Fishers are now proud owners of two Century Farms

By ANDREA L. CHAFFIN

achaffin@civitasmedia.com

Vir­ginia Fisher, right, reads an excerpt from the book, “Ohio Fam­ily Farm Her­itage,” to her hus­band, Don at their home on the Maple Dell Farm. At right are aer­ial shots of the two farms taken in the 1970s: top, Wal­nut Plains Farm and bot­tom, the Maple Dell Farm where the Fish­ers now reside. (Photo by Andrea L. Chaffin)

It sounds like a lyric from a coun­try song, but accord­ing to Don Fisher’s fam­ily folk­lore, the Clin­ton County farm he owns got its start when a Civil War sol­dier fell in love with the farmer’s daughter.

“The story I heard was that some­one fought a bat­tle or two and won, and they told them to stack their rifles and draw their pay, and he did and went to walk­ing,” Don recalled, his face twist­ing into a grin.

The man, William Har­ri­son Fisher of Vir­ginia, Don’s great-grandfather, made his way up to south­west Ohio, where he worked as a farm­hand in Lib­erty Town­ship. It was there he met Mary Matilda Henry, the Clin­ton County woman who would even­tu­ally come to own the 76 acres he worked on.

“He took a lik­ing to her,” Don, 79, added of his father’s grandfather.

The cou­ple built an eight-room frame home in 1882, raised corn and wheat and made hay. Cat­tle and horses drank from the well near the back barn.

Their son, Edwin Clifton, inher­ited the land in 1890, and he and his wife, Josephine Gilchrist, pur­chased an adjoin­ing 50 acres in 1904. The fam­ily had feeder cat­tle and pigs, mar­ket­ing them in Cincin­nati and Pitts­burgh. Their son, Emer­son, and his wife, Thelma, pur­chased the farm in 1955 and passed it down to their son, Don.

One hun­dred and 23 years later, the same fam­ily owns and oper­ates Wal­nut Plains Farm near Port William, now a grain farm. It was one of two farms owned by Don and his wife, Vir­ginia, that were des­ig­nated Ohio Cen­tury Farms by the Ohio Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture this year, a sta­tus awarded to fam­i­lies who have owned the same farm for at least 100 con­sec­u­tive years.

The depart­ment con­tacted the Fish­ers last year and encour­aged them to apply for the des­ig­na­tion. State offi­cials had dis­cov­ered a 1986 pub­li­ca­tion of the book, “Ohio Fam­ily Farm Her­itage,” which fea­tured arti­cles sub­mit­ted by Don’s mother.

Across the state, 78 farms received the des­ig­na­tion in 2012. For the first time, a farm has been des­ig­nated in each of Ohio’s 88 coun­ties, said David Daniels, direc­tor of the Ohio Depart­ment of Agriculture.

“We con­sider this to be a very impor­tant pro­gram,” said Daniels, a High­land County native whose own farm was also des­ig­nated an Ohio Cen­tury Farm in 2012.

It’s also impor­tant the pub­lic real­izes farms are busi­nesses, he added.

“If you stop and think about what 100 con­sec­u­tive years means to a local econ­omy — that’s huge,” Daniels said. “You can’t find many busi­nesses across the state that have been in oper­a­tion for 100 years.”

Not only do the Fish­ers own one farm that has been in their family’s oper­a­tion for 100 years: they own two — one from each side of Don’s fam­ily. Maple Dell Farm, near New Vienna, was pur­chased by Don’s grand­par­ents on his mother’s side: William Estel Fisher and Clara Bernard in 1908.

Maple Dell — on Fisher Road, of course — is where Don and Vir­ginia call home. The rural area remains wide open and is only dec­o­rated with the occa­sional farm­house. The farm can be reached by dri­ving down the skinny, curvy coun­try roads, which mean­der through seem­ingly end­less corn and soy­bean fields.

Estel had lived there as a boy, and pur­chased the 100 acres from Thomas Bernard, shortly adding 80 addi­tional acres. It was a live­stock and grain farm with horses, Shrop­shire sheep, Short­horn cat­tle and Poland China Hogs. There was also corn, wheat, clover, a fruit orchard, veg­etable gar­den and enough dairy cows to sell cream and butter.

In 1969, it was passed down to the couple’s two daugh­ters, Edythe and Thelma. Edythe and her hus­band Harold Haworth, who also owned a well-known hard­ware store in Wilm­ing­ton, did not have any chil­dren. Thelma and her hus­band, Emer­son, who met as Wilm­ing­ton Col­lege stu­dents in the late 1920s, only had one child who would inherit it all: Don.

Maple Dell, named for the lush Maple trees which once dec­o­rated the front acres meet­ing the road, has changed over the decades. The old, dilap­i­dated white farm­house was torn down to build a new brick one from scratch in the mid 1990s. A large, new barn has taken the place of the last two which burnt down.

But it’s located on the other side of the house.

“We decided we bet­ter not build another one there,” Vir­ginia laughed.

Don, who has lived in Clin­ton County his entire life, still owns a few of the trac­tors he started out with, includ­ing an early 1950s John Deere — the sec­ond he ever purchased.

“I still like to play with them once in awhile,” Don said. He also likes trucks, eas­ily rolling through the list of the ones he owns to an inter­ested listener.

He can count the area fam­i­lies off his fin­gers, too, men­tion­ing oth­ers which will likely soon be qual­i­fied to apply for the cen­tury sta­tus as well. Unlike many farm­ing fam­i­lies which have lost land acreage over the decades, the Fish­ers have increased theirs, now own­ing nine dif­fer­ent farms through­out the county.

Vir­ginia, a self-described city girl orig­i­nally from Cincin­nati, said it’s some­thing you can only find in rural areas.

“Peo­ple like me from the city, I never knew any­body who lived in the same place that long,” she said, adding that she used to jump on a trac­tor, but not a combine.

“I picked her up at a dance hall,” Don inter­jected. “It was the best deci­sion I ever made.” They were mar­ried in the early 1970s.

Their son, Vin­cent, han­dles much of the oper­a­tion now, plant­ing and har­vest­ing about 1,200 acres. Their hope is that the farms will con­tinue to be passed down through the gen­er­a­tions, with the help of their grand­chil­dren and son-in-laws.

In their retire­ment, the cou­ple enjoys spend­ing time with their Jack Rus­sell dog, Tiny.

(Andrea Chaf­fin is a staff writer for the Wilm­ing­ton News Journal.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Feb 24 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.