Bringing back historic orchards and vineyards

During a recent visit, Chris Eckert, allowed us to take a look at his family’s orchard plans from the 1940s, all carefully plotted out on graph paper with each type of apple indicated by a specific shape and color.

One of the objectives we have at the farm — and one I am keenly focused on as the farm’s curator — is bringing back not only the built environment, but the farming history as well.

Charles Teubner, who built the 1847 Greek-revival home that is the centerpiece of the farm and our tours, cultivated thousands of grapevines and fruit trees on the farm’s steep hills. Teubner became one of the most successful grape growers in the Missouri Valley region and his nursery operation was considered the first reliable nursery in the state of Missouri.

Enter George Husmann, who would eventually become known as the “father” of grape growing in Missouri.

Teubner had married Husmann’s sister, Josephine, in 1847. When Martin Husmann, the father of George and Josephine, died in an explosion at the local mill that year, George moved in with the married couple and thus began his immersive two-year apprenticeship with Teubner, an experience in viticulture and the plant nursery business that defined his professional trajectory and the history of winemaking in Missouri, California and Europe as well. That’s not an overstatement. Husmann was one of the key players in helping to solve the phylloxera epidemic that was ravaging European vineyards in the late 1800s, sending millions of cuttings — American root stocks — to European vineyards. To this day, vitis vinifera is typically grafted onto vitis labrusca root stock because of the phylloxera louse.

The work that Husmann did while in Missouri is well-known to only a few — those that are most interested in the history of wine and folks who dig into the history of Hermann. At the farm, we aim to change that and make sure people know the impact Husmann and, more broadly, Missouri, had on the global wine industry. To that end, we are planning to bring orchards and vineyards back to these hills.

Recently, JiaMin and I visited Chris Eckert, the fifth generation of Eckert’s growing apples, peaches and more across the Mississippi River in Illinois. Chris was very generous with his time, talking us through the points to consider when planting an orchard. It’s a lot more complicated than I imagined — I thought we could just plant a few acres of heritage apple trees and wait patiently until they bore fruit. Turns out there’s a lot more to it than that — for example, apple trees can get to be up to 30 feet tall, which makes harvesting the fruit difficult and dangerous. There are a number of modern methods for cultivating trees that are dwarfed and allow for safer fruit harvests. And it also turns out that grafting — which is key to grapevine cultivation — is also extensively used in growing healthy orchards.

I’ll keep updating this blog with details as we explore replanting Hermann Farm’s historic orchards. Luckily, I have copies of Husmann’s nursery catalogue, so I know what apple varieties he offered to his customers. I don’t know if we will ever find exactly which apples were grown on the farm, but we can source heritage varieties that we know Husmann cultivated, an exciting prospect as we look at ways to honor the groundbreaking work of the people who called Hermann Farm home.