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(Each year I follow what’s going on with the Old Mission Peninsula farms owned and run by my family – my brother and his wife, Ward and Carol Johnson, my other brother and his wife, Dean and Laura Johnson, and my nephew and his wife, Nic and Mikayla Johnson. Read Nic’s notes about the farms’ integrated pest management here, and read on for this week’s update. -jb)
Cherry season has been a part of my life since the day I was born. Literally, because I was born smack in the middle of cherry season on July 12, 1960. Fortunately, my Mom’s mom — my southern grandmother, “Mammy” — was here at the time, so Dad didn’t have to take too much time off work to take care of me and Mom.
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Everything revolved around cherry season — When would it start? When will it end? What’s the price this year? Will a hail-storm take out the crop? These are all questions that are still relevant today, but the harvest has changed a lot in the last 75 to 100 years.
Back then, Dad managed hundreds of Mexican migrant workers who arrived on the Old Mission Peninsula each summer to pick the crops into cherry lugs, which were then trucked to Gleason & Co. a few miles down the road.
Below are a couple pics of my Dad, Walter Johnson, with a trailer-load of lugs in the barnyard north of Mapleton. These photos were taken in July of 1952.
The first one features his beloved Case tractor — I think this was the DO, but he also had a VAO. He drove that tractor til the day he died, and it often had a treasured spot in the garage of our “new house” built in 1960 in Old Mission. It was such a fun sight to see him tooling through the cooling pad with it decades later, while everyone else was on newer tractors.
In the second photo, it looks like they’re loading the lugs onto his brand new 1952 Chevy stake truck. Everyone, including me, learned how to stand on a stack of lugs without crushing the cherries.
That truck is still on the farm, tucked safely away in a barn and brought out for events like the Old Mission “Walk Around the Block” on July 4th and Log Cabin Days. Here’s Dean and Laura in the truck for the 2022 “Walk Around the Block.”
When we bought our first cherry shaker in the 1970s (I believe it was a Shipley branch shaker, built in Arnold White’s shop where the Seven Hills center is currently located), it was a hard sell for Dad because he felt responsible for the migrants who journeyed north each year for the harvest. Things have changed a lot since those days, but we still have a few migrants who help with farmwork and harvest, some who are here year-round.
This year, cherries started about a week later than usual, so they’ll end a little later than usual, too. But they’ve had a good crop with good prices from the processors. Farmers learn how to be resilient and resourceful year after year, but cherry farming is by no means dead on the Old Mission Peninsula.
Here are a few photos of this year’s cherry season, including photos of the truck from VanderWall Trucking out of St. Charles, Michigan, which hauls the cherries downstate to a processor. Also, both Dean and Ward are calling the new drone sprayer — which I wrote about here — a success. They will likely continue to use it in the future.
Click here to see how the cooling pad works, here to see how the cherry shaker works, and here for all the farm stories.
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Great photos and storyline.
Really enjoyed the story and, especially, the photos. My first job when I moved to TC (Suttons Bay) in 1976 was overnights at LEELANAU FRUIT CO. I was in charge of the cooling tanks among many other jobs. Thanks for jogging my many memories.