My belief is that the longer
you stick with something,
the more you get out of it.
But sometimes, it’s just
hard to stick with it.
The one-time educator turned out to be a pretty good student.
There were challenges. Vines refused to grow, rabbits feasted on
his precious grapes. High winds once almost blew down his
metal building. “They were erecting it piece by piece, and one day
the sheriff called me and said, ‘Your building went down in the
wind.' No way," Gehring said. And then he hurried out there.
At the School Lane Vineyard, things just had a way of coming
together. In 2004, a golfing buddy told Gehring that some home-
owners were complaining about a grove of olive trees he’d plant-
ed. Fruit-bearing olive trees are illegal in Clark County and the
neighbors were talking lawsuit. “What are you going to do with
them?” Gehring asked. “Cut them down,” his friend said. “No
you’re not,” Gehring declared. “We’re going to move them to the
Amargosa Valley.”
In all, 31 trees were dug up and trucked to the desert. Now he has
4,000 olive trees, which in 2016 yielded 6,000 pounds of olives,
which were used to make olive oil.
Today, Gehring’s grape vines span 10 acres. Loken believes that,
with the right partnerships, School Lane Vineyard has the capac-
ity to reach 100 growing acres– with a potential of 500 tons of
wine grapes, or more than 75,000 gallons of Nevada wine.
For now, Gehring is content to see his investment grow, though he
knows that one day soon, it’ll be time to step down. Yet, the edu-
cator, who with an elementary school in Green Valley named in
his honor, isn’t done helping students. Eventually, he wants the
profits from his vineyard to be donated to educational causes.
So, are there any regrets from Gehring’s grand desert experi-
ment? “I have to admit it was a crazy idea,” he says. “But in
hindsight, I’d do it all over again.” ◆
Reprinted with permission from Valley Electric Association