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Growers Growers' work involves everything; from planting, supervising the crop harvest, supervising labor, purchasing supplies, packing, and shipping just to name a few. It was through their innovation that a highly diverse and marketable fruit growing region was created in southwest Michigan. |
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We had a fruit stand. My grandfather and grandmother lived across the road from us, and grandpa ran the stand. [On] Sundays, you’d get a lot of traffic on US-31, so there was a lot of traffic from Indiana going past. So they sold quite a bit. There would be people, truckers who would come out and buy directly from the farm, too. [In] fact, that was a summertime job. I think mostly as we progressed from snipping strawberry buds, as we got older, then we were tending the stand a great deal. - Arlene Emery |
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People are accustomed today to buy nectarines from the grocery store where they are firm, crisp; much like carrots. When they come out to the farm here, they taste a nectarine that was ripened on the tree, and it’s amazing. You need to eat a nectarine in the bathtub with the plug in because it is so juicy. - Herb Teichman |
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They call it facing, [and] and the very pretty bunch of peaches that would be facing up, we took that whole thing with the metal hole in it and we’d put in underneath the shoot. They’d fill it up with peaches until it was closed. If you checked the bushel basket - the edge of the lid - and turned it over, and you took that metal lid off and you took the metal sleeve out, you’d have this thing of cardboard and then a very, very pretty bunch of peaches. They’d be all nice and flat, [and that would] be the top of your bushel. - Richard Schinkel |
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WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY / THE HERITAGE MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER
