for five acres of land. She and her husband, Duward, took over from her parents in 1969, and he also worked at a dairy to supplement their income.
For years, when the grapes ripened, Jones called her 500 customers.
“I thought it was more personal,” she said. The opening day line could stretch down the road.
Jones sold grapes from a small yellow cottage behind the yellow farmhouse where she grew up. She weighed them on the same wood and iron scale her grandfather used, surrounded by the green wooden counters he built. “It’s really my heritage,” she said.
“I’ve never been any other place. I have very deep roots.”
Customers who started coming to Grape View as kids now bring children and even grandchildren.
“They say it’s like going back in a different world, like in the old days,” Jones said. “There are so few peaceful places anymore.”
Since her husband died almost nine years ago, Jones has had help mowing, cutting brush, maintaining equipment and selling grapes from a couple living at the farm and a cousin. But until she broke her hip, Jones insisted on doing the pruning.
“I’d be out there now if it wasn’t for this broken hip,” she said. Even so, pruning so many rows was getting to be too much, and she had never been able to keep up with the spraying. Her grape production dropped.
Last year, Jones reduced the cultivated area to 3 acres from 5. Then she broke her hip and called Mamoser, hoping to hire help. Instead, she got a field of 20 expert volunteers last week, trading tips as they worked.
At the day’s end, Jones walked gingerly into the vineyard to thank the friends and strangers.
“Oh, doesn’t it look nice,” Jones said, admiring her vines, half of them twisting cleanly between fence posts, free of the bushy overgrowth. She reached her hand out in thanks to the next generation of growers and offered them vine clippings.
“It’s just a blessing,” she said.
