John Fuchsel, true Renaissance man

A Renaissance man by definition is a person with many talents or areas of knowledge – and South Ridge, Houston County, resident John Fuchsel is truly a Renaissance man! Fuchsel has retired from a life in sales, first with Badger Corrugating in La Crosse and later 12 years with a home improvement business specializing in exterior remodeling, but he isn’t your typical retiree. He refurbishes old tools, does some lathe work on woods, makes knives, sews leather sheaths and assorted holsters for tools and knives, and makes wine stoppers from vines, resin, and epoxy. He built his own brick wood-fired pizza oven, and also does most of the cooking at his house as well as baking bread using the cold fermentation process. In addition, he raises quail for release and, of course, cares for his 650 vine, acre and a half, vineyard on the side.

Not only does Fuchsel have a wide knowledge of many subjects; he has an amazing depth of knowledge in each of those subjects.

Fuchsel got into tool restoration because he liked the look and feel of older tools; the tools are made of a better quality of steel than many of today’s tools. His goal is to clean up the tools to make them usable, but he likes to retain the patina and charm of the antique tools. Displaying his Estwing hammer, John declared, “I’d cry if I lost this one!” John had purchased the hammer in 1975 and had used it as he built his house (which, of course, he also had designed!).

Pointing out a selection of files, Fuchsel enthused that he likes to go into old hardware stores – the kind where the old floorboards creak – and buy the old stock. He noted that now people go around and buy up all the “new old stock,” scooping up old tools. Fuchsel observed that the old tools need respect to be shown to them.

John shared a screwdriver for which he had made new hickory scales, the wooden parts of the handle. The toughest part according to John was to get that perfect fit on the handle with several angles.

John buys tools from antique dealers, auctions, estate and garage sales and on the internet. He admitted he has a lot of tools, explaining that they are sold in lots and you need to buy the whole lot to get the ones you want.

To refurbish tools, Fuchsel first uses brake cleaner to remove grease and oil, then he uses a bench grinder to get to the bare steel. After the surface rust is off, he puts the tool in a tote with EvapoRust. The final step is a wash with Simple Green and a shot of WD-40 to prevent returning rust. Old wooden handles are treated to a rub with a 50/50 mixture of linseed oil and turpentine. A tool that was picked up for a few dollars can be worth 10 times as much once refurbished.

Tools are treated with Johnson Paste Wax or RemOil if they need lubrication, as well.

John especially likes to collect edged tools, tools with sharp edges. His tool collecting really took off once he retired, but he actually started about 40 years ago when he invested $200 in a wooden chest full of tools. A compass that was in that chest is valued at $100 alone.

Fuchsel also has several hammers made by a blacksmith in Korea, that he bought from a man who was moving and needed to get rid of them. Of course when you have blacksmith hammers, you need a forge – no worries, Fuchsel bought a 90,000 BTU forge in Black River Falls, and picked up a 130 lb anvil at a local auction. Four or five years ago, he started making his own knives – both the knives themselves and the wooden handles.

When he decided he needed a larger belt grinder, he made his own 2” by 72” belt grinder using a 11⁄2 horsepower motor he had in the shop and made a wheel attachment to do the curvature for knives.

Fuchsel uses a stabilizing resin called Cactus Juice to stabilize wood for new tool handles. The process uses a vacuum chamber (handmade by John of course) to infuse the resin into wood. The wood needs to be completely dry before the process; drying is done in an oven and confirmed by weighing until consistent. Epoxy is added to the larger negative spaces after the resin infusion.

One of John’s favorite tools is a 100-plus-year-old lopper with taped handles. At first he intended to replace the handles, but later thought better of it and left the history of the tool intact. He eventually intends to donate the lopper to the La Crescent, Minn., museum when he no longer wants it since it was originally made for apple pruning.

The vineyard

The first thing John had to say was that he wanted to dissuade any of the FCJ readers from starting a vineyard. “You have to get to a certain scale – you need a lot of infrastructure (tools, sprayers, tools to build trellising, a spinning Jenny, and chemicals) to have a vineyard.” He encouraged people to first decide what their market was. John got into it originally to grow his own grapes to make his own wine and to go bigger than that as well. He sells many of his grapes to local wineries now.

It takes 10 vines to harvest enough grapes to produce 100 pounds of grapes to make a “carboy” of wine. From the mature vines in John’s vineyard, he harvested an average of 20 pounds of grapes per vine.

Fuchsel grows a wide variety of grapes – the reds include: Marquette, Frontenac, Concord, Reliance, Somerset Seedless, and Petite Pearl; the whites include: Frontenac Gris, Frontenac Blanc, La Crescent, La Crosse, Briana, Edelweiss, and Louise Swenson.

The vineyard is very labor intensive; John spends 50 to 60 hours winter pruning and an average of an hour a day for the entire year. Fuchsel is able to do most of the work himself except harvest. His wife Jacqueline joins him as his primary harvest helper. With the wide variety of grapes in his vineyard, the harvest can be spread over four to six weeks with the different varieties ripening at different times. His brother Paul has a refrigerator at his nearby home to store grapes in. Customers appreciate the cold grapes as they crush the grapes, the grapes remain fresher. Normally they add dry ice to chill during the crushing.

Fuchsel refers to the vineyard as a hobby that pays for itself and not a retirement job or second income. After the tools and chemicals are paid for, he sees about half of the sales as profit.

Chemicals needed for the vineyard include Roundup for weeds, sulfur spray, Dormant oil spray for residual insects who have wintered in the bark of the vines, as many as seven fungicides to switch off and keep from creating a resistance to one or another, and burndown herbicide. Deer repellent is used now; later phylloxera gall may begin, which causes leaves to curl and must be prevented. Since fungal diseases can’t be eradicated, the treatment needs to be proactive.

Once the grapes are ripe, bird control is a challenge. Fuchsel uses a three-pronged approach to deal with the birds. He has netting to cover about half of his 650 vines; he also uses an electronic bird harasser which plays distress calls from robins and calls from birds of prey. The third weapon is avian control spray, the smell of which drives away the birds. If birds break the skin on a grape, the bees are likely to become another issue.

When John first started growing grapes, he ordered French hybrids which can’t grow in this area. He learned about Elmer Swenson, dairy farmer near Osceola, Wis., who had been working to develop table grapes; the University of Minnesota took on his work 25 to 30 years ago. Seed Saver in Decorah, Iowa had some of these grapes and allowed Fuchsel to take some cuttings after getting Swenson’s permission. Those cuttings didn’t grow either so Fuchsel ended up buying stock from a nursery. Three hundred vines were the most he has planted at any one time.

The grapes in the vineyard are rated at -25 degrees so they need no winter cover. As we toured the vineyard, John pointed out that a vine needs 17 leaves on a vine to mature the clusters of grapes on it. Vines with fewer leaves are pruned off. Air flow is needed to prevent fungus; the air blast sprayer atomizes the spray and gets into the canopy of the vine, thus doing a better job of disbursement.

Fuchsel attended field days at other operating vineyards in order to learn more about growing grapes. He’s part of a Facebook group for cold climate growers; sometimes he’s giving the advice; other times he’s receiving it.

According to John, he’s happy with how the grapes are looking now. The current near-drought situation hasn’t affected the vines since their roots go down about 15 feet. Some of the blossoms were not pollinated, which causes open clusters with fewer grapes, but this keeps the fungus away. John expects harvest to be a couple weeks earlier than most years since we’ve had a lot of high degree days this summer already.

After reading about his many interests, I’m sure you now agree that John Fuchsel is indeed a Renaissance man. He enjoys his variety of interests; retirement will never be boring for John Fuchsel. In fact, one of his neighbors quoted him as saying, “A day you don’t learn something new is a day wasted!” John obviously follows this motto in his daily life!