By Pauline Masson – Last week when we celebrated Earth Day on April 22, on the anniversary of the modern environmental movement that started in 1970, it occurred to me that by the time Earth Day started a handful of super growers in our area had already been cleaning the air by absorbing ozone for 50 years.
Most of the huge farms that we take for granted as providers of food, flowers and places for family visits, came to this section of east central Missouri to escape the air pollution in St. Louis.
Engelhart Farm, one of a cluster of legendary agricultural centers in the Pacific area, started in the final stages of the coal dust pollution of St. Louis.
At the corner of Sarah and Easton in St. Louis a young farmer named Harry Engelhart sold his home grown produce at a curbside stand. But in the winter of 1922 he watched his young bride, who suffered from a pulmonary disorder, struggle with breathing the heavy coal smoke. He told his friends at the corner barbershop that he needed to get his wife out of the city.
One of the men getting a hair cut knew of a farm on Fiddle Creek Road for sale in Franklin County. Harry looked at the recommended farm but it was too remote to transport produce back to his curbside vegetable stand at Sarah and Easton. The family had another farm for sale just west of Pacific. The Missouri Pacific Railroad ran along the edge of this particular farm and had a regular stop at the Avery Dairy located on the State Road that paralleled the railroad tracks just across from the farm. Harry could grow his vegetables and hop the train at the edge of his property for the ride to St. Louis.
He purchased the 50-acre farm, moved his wife there and planted his first crop. He took the train to St. Louis once a week and, for the next 15 years, he continued to sell his produce at his regular Sarah and Easton curbside stand.
Farming might keep you from starving but it was often a meager living. Harry made friends with neighboring farmer, Martin George, who had came to Pacific in 1918 to escape the rocky soil of Vienna, Missouri, looking for arable soil to grow his Delicious and Golden Delicious apples that took first place in the Franklin County Farm Show. Harry planted some peach trees to complement George’s apples, and he planted a vineyard.
Still times were tough. Harry and Martin George, who became fast friends, learned that a man named Lars Jensen needed help on a large farm nearby. Shaw’s Garden in St. Louis had bought a 1,300 acre farm to get their precious orchids out of the St. Louis coal dust. The two young farmers hired on to operate tractors and discs as Lars Jensen cultivated the farm with acres and acres of native plants and woodland.
Another opportunity to earn extra money cropped up when the St. Louis animal feed company Ralston Purina bought a farm in nearby Gray Summit. Harry found work as a carpenter to help build barns, out buildings, homes for workers and a large kitchen and dining hall.
In 1932 progress arrived at the rural area when the US highway department built the interstate highway, Route 66 through the area. The Missouri Pacific was convinced to edge its tracks to the north and the new highway ran along the edge of the Engelhart farm. Harry built a small house beside the road and began to sell his produce from a roadside stand. He installed a gas pump to supply fuel to the growing number of cars that traveled the new Route 66.
By this time Harry Engelhart and Martin George had turned their farms into successful producers of food. They split out two farms they had bought together between their original farms, but they never moved away from the close relationship of neighboring farmers. The Engelhart Farm reached 105 acres. George’s Orchard reached 85 acres.
Up on Thornton Road the Howe family has been farming their farm since 1894. John, the oldest son, planted aces of daffodils that survive to this day, collected trees from around the world, and attracted the attention famous horticulturists and university students with his grafted nut trees.
For more than a hundred years this chain of master growers – Howe Valley Farm, George’s Orchard, Engelhart Farm, Shaw nature Reserve, and Purina Farms – have cemented the Pacific area’s place in Earth Day campaign to save the world by putting more plants in the ground.
At Howe Valley Farm, after taking their wedding vows beside a huge pavilion built over the original farm house, brides can pose for photos with a backdrop of a hillside vineyard, a sea of daffodils in season or herd of range fed beef.
George’s Orchard today at 104 year old is operated as a family farm where future farmers can learn farming techniques.
Though Harry Engelhart can recall the days when everything at Engelhart Farm, which turns 100 this year, was planted by hand, today he has equipment that can plant 1,500 plants an hour. In 2021 he put 700,000 plants in the ground on the 105 acre farm.
Shaw Nature Reserve bought a farm here in 1925 and established an enclave to save Henry Shaw’s collection of orchids at the Missouri Botanical Garden from the coal dust in St. Louis. Today the 2,441 acre park is true ‘reserve’ of Missouri prairies, woodlands, wild flowers and Westlands. Its focus is preservation, recreation and education.
Purina Farms in Gray Summit, established in 1926, now operates a 300-acre pet center and a 1,200 acre animal nutrition research farm, both dedicated to science of healthy food through scientific agricultural methods. To show it cares about the environment, Purina is working to make 100 percent of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. Eighty percent of Purina pet food packaging can already be recycled or reused.
Combined our Earth Day star performers encompass more than 4,000 acres of ozone cleaning plants and trees and are all looking to the future. We’re in good hands.
