The Brown Fruit Farm: 100 Acres in Orchards

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The Brown Fruit Farm: 100 Acres in Orchards: Worthington, Ohio: An Apple a Day...Growing up in an Orchard is text, with genre book, history and memoir. Its dimensions are 11 in. x 8.5 in.. It is 66 pages long.

It was created in June 1997.

Bernard (Brownie) Leon Cellar, 1926-2017 is the Author.

This book, written by Bernard (Brownie) Cellar, details his memories of growing up on the Brown Fruit Farm, which operated north of Worthington for nearly fifty years, from around 1912 to 1958. The farm grew and sold apples and apple products such as juice, candy and apple butter, as well as cherries, plums and honey. As of 1925, the farm encompassed 100 acres planted with 4000 fruit trees and was the largest fruit farm in central Ohio. It was renowned not only for the quality of its produce, but also for its innovative roadside marketing, including signs telling motorists how many miles they were from the farm.

The farm’s original apple orchards were planted around 1901, by Frank Bower, on property once owned by the Pool family. Sally and Joseph Pool came to Sharon Township in 1812, and their family gravestones have been incorporated into a restored cemetery at Highbanks Metro Park. Bower sold the orchards to William C. Brown in 1909, who few years later turned the property over to his son, Frame. Over the next couple of decades, Frame grew the farm with cutting-edge farming and marketing techniques. Frame and his wife, Marie, and daughter, Molly, lived in the old farmhouse on the property that had been built by the Pool family. Frame and Marie Brown both passed away in 1936, when Molly Brown took over ownership of the farm.

In his book, Brownie shares his memories of the farm’s workers, farming methods and of his family. His father, Murrin Cellar, started working on the farm in 1915 and became full time after his high school graduation, eventually becoming farm manager until the farm’s closing. As one of the farm’s year-round staff, Murrin lived on the property with his wife Leona and children Roger, Russell, Brownie and Myrna.

Brownie Cellar served in the Korean War and went on to become an educator. He was a math teacher, coach and administrator at the Worthington High School beginning in 1949 and continued his career as an educator in central Ohio for 50 years.

View table of contents.

The Brown Fruit Farm: 100 Acres in Orchards

Table of contents

Introduction – Prologue – The Brown Fruit Farm – To These I Was Born – “Po” – Mr. Brown and My Fourth Birthday – First Day of School – A Summer Thunderstorm and an Old Horse – Road Building and a Broken Collarbone – Spring: Buds, Blossoms, Tractors and Sprayers – Summer “Showers” under a Water Standpipe – River Swimming and the Free Movies – Pruning Trees and Rabbit Meals – The Apple-Thinning Crew – Autumn – Miss Ruth – The Seventeen-Year-Old Maestro – What’s a “Speed-Sprayer?” – The Fruit Farm as a Stepping Stone – Other Migrant Workers – Po and the Water Tower – My Mother –Country Teen in a City Market – Hay Fields and a Grain Elevator – The Raiders – Tree Stumps and the F.B.I. – Molly – The Brown Fruit Farm - Epilogue -- Appendix

You can find the original at Old Worthington Library.

This file was reformatted digital in the format video/jpeg2000.

The Worthington Memory identification code is wpl0292_001.

This metadata record was human prepared by Worthington Libraries on December 29, 2017. It was last updated January 16, 2018.