Join a Grape Harvest in the Heart of Flushing
On a small patch of land in Flushing, between a funeral home and a brick apartment building, sits the Voelker Orth Museum, a charming Victorian house, beautifully preserved to reflect its era. For one late-summer day each year, volunteers join the museum’s small staff in the adjacent garden to harvest the grapes dangling from the arbor. They’ll clean the fruit, pick out stems and turn the grapes into juice, the main ingredient in a signature punch that the museum serves at its many events. While they work, they’ll hear the faint sound of modern life from Northern Boulevard, only a block away. By sundown, the harvest will be over, the grape juice frozen for use throughout the coming year.
The Voelker Orth Museum is an unexpected gem, an artifact of middle-class domestic life in Flushing in the late 19th and early 20th century. Conrad Voelker bought the house in 1899, having immigrated from Germany’s Rhine region. The property stayed in Voelker’s family until 2003, when his granddaughter Elizabetha Orth donated it to be turned into a museum. Members of the surrounding community formed a board and restored the house, preserved its period furniture and windows and planted a traditional garden. On Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, guests can tour the rooms. In Elizabetha Orth’s own bedroom, they’ll find a matching painted vanity and bed. In the parlor is a 1930 Sohmer piano, made in Queens.
As the museum board worked to restore and preserve the home, they found a photo of an arbor dripping with grapevines. While it is likely that Voelker brought those grapes over from the Rhine, given its rich winemaking history, the museum instead planted flavorful Catawba grapes, a varietal known to thrive in New York. According to the museum’s director, Debby Silverfine, making wine would get too complicated for such a small operation, but the grape’s distinctive flavor makes it ideal for juice and, of course, punch.
On top of the museum’s preservation and horticultural efforts is a dynamic, diverse events program. The museum hosts schools and groups for workshops like vegetable gardening and candle-making, using wax from the on-site honeybee hive. Multi-disciplinary artist Linda Rettich will show her work in the house throughout the fall and host a one-day embroidery workshop. An Oktoberfest-themed fundraiser this fall will celebrate the museum’s German heritage with a nod to Flushing’s growing Korean population (think: brats topped with kimchi), connecting a Victorian relic to its ever-evolving neighborhood.
JOIN THE HARVEST
The grape harvest is tentatively scheduled for this Saturday, September 14, from 9:45am to 3pm, provided the grapes are ready to pick at that time. (For more information and to confirm the date, call 718.359.6227 or email info@vomuseum.org.) Most volunteers will work inside, preparing the grapes to be juiced, and will have the chance to try the museum’s signature grape juice punch.
