Orchards and small fruit

1892 — 2022

An industry the county histories name, the censuses watched disappear: The apple entered the county's commercial record as a named man's work: Howard's 1907 biographies describe George W. Brunson as "one of the first men to become identified with the apple tree industry in the county," and the fruit interest was organized enough by 1892 to form the St. Joseph County Horticultural Society on November 9 of that year, admitted under the state society's statute, its meetings — Howard notes with approval — open to members' wives at full privilege without dues, its exhibitions, in his judgment, succeeding precisely where the county fair failed, by staying close to the fruit. The censuses give the orchard its numbers only at its ending. The 1950 census counted land in bearing and nonbearing orchards, groves, vineyards and planted nut trees on 995 farms, 1,200 acres of it; the 1954 census counted 165 farms and 418 acres — the 1954 table footnotes its own figures as a narrower count than 1950's, so the fall between the two printed numbers is steeper than the fall on the ground, but the direction is the record's own and the endpoint is not in doubt.

Apple trees of all ages numbered 29,232 in 1950 and 8,305 in 1954, of which 6,799 were of bearing age; the harvest had fallen from 32,270 bushels in 1949 to 4,067 in 1954. Peaches show the same arc smaller — 12,988 trees in 1950, 2,262 in 1954, 1,423 bushels picked in 1954 — and pears the same, 2,817 trees to 1,138. Strawberries, the small fruit of the sandy soils, were picked for sale by 63 farms in 1949, 18,186 quarts, and 19 farms in 1954, 7,981 quarts. The 2022 census closes the line at true size: land in orchards on 13 farms, 27 acres in all, and the berry acreage suppressed in the county tables as too small to print without disclosure. The county that organized a horticultural society in 1892 grows its apples now in yards and small plantings below the census's threshold of print — a real industry, ended, whose institutions outlasted it.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — George W. Brunson among the first men identified with the county's apple tree industry (Rupel sketch), and the St. Joseph County Horticultural Society, formed November 9, 1892, its membership rules and exhibitions.
2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1954 Census of Agriculture, Vol. I, Part 4 (Indiana), County Table 9, Part 4 — land in orchards (farms and acres, 1954 and 1950), apple, peach and pear trees of all ages and of bearing age, quantities harvested, and strawberries harvested for sale (farms, acres, quarts), read from the printed table.
3. USDA, NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Vol. 1, Chapter 2 county tables — Table 30, land in orchards: St. Joseph County, 13 farms and 27 acres in 2022 (13 farms, 21 acres in 2017); Table 32, land in berries, acreage withheld as (D).