Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues, it is 8.39, still has some light rain floating around the Finger Lakes and it's a chilly one, temperature at 42. Time to talk with our friends from Seneca County Cornell Cooperative Extension, we start off with Abe Vaughner joining us, good morning Abe, how are you?
Abe Vaughner: Good morning Paul, I'm fine, thank you. Good to have you on board and by all accounts the recent recycling and document shredding event that happened towards the end of October, massive success.
Paul Szmal: It was a very successful event, I want to thank Seneca Meadows and the Seneca County Highway Department and all the people at the county building that helped to make that a success. It was actually so successful that our shredding truck was filled up by 11 o'clock which has never ever happened before, that's about five tons worth of paper that we processed in about two hours, and so we did have a few people that were a little bit upset when they came around at 11.40 with their trucks full of documents to be shredded, so one of the things we've done, we've managed to schedule another document shredding event that will be on Friday the 14th of November, it'll be from 10 to noon and it will be at our office in Waterloo, but the thing with this one is we will ask people to please register for a time slot.
Abe Vaughner: It's going to be in our parking lot, we've got Huntington Nursing Home and a whole bunch of other things right around there, so we're going to try to keep a little bit better control on things.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, keep the traffic flow going so things don't get all gummed up. So we are asking people to come around to the website, which is SenecaCountyCCE.org, and they will be able to hit the registration link and just sign up for a time slot. So it's 15-minute increments, we're going to have so many people every 15 minutes, and it should keep everything under control and tell people how to get from point A to point B in the parking lot without jamming things up too much.
Abe Vaughner: You want to talk about a little bit of serendipity too, the Friday, November 14th, the next day, November 15th, happens to be America Recycles Day.
Paul Szmal: America Recycles, it certainly was serendipity. We were able to get that with the shredding truck and then we went, oh wow, the next day is America Recycles Day, which actually used to be our traditional weekend to do the document shredding and the electronics, and middle of November tends to be a little bit nastier than the end of October, so we switched. But yes, encouraging everyone to recycle, we'll have some special things going on next week with our Facebook pages and those kinds of things talking about recycling.
Abe Vaughner: And the Master Gardeners, they're going to be holding an event coming up on November the 22nd.
Paul Szmal: The 22nd is the Fresh Greens Workshop. I'm pretty sure we used to call this the Wreath and Swag Workshop because we at one point had some people going like, fresh greens, like salads, what are you doing? So this is the traditional make a wreath for your holiday or centerpiece for your table. It'll be $20 registration fee and that will include all of the materials you need and the expert instruction from our Master Gardeners or at least suggestions. This is actually one we get a lot of people that come back year after year to do this. We will also have, if people don't want to, if they just want to pick one up, we'll have kits and they can take them home and we have videos actually on our website that goes through how to make a wreath and do the swag. And that will be from 9 to 11 out at Vince's Park on that Saturday and again, please sign up to register.
Abe Vaughner: Right, and we're in full swing or about to be in full swing of hunting season and I know that there are some hunters that wind up with more venison than they can actually use and they're always looking for a place to put that extra meat. You guys have a resource for that.
Paul Szmal: This is a great program. The Venison Donation Coalition arranges for processors to be able to process a deer and they get it directly to our food pantries. Everything that's going on right now, food pantries are more important and food insecurity is more important than it has been in a long time. And so, yes, if you're a hunter and you're really good, go ahead and consider donating your extra deer to the Venison Donation Coalition. The processor in Seneca County is the Finger Lakes Meat Processors on Route 336 in Romulus and you drop off your freshly harvested field-dressed deer and they will make sure that that meat gets to the local food pantries.
Abe Vaughner: And we want to give a shout out too for the annual meeting because that's coming up here in less than 30 days.
Paul Szmal: Less than 30 days, yes, it's like, it always kind of creeps up on us. It will be December 1st, it's at the moment a save the date. We'll be doing it at Knapp's Winery Restaurant as we have for a number of years now. It's open to anyone who's a Seneca County resident who partakes of our program or is interested and supportive of Cooperative Extension. So the registration information will be coming up on our website. So just keep an eye out for that.
Abe Vaughner: Now, that's Abe Vauder from Seneca County CCE, but we have another guest joining us this morning as we shift gears a little bit to talk about grape growing and how the growing season was and how it was affected by some things. And joining us to talk about that is Hans Walter-Peterson. Hans, good morning. How are you, sir?
Hans Walter-Peterson: I'm good, Paul. Thanks for letting me be here today to talk a little bit about our industry.
Paul Szmal: And why don't we start by you giving us kind of a recap of how the 2025 growing season was.
Hans Walter-Peterson: In a word, overall spectacular. The folks probably know it was a pretty dry year. We didn't have a whole lot of rain, at least compared to what we normally get, especially starting in around mid-June or so, things really started to dry out and stayed pretty dry through the end of harvest. And so for grapes and a lot of other crops, dry conditions can be really beneficial from a standpoint of keeping diseases at bay. And so the varieties that a lot of people know and that the Finger Lakes is getting really well known for, like Riesling and Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay, are pretty susceptible to a lot of the diseases that we have to deal with. And so drier conditions help growers to keep that fruit leaner. And so basically the way I always talk about vintages is we have vintages or growing seasons where you pick when you have to or you pick when you want to. And 2025 was definitely a year where you pretty much got to pick when you wanted to, because the fruit was in such good condition. And so growers and winemakers could kind of make the decision about, is it right to come in? No, let's leave it out for a few more days. It still looks nice and healthy. Now we can start to bring it in when we're ready and when we think the fruit is ready. So everybody I talked to was very enthusiastic about the quality of the crop that came in this year. And so if you are a fan or even moderately interested in Finger Lakes wines and want to support our industry, keep an eye out for the 2025 wines when they start coming out sometime next year. It's really just really good quality and really good conditions that we had this year. So we're pretty excited.
Paul Szmal: Now one of the unfortunate things that has happened from an agricultural standpoint in this region is we now have a purveyance of spotted lanternfly. Did that have an effect on the grape growing season and the crop this year?
Hans Walter-Peterson: Not this year. The lanternfly arrived in the Finger Lakes, technically arrived a few years ago in Ithaca. But last year in 2024, we found a couple of populations in close proximity to more of the vineyards. And so there's one population in Geneva and another one near Romulus along the west side of Keuga Lake. And so those two populations expanded quite a bit this year, which typically happens with an invasive pest. Because invasive pests are from another area, there are no predators for them that have kind of evolved with them. And so anytime we get a new invasive pest, this is no exception, we tend to see the populations grow very quickly because there aren't other predators to kind of keep it under control. But they're still just in those two locations as far as we know. If somebody told me they found more in other parts of the region, it wouldn't surprise me at all, but those are just the two that we know of. And so we've found lanternflies in one commercial vineyard so far. Very small numbers. So it really wasn't a problem as far as quality and impacting vine health. But over the next few years, we're going to see a lot more of these things showing up in vineyards and just around the Finger Lakes in general. So it's something that we've been talking to the growers about for the past few years, knowing that it was going to show up at some point, and now it has. And so we're kind of getting a little bit more engaged with managing the insect itself. It can have a pretty significant impact on grapevines if enough of them feed on a vine. They basically feed on the sap in the vine. So literally, they can suck the life out of a grapevine. Kind of like if you lose too much blood, it's harder and harder for your body to function. That's the same way with grapevines and other plants. If you lose sap, that's the stuff that keeps the grapevine going. So it can have an effect on the vine health and the fruit quality if enough of them feed on grapevines. But I keep emphasizing to people, while we're definitely concerned about this new pest, it's not the end of grape growing by any means. There are plenty of places in the East that have had lanternfly in them for a while now. Southeast Pennsylvania has had it for almost 10 years now, and they're still growing grapes down there and making wines. Virginia, New Jersey, same situation. So it's not a dire threat to the industry, but it's something that we need to manage, and we will learn how to manage, and we're learning a lot already. And so it's just another thing that growers are going to have to deal with. But like I said, it's not the end of grape growing. It's something that we have to learn how to manage so that it has as little of an impact as possible in the vineyards.
Paul Szmal: And finally, one of the cornerstone publications of the wine industry is Wine Enthusiast magazine, and the Finger Lakes region got one of their prestigious awards.
Hans Walter-Peterson: Yeah. So every year, Wine Enthusiast pulls together a bunch of awards for different individuals and wineries and regions. And this year, the Finger Lakes was named by Wine Enthusiast magazine as the American wine region of the year. So not Napa or Sonoma or Washington State, Red Mountain region in Washington State, any of those. It was the Finger Lakes. And so it was a really, really fun honor to see. It's an indication of all the hard work and incredible improvements in quality and production that we've had here in the region over the past 25 years plus. And so I think it was just a really great honor for the region to get a real indication of what the incredible things that the growers and winemakers do here. I will just mention also that one of our wineries was named also an American winery of the year. They have, I think it's four or five. But Red Tail Ridge near Pen Yen was one of the winners of that award as well this year.
Paul Szmal: Congratulations to them. Congratulations to the whole region. Hans, Abe, thank you for joining us this morning. We appreciate the information and the updates.
Hans Walter-Peterson: Thank you so much, Paul.
Abe Vaughner: Thank you.
Paul Szmal: It is 8.52 on FLX Morning.
