Utah Valley Orchards

Interviewee: Harley Gillman (HG), 611 East 1600 North, Orem, Utah 84097 Interviewer: Megan McRae (MM) Interview location: 611 East 1600 North, Orem, Utah 84097 Date: November 5, 1999 Note: Edited for clarity

Overview 1. Background: Uncle Will Gillman owned 105 acres where Novell is now. Will’s sons ran the farm, Clayton and Dean. 1. Harley purchases land for orchards 1. Spraying 1. Apples 1. Harvest laborers: Mexicans, Japanese, POWs 1. Leases land to Vern Stratton from 1400 North and “up the street” (address?) 1. Produce grown 1. Distribution 1. Mexican laborers 1. Teenage laborers 1. Geneva Steel workers 1. Farm labor, wife worked on farm 1. Uncle Will/sons ran farm 1. Memories of accidents and injuries on farm 1. Details of picking apples 1. Farm labor/farm laborers 1. Supplemental jobs Harley worked, mostly Geneva Steel 1. Farm was a pretty good money maker 1. Frost problems 1. Church wards and stakes change with growth 1. Cleaning the canal 1. Rocks 1. Canals and swimming “the quality of life was just good back in those days” 1. Urban development, focus on 70s 1. People are struggling: David Kirk’s orchard, “prettiest orchards you’ve ever seen” and Vern Stratton. 1. Profitable to sell land 1. Farmers have moved south, as much fruit grown in valley as ever, mentions Allreds 1. Managed Church Welfare Farm MM: Your name is Harley Gillman? Is Harley with two ‘L’s?

HG: No, just one. Like the motorcycle. I had one when I was a boy. We didn’t own one, but a friend of mine, his brother went in the service and left us a 1934 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, we’d burn up the town.

MM: When were you born?

HG: 1927.

MM: When did your work begin with the orchards?

HG: My work began when I was old enough to even remember. My Uncle Will owned all of the property where the WordPerfect complex is now; he lived in that old house right next door. As a boy I worked on his farm all the time. My dad had a small farm, but the big orchard I worked on was the 105 acres that was owned by my uncle. His boys are all still alive, Clayton Gillman and Dean Gillman. They were big farmers; probably the biggest fruit growers in the valley.

MM: At one point did you own an orchard?

HG: After my father passed away, I bought the family farm from my mother. It was only about 11 acres at the time, but then I bought more ground and expanded it to about 26, 27 acres.

MM: The orchard was the ground around here?

HG: Yes.

MM: Your father owned it until what year?

HG: My father owned five acres; his father bought his sons five acres when they got married. My father gave me this five acres here. After my Uncle Will and his wife passed away, I bought their five acres off of them, and that gave me five more acres here. Later on I bought a piece of ground up the road, and that’s how we started. I don’t know how my Uncle Will acquired his farm. But he must have purchased it as a young man, because that was one of the biggest orchards in Orem. Later WordPerfect bought his property from his sons and put in the WordPerfect Complex.

My first job was probably driving a team of horses on a spray wagon to spray the trees. I would sit on a sprayer with a motor on it that would generate the pressure to pump the water on to the trees. My two cousins, Clayton and Dean Gillman, would spray the trees and I would drive the team of horses when I was little.

The sprayer motor had a thing on it that you would suck the water out of the canal. It had a screen on the end though, so that it would not get any materials in it that would plug up the nozzles of the sprayer. We’d suck water out of the canal until the sprayer was full, and then we would add the spray material, which was arsenic or lead, and then we’d spray the trees to keep the worms down. But I believe the worms thrived on that arsenic and lead. As time went by they

Gillman, Harley 2 came out with chemicals that were much more effective than arsenic and lead. But, that’s what we did for years. Then, part of the farm was sugar beets, and part of it was tomatoes and hay fields. We’d haul hay and then sugar beets, and did all kinds of things like that.

MM: Did you grow any fruit?

HG: Oh yes, most of it was apples—Jonathan and Red Delicious apples. During the war we used Mexicans and Japanese who were displaced. There was a prisoner of war camp down there, I remember the prisoners being there and helping us, picking apples for us. I also remember the Japanese people coming there and picking apples.

MM: Do you remember any German prisoners of war?

HG: Yes, I remember German prisoners of war. The prisoners of war camp was just down on 800 east off of 800 North.

MM: Are these orchards still open and operating, or have you sold the land?

HG: The land has been sold to WordPerfect, and I took up part of the orchard that I owned over at the back of the bank. At about 1400 North and State there is still an orchard there that I lease to Vern Stratton. I’ve also leased him an orchard up the street. The only thing I farm now is this piece out here south of my house, and it’s sweet corn. The last three years it’s been sweet corn.

MM: So, did you sell the rest of your land?

HG: Yes. It went into sub-divisions. It’s homes.

MM: You said that the crops you produced were apples, sugar beets, and you also grew hay?

HG: Hay, and grain, sweet peas, they grew sweet peas on Uncle Will’s farm and we had to harvest them night and day. We’d pick them in the day-time, haul them down to the pea room, and then we would have to stack the peas as they went through combine, or the pea viner. then the vines would have to be stacked as the vines came off the other end.

MM: Where did you sell these crops?

HG: The canary bought the tomatoes, the Pleasant Grove canning company. We just put a historical marker on the canary site out there in Orem. It’s been torn down now, there’s apartments or something there. We put a historical marker there. I’m on the Orem Historical Preservation Committee.

MM: Did you hire any employees other than those in your family to work your orchards? And how many were permanent employees?

HG: I have had one Mexican fellow that has lived with us for 30 years. He went home to Mexico about two weeks ago. He showed back up here the other day. I can’t believe he’s back. He

Gillman, Harley 3 usually spends the winter there and comes back in February or March. But he came back the other day. I think that he has become a legal alien now, and he can get unemployment and Social Security. I think he is going to become a permanent resident now.

MM: He was a migrant worker who would come up in the summers?

HG: Yes, he started out as a migrant worker. But then they changed the law and legalized those who had been here so many years, I think they called them SAW workers, Strategic Agricultural Workers. So he’s an American citizen I guess. For all intents and purposes now, he gets all the benefits at least of an American citizen. We had to have more pickers when we picked the cherries and the apples.

MM: Who would you hire?

HG: It was usually Mexicans.

MM: They were migrant workers?

HG: Yes.

MM: Where did you house them?

HG: At first there were several labor camps. One of them was up on eighth north up at Val Crandall’s. Tom Reese, Howard Ferguson, and Bob Wright, down the street, had a place where they lived. That’s where my men would live, down there, until I built a place for them. He has lived there ever since. He has lived here with us for years, in an apartment that we have out back.

MM: In what month would they come, normally?

HG: February or March.

MM: And when would they leave?

HG: November.

MM: So they spent most of their year here?

HG: Oh yes, they spent most of their year here.

MM: Did you have any permanent, non-Mexican employees?

HG: I never did. I’d hire kids, and usually the kids that wanted to pick cherries were welcome to do so. If they’d pick a box a day we were lucky.

MM: The kids you hired weren’t very good workers?

Gillman, Harley 4 HG: Kids don’t have the stick-to-it-ness. When I started picking fruit for Jim Ferguson when I was fourteen years old, that was the only way I was going to get a new bicycle. I remember working the whole darn cherry season to make $18 to buy that bicycle with.

MM: How old were you when you started driving the spray wagon teams?

HG: I must have been 10 or 12.

MM: What other work have you done in the orchards? I am sure everything, but maybe you could describe a few of your activities.

HG: We did everything. When my wife and I first planted our orchards, she would drive the tractor, and I would hold the hose and spray. We did it all. When we were farming the heaviest, I was working for US Steel. So it was hard for me then. I was working lots of twelve-hour days. She would have to take the water, she would have to mark off the trees, just everything. I remember one night coming home and walking up the field to see what she was doing. She was up there, marking off these young apple trees. As she went by one tree it just toppled over. I threw my hat on the ground, and thought, “What in the world are you doing running over that tree!” There’s a tree and then there is a root stalk, and when the trees are grafted to a root stalk you would get different kinds of root stalks. The graft was giving nourishment to that tree, but the graft hadn’t bonded well. She hardly even bumped it. The tire had just hit some limbs and the tree fell over because it just didn’t have a good graft. But she did everything, she helped with the spray, she dished, marked off the trees for the pruners. She had to do it.

MM: Was this a normal situation with the husband and the wife working a lot in the fields?

HG: I don’t ever remember my Aunt Stell working. She might have when she was younger, but Uncle Will worked up at the state capital and his boys took care of the farm. I was born in 1927, so I would have been around ten. Uncle Will was working in Salt Lake when I was helping him on the farm, and I got a dollar a day, I think. But then the war came along, and Uncle Will sold the farm to the boys. They ran the farm all during the war. One of them went in the service. Clayton went for a short while, but then he got out to help Dean take care of the big farm.

MM: What are some of your fondest memories about working in the orchards?

HG: The horse ran away with my cousin, Norman, and I one day. A load of hay was tipped in the canal. We had been sent up to clean the Alta ditch. (The Alta ditch is probably Orem’s best source of water right now. Orem City owns all of that. There is a stream that came down from the mountains, above Canyon Glen, around the hill and down.) Norman was holding the lunch bucket, and I was holding the shovels sitting on back of the horse. He was on front and I was on back. He rattled the lunch bucket. He had a bowl that had peaches and a spoon in it. It rattled, and that spooked the horse. The horse took off. So, he got his hand through the handle of the lunch bucket, holding onto the reigns of the horse. The horse was just going faster and faster, he was out of control down the fence line. He got so close to the fence post that it hit Norman’s leg. When the post hit his leg, it knocked it around and he fell off the horse. When he went off, he

Gillman, Harley 5 took me off with him! We landed in the rocks along the side of the fence line. He was quite hurt, and I had to go get help. The horse ran on home into the yard.

I remember the day the horse ran away with Norman on the rake. All over the field, finally broke loose of the rake, Norman fell off the back. A load of hay tipped over. Those are the things you remember the most, are the accidents and the injuries.

I remember jumping off the sorting table one day. You used to sort apples on a table that had a little incline. Somebody would put a box of apples on top of this table, they’d roll down, and there was women standing on each side, and they would pick out all the bad ones. At the bottom was a small chute, you would fill the box or the basket, put a lid on it, and set it aside. I don’t know what I was doing on the sorting table, standing up there, just playing I guess. I jumped off and broke my leg.

I do remember the long days on your knees when they were sore from the beets or something. But the things you remember are the more exciting things. I remember getting kicked by the horse, right in the belly.

MM: What was the most difficult part of working in an orchard?

HG: Picking the fruit, I think. The picking bags made your shoulders sore. Some men, like Ed Akins, who lived out in the LDS Church’s ward, he was a janitor in a school or something. He could come and in a day and he could pick over 100 bushels of apples. He was a great picker. He could pick a lot of apples. Lots of these Mexican fellows that came later on, they could pick a lot of apples. They could pick over 100 bushels easy. They were amazing. When I was young, you had to do the work, the hard work. But when you got older, and owned the farm, then you hired somebody to do that. So it’s a lot easier.

MM: So what age were you when you stopped doing a lot of the harder work?

HG: My dad died in 1948, I was 21 years old. I couldn’t afford to hire anybody. So we had to do it all ourselves: pick the cucumbers, pick the raspberries, and all the things we grew. We grew lots of pumpkins and we had to pick them and the sweet corn. We had to do that until about 1960. Then we started with the migrant workers. We planted young trees, when we were young, and when they got into production then we had to start hiring people.

MM: You also were working for US Steel. Have you ever just worked on your orchards? Or did you always supplement your income?

HG: Always had to supplement the income.

MM: What were some of the jobs you chose to do?

HG: Mostly at US Steel—I worked there 38 years.

MM: Were the orchards a hobby for you? Why did you decide to do it?

Gillman, Harley 6 HG: Just additional money. The orchard got to be pretty good money maker. We made pretty good money on sour cherries for years; we made good money on apples for years. We probably grew more pumpkins than anybody in Utah County, maybe the state. We would grow lots of pumpkins and supply all the stores from Salt Lake to Nephi with pumpkins piled out in front. All the month of October we would just hire men, and kids, lots of kids worked with me then, because they loved to haul pumpkins. It only takes you a few minutes if you were in a good field to load the truck, and then you’d have a drive to Salt Lake to unload it, and then you’d have a drive back. They liked to do that. That’s what we did. I would take my vacations in the month of October to harvest the apples and pumpkins. Now that I think about it I worked too dang hard!

MM: The greatest harvest time was in October?

HG: Yes that was the hardest time with the most stress. Yes, there are storms. Frost is a stressful time. Hail storms could wipe you out.

MM: Were there any particularly bad years at all?

HG: Yes there was. In the early days there were lots of years, but I don’t think we’ve had a killing frost. This was a bad year for peaches, and some of the apples, red delicious apples. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a total freeze out. Back in the early days when we were farming, boy, you had total freeze outs. People were installing smudge pots, and even propane heaters out in the orchards, even buying wind mills, everything. I was of the opinion though, that they were not wise to do that. I never did buy the heating stuff they put in. If they had apples or cherries, I had cherries. So I came to the belief that they were not saving much by doing that. I think it was the exception, rather than the rule that those heating devices really saved any crops in the cold springs.

MM: Spring is what you worried about?

HG: Yes, spring is when you watched the temperatures at night, and worried about whether you would get froze out by morning or not.

MM: What was it like living in this area when it was mostly orchards? How far was it to the nearest home?

HG: We had a close neighbor that old house right there. But other than that on this street there were only a few people. Let me give you an example. In 1963 I was bishop of the ward, and that ward went from 800 North, west of the highway to Utah Lake, and from 12th North to the mountains and then to 20th North in Orem. I think I was released as a Bishop in 1969. So thirty years ago, the same area that I was bishop of is now five Stakes! It’s Timpview Stake, Aspen Stake, Heather Ridge Stake, Northridge Stake, and Windsor Stake. You can see the change that took place. But the quality of life was good. When I was 16 years old, I had the job of cleaning the Murdock Canal. It’s a big canal that runs through the mouth of Provo Canyon to the point of the mountain. My friend Garth Walker and I had the job of cleaning that canal. We had a horse on each side of the canal. We got $6 a day for

Gillman, Harley 7 our time and $2.50 for the horse. We got $8.50 a day it was dang good for young guys. With a horse on each side we would drag a “v” shaped thing made of railroad rails, steel. We’d drag it down the canal in order to break the moss loose so that the water. Moss grows so much in the canal the water wouldn’t flow. We would clean that out. If that thing broke down, if we broke the chain or something came loose and we had to get down in the water, we had no hesitancy…

[Interruption]

Unknown female voice: And so the biggest deal was when he planted the orchards it was just like obsessive-compulsive disorder. Here we would have a hole, and it was just a stick, and we’d have to have them lined up perfectly with each row. Like when they grow it’s going to matter. Then we would get a flatbed trailer and we’d have to pick the rocks up out of the ground. Every year we picked rocks up.

HG: Oh yes, they were growing rocks.

Unknown female voice: They did better than the trees did!

HG: But you have to have the rows straight, you can’t have crooked rows.

Unknown female voice: Obsessive-Compulsive disorder!

HG: Oh, but I was telling you, we didn’t have any hesitancy whatsoever to take all our clothes off and get in the canal, nude, fix the thing, and get back out on the canal bank, put our clothes back on, and get back on the horse. There were no houses, nobody to see you. If you did that now, you’d have the police there, somebody would call them. The quality of life was just good back in those days. We swam in that canal everyday.

For a long time, it wasn’t until the 1940's when Deer Creek Reservoir was built, and that made the water cold. Before that the water ran from the high Uintas to here, and by the time it got here it was warm. That canal was a good swimming place. But then when they put Deer Creek Reservoir in, it got cold because it comes off the bottom of Deer Creek.

MM: When did you start to notice major development?

HG: I started noticing it in the 1960’s. Then in the 1970's it was really booming. By the late 1970’s it was on the way in. That’s when so many people were extending themselves. People were just going under financially, one right after another, because they had extended themselves. Inflation was out of control.Paul Volker, head of the Federal Reserve Board, raised the interest rates to 23%. Some of us were sitting on loans that were no problem when they were 6, 7, 8 percent, but when they got to 23% people were going under like flies! It was horrible. I lost a fortune in the late 1970's and early 1980's; because I had started into the development business. I was buying land and developing it into sub-divisions.

MM: Were you ever able to gain that back when the economy was stable?

Gillman, Harley 8 HG: You make money when the things are good, but I don’t know if you ever make that back or not. You just write it off and go on.

MM: Even though you began the loan at 6%, it was moved up to 27%?

HG: I think I got to where I was paying 23% on a loan in the early 1980's.

MM: I didn’t know they could do that.

HG: Yes, if your loan is based on the amount of percent over prime, if you have a 2% over prime, and the prime rate keeps going up. Paul Volker just kept raising the prime rate. I think it got to 23% in the early 80's. You couldn’t cut it, you just had to take it. Then the banks took back what you put in, and then they found somebody else that had a little money and they would sell it to them for a profit but you were out. There were lots of people that lost their shirts in the early 1980's. Lots of people.

MM: W hat do you see as the specific role of orchards in this town?

HG: I think it’s gone now. I don’t think there are any. Vern Stratton is still hanging on. If you go down the street you’ll see one of the best orchards owned by Jack Kirk at about 800 West and 1600 North. That was one of the prettiest orchards just a few years ago, and now it’s dying and looks bad, and they are cutting the trees down. If you look back in the orchard a ways you will see where they have cut most of the trees down, and the firewood is standing around.

People with orchards are struggling. I don’t care whether it’s in Orem or anywhere. That’s probably the last decent orchard in Orem now. Vern Stratton still has some orchards, but they aren’t very big, and most of the orchards he rents from people like Dr. Niberg and me. He still has a lot of good farm ground still.

MM: Is it just more profitable to sell your land to developers?

HG: It’s more profitable. Land value has gone up, and that has saved a lot of the farmers. They probably haven’t made any money the last few years growing fruit, but if they are still in the business the land has gone up in value. I don’t know how much the land has gone up in value but I imagine it averages 10% a year. We were paying $30,000 an acre for ground a few years ago, and now you’d be lucky to find it for 60, 70, or 80,000 depending on where it is. But that is what has made the most money for the farmers, is that they have increased the value of the land. I don’t think it’s the crops they’ve grown.

MM: Do you see within ten or twenty years basically all the orchards gone?

HG: In Orem, yes. But there will still be orchards around Santaquin, Payson and that area. That is where all the orchards have moved. We don’t think there are many orchards anymore in Utah County, but I’d imagine if they did a survey there is probably more orchards in Utah County now than there ever was at the peak when Orem and the Provo Bench had a lot of orchards. I’d imagine there is more fruit down that way then there ever was here.

Gillman, Harley 9 Rey Allred is probably the biggest single farmer. There are others who have partnerships, or family orchards. But Rey Allred, just him and his daughters probably have the biggest farm in Utah County. He’s in Payson now, but he was in Provo. His father, I think his name was Bliss Allred, had orchards here. I guess they got run out with growth. Rey is still in business and he knows his stuff. His daughter’s an entomologist. She controls the aphids and coddily moth. She’s a good one.

MM: What are you doing now with your life? Did you retire? Do you spend time with your grandkids?

HG: Yes, I love that the most. When you were coming I took a little grandson home. He is two years old on Saturday. He is the joy of my life, but I do enjoy the grandchildren. I serve on several water boards, I am on four water boards, I am the chairman of the Historical Preservation Committee. I keep busy. I work at the temple.

MM: I had no idea before I took this class that orchards were even in Orem.

HG: There is not many around. The LDS Church Welfare Farm probably owns as much as anybody. For five years I managed this church farm just up the street. Then they sold off 40 acres to the Alpine School District and that is where the Timpanogos High School is now. But they still have 45 acres of orchard just up the street.

MM: What would the church do with the fruit grown there?

HG: It goes into welfare, I think that it’s shipped to Canada, all over. They supply the apples for the needy. They store them, and they process them, and then they hand them out to the people who are in need. They have Red Delicious and Roman Beauties, the Roman Beauties are taken out to the cannery and made into apple sauce. They are given to the poor and needy. I don’t think any of the apples from this farm or the one down by Sharon Stake are put on the open market. I think they’re all put into the welfare system of the LDS Church. Everybody gets the opportunity to work there, all the apples are picked up by volunteer labor. This farm did so well in the five years that I had it, I think we transferred $250,000 to the general fund of the LDS Church. It did well, I don’t know if the farm is owned by somebody different, but the apples that go into welfare have a value on them. So that arm of the Church pays this farm for the apples that it produces. It’s just like taking it out of one pocket and putting it into the other I guess.

Gillman, Harley 10