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Apple season is underway on a lot of Old Mission Peninsula farms, and if it’s not, it will be shortly.
Growing up on an OMP farm, apple season was always a welcome time of the year. The weather was cooler, there wasn’t the sense of urgency we had with cherry season, and there was something about pulling the apple-picking bags and crates out of the barn that still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
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Below is a photo of my mom and dad, Walter and Mary Johnson, picking apples in September of 1946 (70 years ago this month!). They were married in Arlington, Virginia in August of 1946, and Mom was a city girl who grew up in a big southern family. She met Dad at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and moved to Old Mission Peninsula to be a farm wife.
So, this photo was one month after they were married and she moved north. I can just imagine her thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” and “I might have to re-think wearing skirts in the orchard.”
By the way, the photo of apples at the top is, I believe, the exact orchard where my mom and dad are picking in 1946. We call it “The 40,” because it’s 40 acres (corner of Peninsula Drive and Kroupa Road, across from PFE). My grandparents, Stella and Lester Johnson, built a house there when Mom and Dad took over the “old house” across from the barn on the home farm just north of Mapleton. (That house burned down in 1964.)
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[…] was the R.C. Warren Cherry Processing Plant, which I believe was the brine operation part of Peninsula Fruit Exchange (PFE), on the corner of Peninsula Drive and Kroupa Road. PFE was purchased by Seneca Foods in […]