I returned to Vine Valley because I wasn’t satisfied with the picture that I had taken of the Vine Valley United Methodist Church. This little church is near the southern end of Canandaigua Lake and was built in Queen Anne style around 1891. It is a beautiful old building and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. One can see that it has been very well cared for over the years. Vine Valley isn’t even a postal address; it’s just a very small populated community that resides in the town of Middlesex, NY. It’s a place where one can live close to nature or to just escape from the day to day cares of modern living.
I suspect that Vine Valley got its name from wild grape vines that once grew there. Before making the decent into Vine Valley, one can see grape vineyards along route 364 which have taken the place of the older, out of date farms which used to be there. On the southern Vine Valley road, one sees the remnants of several old farms whose buildings have been neglected by their owners for a long long time. Due to the slope of the land and the small amount of the tillable acreage available, farming here just isn’t practical anymore.
On the other side of the road, a couple of horses were nibbling on some grass, their thoughts were far removed from farming and tilling the land and only resided in filling their bellies with some fresh spring green grass.
