Beyond Shingle Diggin's

Published May 22, 1996

FARMING - that’s all for now!

There are more stories of farms and farmers, so this series could go on and on. But I think it’s time to draw to a close for now. That means leaving out many names that I’ve had in mind, as well as the hundreds I don’t know at all. There are the Dalys, Thomas and Mary, who added over the years property from farms belonging to the Reuben Wendzels; Norman, Floyd, and Norris Arent; Leo Webers; and Ted Elsners. There was John Vanderveer, whose farm was a valuable property on the north line of Berrien County.

There was Eugene Austin who in 1890 purchased 70 acres just east of Paw Paw Lake and, along with the farm, operated the Walnut Grove Farm Resort. Ira Leedy’s large fruit and vegetable farm in the 1890s encompassed all of what is now Coloma Heights Subdivision, Leedy Subdivision, Coloma Middle School, and the athletic field of the Middle School. The Wendzel family, sons Rhinholt and Robert, came first in 1904 and established a home on Hill Road and then sent for their parents. They were lucky enough to have an artesian well on their property. There was the Henry R. Holland farm across from Watervliet Cemetery, upon which the present Watervliet High School was built; and the Emil Wolcott family, who donated acreage from their farm for the Watervliet Paper Mill.

I’m leaving out many of Grandfather Branch’s neighbors along Hagar Shore Road; the John Pocketts around the corner on County Line Road; Cousin Muriel’s other grandparents, where I had my first experience of picking and eating apples out of the orchard, of watching the cows being brought in, and of smelling roses from his rather famous rose garden. Today, after a bad fire some 50 years ago, all that remains is the silo, standing like a sentinel to long-ago memories.

There were the Coons, the Harts, Schoonovers, Doolittles, Hutchins, Friesens, Wicklunds, Lavelys and John Pecks, all neighbors familiar to me as I grew up. On down were the Kellys and Hazens. On Coloma Road, the Warmans, the Robinsons, the Roricks, the Scherers, and the farm where I was dancing on a stump while Dad plowed and suddenly was attacked by a hundred bees! I dare not forget the Norm Ericksons, the Kerlikowskes, the Arneys, the Dunses, the Henkes, the Thars, the Tidebohls, and the John Millers. I must stop going up and down these roads in my mind.

I’d like to close with a few tidbits which help us to round out the story. The first Agricultural Society of Berrien County was organized in 1850. The first county fair was held in Berrien Springs in 1851. James Higbee, in 1879, held an agricultural fair on his property in Bainbridge. A half-mile track was laid out and graded and enclosed by a high fence and buildings 20 by 100 feet were erected for a grandstand. One hundred feet was added for a floral exhibition. W. H. Baldwin and L. W. Pearl helped with it, a project of the Lakeshore Agricultural Society.

In 1900, news in the Record included these items: J. W. Silver thinks he’ll have over 1,000 barrels of winter apples. F. R. Hjorth of Tocquin says of his 1,000 peach trees only three or four have been affected by the “Yellows.” An Elberta peach from David Scherer’s orchard measured 12 inches in circumference. The Methodist Sunday School held a picnic at Sebastian Smith’s orchard at Paw Paw Lake. A potato grown by Isaac Quigano and weighing 3-1/4 pounds is on exhibition at F. E. Baughman’s. A gourd grown at F. Howard’s place east of Watervliet is on exhibition at Sam Clauser’s. It is six feet long and looks like a baseball bat. L. R. Lull, one mile north of the Stickney School, has 25 swarms of bees for sale at $2.50 per swarm.

In the September 1905 Courier these were mentioned: John B. Krause, living two miles south of Coloma on 110 acres, has a quince orchard, one of the few in Berrien County. H. C. DeField made a specialty of raspberries, of which he had eight acres, yielding an average of 1,200 cases per year. Ira Leedy had some kind of fruit marketable all summer, from strawberries through melons. E. C. Dedrick had magnificent peaches, and Louis Patterson was a straight packer with his ten acres of fruit, “and the sort of fellow you like to tie up with.”

“It was a pleasure,” said the Courier, “to visit the Helen Hosbein grain and fruit farm.” Helen and Edward Hosbein were later German immigrants (1888). Leo stayed on the farm on Angling Road but is best known as the first Dr. of Veterinary Medicine in these parts. What would local farmers have done without him? Marion Leedy interviewed his daughter, Joan Hosbein Reinhardt, when writing for “Glimpses of the Past” and gives an interesting description of those early days when the kitchen table was sometimes the operating room.

In 1917, work started on the packing house building on a site secured on the Otto Schmuhl farm - purchased from Robert Kibler, along the right of way of the Pere Marquette Railroad. They planned to care for all fruit grown by members of the local Fruit Association. Thus, cooperatives had reached the farmers by way of the “Patrons of Husbandry” (official name of the Grange) which had first reached Michigan in 1872. In this same year, Wm. Daly and Robt. Sherwood both spoke at the Horticultural Society, Daly on “Small Fruit” and Sherwood on “Good Roads for Berrien County.”

Typical of peach growers in 1919 was Emilius Wolcott (Actually, Emilius probably spelled Wolcott with two o’s. One was dropped later.) who shipped three carloads or 1,488 bushels for $3,000. 1919 was a great year for huckleberries. The editor of the Record, Leon Case, tells of his visit to this famous marsh, which many readers will remember. “This writer visited Sumner’s Marsh three miles northeast of Watervliet Saturday and it was an interesting experience and much drier than usual. He had the good judgment to take his wife along to help pick as it is slow going. Much of the professional picking has been done by Indians and parties of them will go and camp for several weeks while picking. One Indian at Sumner’s Marsh picked 60 quarts in one day. They are selling now for $4.50 to $5 per crate (16 quarts) on the local market.” I noted that elsewhere in the same paper, the Sumner Huckleberry Marsh was on fire; three acres out of the 20 burned.

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