Harley Gillman (HG), 611 East 1600 North, Orem, Utah 84097 Interviewer
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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.