About a year ago, I learned the owners of Hummingbird Estate — Ed and Susan Walk — live in Neoga, Illinois. This was quite a surprise as I was raised in Paris, Illinois, about 50 miles from Neoga. Meghann Walk, general manager, and I laughed about this interesting connection, and we loved it. At the time we had no idea there was even more.

In the 1970s, Ed and Susan met at The Tool Box, a “disco bar” in Effingham, Illinois. They married, raised a family and were large pork and grain farmers for several decades until, as Ed said, “We weren’t big enough.” During those years, they built a new home on their property and moved from the original house, the home they lived in when their daughter Meghann was born. They then rented that house, where a newly married couple lived for a decade and started their own family. This family, we discovered late last year, was my best friend from Paris High School and her husband — I’d even introduced them to each other. Their three daughters became friends with Meghann’s siblings, and she remembers going to a birthday party at this home. Years later, Meghann’s own daughter attended a preschool run by my friend.

The Walks and I are the same age, so Ed knew some of the prominent sports people from Paris, and he came over in the summers for baseball. That baseball field was right across from the Surf Club where I was likely swimming and sunning.

These types of connections are wonderments to me.

What are the chances that people from 50 miles apart in the cornfields of Illinois are likely to meet and become friends at a winery in Southern Oregon? Curious as to their story, we spoke at their recent visit about their path from Hummingbird Farm to Hummingbird Estate.

While in college in Missouri, one of their daughters met a Southern Oregon man, married and relocated here, bringing two pigs from the family farm when they came. Ed and Susan would visit often. Susan said she told Ed, “If we’re going to visit, find me a house.”

In 2017, Ed came out early and did some house hunting.

“I found you a house,” Ed called and said.

“Great,” she responded.

“I found you four houses,” he continued.

“He stood on the terrace, which had lily ponds on it at the time,” Susan said. “It was evening, and he liked the city lights coming up.”

He also liked that he could see the mountains. I think that’s something we flatlanders hold in common once we get a view of them.

With plans for a vineyard written up by the previous owner, Mike Stepovich, the last territorial governor of Alaska who’d lived there until he died in 2014, the Walks purchased the property in April 2017.

“Grass way high, you could stand on the first floor and see the sky, red shag carpet everywhere on both floors, blackberry bushes and overgrown vegetation across the acres,” said Susan, describing the property.

For two years, they came back and forth quarterly, often with Illinois friends coming along to help work on the property and grounds. They’re grateful for all the help and guidance along the way.

“They ripped up all the fields 3 feet deep,” said Ed. “Brought up old irrigation pipe — wood, metal, plastic — a mountain of pipe.”

“History of the valley since 1926,” Meghann added.

“We brought up so many huge rocks. I can’t straighten it because I picked up so many rocks,” Ed said of his crooked thumb while showing me the digit.

You can see some of those rocks as you come up the now-paved driveway to the estate tasting room and guest suites. Looking off and shaking his head Ed said, “Every square inch of these 50 acres and these four houses has had something done to it, but work still remains.”

There is yet another local connection.

As a child, Emily (Carpenter) Mostue, of Dunbar Farms, would spend days swimming and having family dinners there. Her great uncle and aunt built the house in 1926, known then as Topsides, which included a children’s theatre.

“All the kids would go up to the third floor, up the narrow winding stairs, and put on a ‘play,’” Emily said. “The adults would be very good sports and come up to watch it. It had a dressing room with wonderful costumes. Good memories.”

The property is on the National Register of Historic Places and sits very close to where Peter Britt had his original vineyard. Hummingbird Estate opened in September 2019. They had been told it would take 3 to 5 years for grapes to flourish.

“The second year we had them,” Susan said. “We were told to harvest, that we might get a ton and a half. When we had around 10 tons, we said no more because we weren’t prepared.”

Peter Britt, photographer, gardener and viticulturist, obviously knew the potential of the soils and pioneered the first grapes of Southern Oregon. The Walks, farmers from Illinois, pioneered the first white pinot noir in the Rogue Valley and restored a fallowed property to its former glory — and then some. I thank you for this.

The hummingbird is only found in the Americas and has much mythology and symbolism attached to them. The Mayans believed the first wedding was between two hummingbirds.

Hummingbird Estate, 1677 Old Stage Road, Central Point, offers wine with a relaxing tasting room, terrace with a view, five guest suites, and is a highly popular wedding venue. It’s a great place for making connections.

See hummingbirdestate.com or call 541-930-2650.