Restoring Our Connection to a Simpler Past, So Easily Lost in This Connected Present

The introduction to the 8 April 2011 issue of Adam Puchta Winery's newsletter is worth sharing:

Reflecting on the legacy of Adam Puchta

This week I had the great fortune to be interviewed and photographed by some really cool people from Feast Magazine for an upcoming article. The really neat thing about all this is that for a short period of time I was able to go back in time and relive the history of my ancestors and my childhood. In this very fast-paced and hectic society that we live in, we often forget to just stop and reflect on our lives and our upbringing.

Through the aforementioned sessions I had the opportunity to mentally ride with my great-great grandfather Adam on his oxen ride to Hermann, on a wagon filled with wine barrels for shipping, over a single lane dirt road that took most of one day just to go a little over 2 miles...then spend another day shopping for everything needed to live on for the next month... then return home over that same muddy dirt road!

How many times do we drive to the store in a single day... a week....a month.... just to get one item, much less and entire month's supply of groceries, clothing, hardware or whatever!? Do any of us even think that far ahead anymore?
 
I walked over a quarter mile back into the woods with the photographer to an old deserted Norton vineyard site, that dates back prior to prohibition and that still has a few Norton vines in an old terrace row, grown over now with trees. The vines have recently been trashed by high winds and ice storms that have chewed up the woods, but it is still so cool to see something alive that was planted over a hundred years ago and is still growing and producing fruit! 

To stand in the same cellar where Adam made wine, to remember as a kid turning the milk separator to produce cream for butter and milk for drinking, then churning that cream into butter...or to talk about the hams and bacon hanging in the smokehouse and the every day ritual my grandfather had in stealing a nibble of cured ham so that my grandmother wouldn't find out.... (she knew!), making apple butter, digging potatoes and canning everything edible for the winter months.

Most of these things are lost in our modern society, but still a very large part of other cultures around the world as everyday tasks and life. We really don't stop and reflect on how fortunate we are in this society and how easy our lives are these days!
 
So what are my rambling's about? Just the thoughts of someone who is really beginning to understand and appreciate what my ancestors had to go through in every day life and to realize just how difficult that their lives were, but in some respects a whole lot simpler, less hectic and maybe even a bit more enjoyable!
 
Take some time, have some wine and enjoy your life..... if you don't, nobody can do it for you!
 
I'd like to dedicate this newsletter to my good friend and classmate Clay Johnson, who recently passed away from cancer.... Way to young to be gone, but so richly blessed to have known him and to have been able to call him my friend!  Rest in peace brother!
 
 
Cheers!
 
Tim

Tim, Spencer, and Parker Puchta
6th & 7th Generation