Middle Tennessee State University students and Fermentation Science and School of Agriculture faculty will be involved with the annual Grape Harvest Day, from 7 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, at Lane Agri-Park, 315 John R. Rice Blvd, in Murfreesboro.

Open to the public, volunteers can learn from Rutherford County master gardeners how to harvest grapes at the Lane Agri-Park vineyard. An MTSU destemmer and crusher will be onsite. Participants are asked to park at the livestock barn building parking lot.

Volunteers should bring pruners, gloves, hat, sunscreen, water and clean gallon jugs to take juice home after the harvest is complete.

“It should be a good day for an event that continues to grow,” said Tony Johnston, professor and Fermentation Sciencedirector, who added that his students will be helping and retired biology professor John Dubois will return “to help man the crusher and destemmer.”

Johnston has been involved with the vineyard since 2006, helping oversee posts being placed in the ground, trellises constructed and initial planting of 200 grape vines in 2007.

Grape Harvest Day is a partnership between MTSU Fermentation Science, the UT Extension and Tennessee State University Cooperative Extension/College of Agriculture. The MTSU School of Agriculture is one of 11 College of Basic and Applied Sciences departments.

For more information about the event, contact Rachel Painter the UT Extension marketing specialist, at 615-898-7710 or email rpainter@utk.edu.

For more information about MTSU Fermentation Science, visit https://www.mtsu.edu/programs/fermentation/, call Johnston at 615-898-2421 or email him at Tony.Johnston@mtsu.edu.

— Randy Weiler (Randy.Weiler@mtsu.edu)