Page 25 - Leisure Living Magazine: July 2020 Edition

More Than Just Peaches !
By Brad Swan, Catawba Peach Farmer
Every summer, as one of the last remaining peach growers on Catawba island, I take the opportunity to report on the annual crop as well as discuss related thoughts. So for starters, the 2020 crop for local peaches looks to be very good. For the orchards just miles south of here however, things
do not look as
promising. One
very cold night
in late spring
may have totally
destroyed their
peaches, while
the lake gave
us a few more
degrees.
Enjoying the great peach
one of the old-time peach growers. I was told that most of the growers and probably a huge portion of the local workforce also worked in the fishing industry.
By growing peach varieties that ripened near the end of the summer (mostly Elberta) a farmer could make a living in fishing while tending the orchard at night. I have read that in two good years an orchard could pay for all of its land and the house build upon it. I have to believe that there was also a huge barter system built around homemade wine. After all, most of these growers still maintained small vineyards and they were all
proficient at winemaking.
I have always known that commercial fishing
was big here but upon researching it I was amazed to find that in 1913 there were at least eight fish companies lining the Portage River. In that year those eight fish companies reported catches of over 7,000 tons of fish!
So there you have it. Grapes, peaches, and fish all came together to create our great heritage. I hope to see you on August 8th at our Peach and Wine Festival to celebrate this heritage and support the Ottawa County Humane Society.
Scene at Canning Factory, Port Clinton, Ohio
history of A load of Peaches, Port Clinton, Ohio Catawba Island
as I do, I could not
but wonder how those early orchardists survived such a temperamental crop. By the early 1900’s Catawba Island and surrounding areas had turned all available ground into peach growing. From the mid to late 1800’s this area was devoted almost exclusively to vineyards. Those vineyards supported over 70 local wineries as well as others in Cleveland and Detroit. There were three wineries on Catawba Island, 12 on Kelleys Island, 9 on South Bass Island and 47 in Sandusky.
Grape disease was the biggest reason for the switch to peaches and the locals embraced that switch with a passion. By the early 1900’s there were some years with up to 1 million bushels of peaches grown in the area. These crops supported a huge local economy. The supporting industries included packing houses, basket factories, canning factories, steamship lines, train lines and chemical companies. It seems that almost every household must have had a connection to the peach industry. So considering that weather or other factors would sometimes make only one in every three years profitable, let alone the years of entire crop losses, just how did the economy survive? I found the answer while interviewing
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