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My father was interested in irrigation. He and Ferdinand Zar, a farmer in Dutton Township , were trying to get some portable pipe so they could do a lot of irrigating. We had about seven hundred acres of land on Hickory Creek. We could get water out of Hickory Creek. We could pump water but this pipe was portable. It was made of steel, lightweight steel. Two men could lay the pipe. Champion Pipe Company from Gary , Indiana , developed the patent on this thing and we used interlocking pipes. It served a purpose for a long time, and it saved a lot of fruit, ground fruit, with irrigation.

I developed equipment. We developed our own sprayer. We covered two rows at a time. We used our tractors more than anybody else did around here. We did our heavy work with a big, crawling tractor. Four-bottom plow, eighteen-inch plows. Then, the farm alls came in and you could cultivate two rows at a time. Farm alls were International tractors and they worked fine. Finally, they started to manufacture more tractors, John Deere, and all of ‘em. International was probably the best row crop tractors that was ever built. It could do two rows at a time. They developed a small tractor that would straddle one row, and it had a little unit on the tractor that did the work in and out of the plants, so we didn’t have to hoe everything. Cliff Emlong
Universities should spend more time on how to handle selling this fruit for profit instead of how to raise more of it. We already [have] a glut of fruit, but the main thing that universities teach is how to raise more. That’s going against the grain. [The] World Trade Agreement had a lot to do with it. You get fruits coming here from anywhere in the world, and if they can get them cheaper over there than they can get them here, we’re in trouble.

Our university has been sending experts to these other countries that are now giving us problems. I know some university professors from Michigan State that went to Asiatic places to tell them how to raise fruit. China right now has increased. They are raising ten times more fruit than we are here in the United States . They’ve got to find some way to get rid of it so they send it back over here in the form of concentrated apple juice at half the price. They can send juice here at half the price that our companies are making here. They don’t even want our apples anymore for juice. Juice apples used to be valuable enough to rely on for our entire picking cost. Harold Fox
Wally has always worked closely with the MSU extension people. We attend fruit grower shows and educational meetings all over the United States . Each state offers such programs. The local extension horticulturists and I organized the International Dwarf Fruit Tree Association in 1956. We called a meeting and drew a large crowd. It was successful enough that the next year [we] invited Dr. Tookie and others from Michigan State University . He deserves much credit for the formation of the organization. We later changed the name to the Dwarf Tree Association. I served as president for four years. As the industry changes we look to modernize whenever possible.

One time, I hired a young guy Chris Reiser, from Michigan State and sent him to Europe . On his first trip, he discovered sweet cherry dwarf trees. He checked it out, came back and said, “We should be looking at this.” So I returned to Germany , acquainted myself with the professor in charge, and after twenty-some visits to Germany over the next two or three years, we secured the rights to these rootstocks. Wallace and Laura Heuser
In [19]69, the first planting of dwarf, truly dwarf fruit trees, was made here in Van Buren , Michigan . Those trees only get to be about six to eight feet tall. Full-size trees might be planted thirty by thirty feet with maybe seventy trees in between, and eventually get to full bearing when they’re twenty years old. [You] might have three or four hundred bushels to the acre because you’ve got all this space between the trees that you have to fill. Mark Longstroth
They’re necessary [chemicals]. They’re not as dangerous as they’re portrayed to be if they’re handled properly. I have handled chemicals since I was twelve. I’ve gone the gambit from lime and sulfur, summer oil, nicotine sulfate which was either black leaf forty or black leaf one-fifty-five ‑ arsenate lead, DDT, DD, DDE, parathion. James Lull
Hassle Farms out at Keeler they grew enough strawberries that the buyers would send trucks right to their farm and load not just one truck, but maybe five of them or so right, at there farm. He was one of the largest strawberry growers for years. Eugene Peters
Most of the fruit farmers down there had connections with Michigan State , and we were neighbors and so they did things to [help] us. There were different projects that, I don’t know what many of them were, but they would come and check and look at our crops and things like that. The county extension agents did their [part]; that kind of person there. They also kept us abreast of what things like this were coming or materials, and then they’d put our names on the certified project. Richard Schinkel

The MSU extension offers an extensive number of workshops for local schools, and meetings run from the beginning of the growing season through the winter season. We organize one or two meetings per week, in some format or another. During the winter months, we conduct two to four day-intensive workshops for local schools. At times, we participate in community functions at state conferences. We also benefit from interaction with other states, but mainly on growers in this area. In December, we sponsor the Agricultural and Fruit and Marketing Expos, basically a continuation of the Michigan Horticultural Society meetings founded several decades ago.

More recently, Michigan State University and the Michigan Horticultural Society have joined forces. Faculty members or extension agents organize educational sessions at the annual meeting, most based on what growers perceive as their needs and what the agents or specialists can come up with to address those issues. Large meetings consist of several themes usually going on at the same time, most depending on the topics: Cherries, apples, farm marketing, etc.

In their heyday, Haven peaches had a great impact on the growing community and the peach-growing industry. When Stanley Johnston developed the Haven varieties, it lengthened the growing season, but that type of work was done about forty years ago, and that’s an extremely long time for varieties. It is truly amazing that we still grow some of the Haven varieties at all. Genetic material is still used in our operations today. Cresthaven serves as one example of this process because of its nice fruit and eating characteristics but, because of color issues, it offers no real market value. In our work here, past experiments play a major role in the development of future projects.

Jim Hancock of Michigan State University handles our blueberry breeding program, continuing on earlier work completed by Stanley Johnston. Johnston developed modern cultivating techniques for several blueberry varieties. Over the past fifteen years, Hancock has worked to extend the season and produce a better quality fruit. He experiments with germplasms from South America , notably from Chile , to produce a more weather-resistant type.

A few growers realized the benefits of the South Haven station and sought experimental material for their farms. Over time, we developed breeding programs that growers adopted, many of which exist today. Both the South Haven and MSU stations thrive in the midst of the grower communities. We cannot leave the station without crossing over into a fruit operation. This relationship works both ways, and I feel engaged with the grower community at all times.

Several means of communication allow us to remain in touch with new growers. We offer workshops that educate the community on the complexities of fruit farming. Growers in our immediate community [an eleven county region in the southwest], attend the same meetings. We maintain one-on-one type of relationships, either in the hallway or in a lecture hall. Annual reports keep farmers informed of current affairs, Web sites also net results, as does the popular media, local newspapers, or grower magazines. I conduct two radio broadcasts per week and pass on pertinent results based on the time of year or the ones I think benefit growers most. William Shane
In order to reduce labor, we used to hire one hundred-two hundred people to pick fruit on the farm, and that required labor housing and a lot of management. When I bought the farm from my father, in 1962, I believe it was, one of the first things I did was try to reduce the cost of labor because cherries at that time were selling for about only three or four cents a pound. So there was a fellow, a neighbor, who was making mechanical harvesting equipment. One of our neighbors had tried one of these machines and each time they made it, it became obsolete, and they’d improve it. Finally, I got one that I thought would work, but it had never been used on a commercial basis. I was a young fellow and very determined. We were determined that we were going to sell our cherries with machine harvest or get out of the business. We sold our cabins and all our hand equipment. We had a long time, several years, before it ever was sold and accepted by the industry, but we did come through and now ninety-seven-ninety-five percent of all the cherries in the state are picked with this machine.

When my father started up here, he had ambitions of raising peaches and cherries. Actually, cherries was the first crop he harvested. Cherries and peaches and apples, those were the three crops that we grew. Occasionally, he’d try something different like plums or pears or something, but he didn’t stay with it. Peaches were his first love. He worked closely together in testing out different varieties that were interesting or indexed to be possible future varieties to grow commercially for Michigan State University . They’d have individual growers who would grow varieties on the farm and then judge the fruit before it was released as a variety worthy of production.

Halehaven, Kalhaven, Richhaven, Jayhaven, Gullhaven, and Pearhaven were all Haven peach varieties that were originally grown and developed at Michigan State research farm, in South Haven, by Stanley Johnston. My father was a student in one of his classes early on, 1933, or maybe earlier than that. Stanley Johnston had confidence in my dad, and dad liked his style, so they got together and began a lifetime of working together.

Stanley Johnston said it was important to know the weather, and that’s why my dad offered to take care of the cooperative weather station, and I took it over when my dad died. It’s been here since 1924 on the farm. It’s kept daily recordings ever since. It’s one of the longest in the state. Stanley Johnston was also instrumental in working with blueberries and the blueberry industry. Most blueberries are called huckleberries because they grow in swamps, in low lands; but they found this plant, the highland blueberry, that would do well as long as there was water nearby or close to the surface, and it would produce bigger berries. The blueberry industry developed. Then, he developed the apricot as well. He took some of the seedlings and some that were named, made crosses, and developed the apricot too. Some of the apricot trees that he had were right near our house on the highest hill in the country. In fact, we have most of those apricot varieties that Stanley Johnston introduced. It was Stanley Johnston [who] told me when I took over the farm that on the highest ridge, the poorest land, I should plant a bunch of apricots. We still have some of the original trees. Herb Teichman

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WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY / FT. MIAMI HERITAGE SOCIETY OF MICHIGAN