KALAMAZOO COUNTY, MI
GENEALOGY & LOCAL HISTORY
CELERY CULTIVATION
CELERY FLATS INTERPRETIVE CENTER
| CELERY CULTIVATION MAIN PAGE |
| Celery Flats Interpretive Center |
| George Taylor's Recollection's - the man who started celery cultivation in Kalamazoo. |
| Celery Growers and Shippers in Kalamazoo |
| Celery Image Gallery |
| Celery Soup |
| Dutch in Kalamazoo |
| Portage Bicentennial Park |
CELERY FLATS INTERPRETATIVE CENTER
7335 Garden Lane, Portage, MI
1/4 mile east of South Westnedge Ave.
269 329-4522
|
The Portage Creek Bicentennial Park includes an interpretive center (open seasonally) dedicated to explaining the importance and history of celery farming to region. In addition to the main building, the center has a working celery farm area. (be sure to visit the Portage Creek Bicentennial Park page) The Center features photographs, graphics, artifacts, equipment, and other materials connected with celery farming in Kalamazoo. A guided tour is available for a small fee. |
click on images to enlarge them
Entrance to the Interpretative Center
The Interpretative Center Building
click on images to enlarge them
The lobby, where the tour begins
| The beginning of celery cultivation and Dutch immigration: stalk (Pascal) celery was not grown in Holland, just a celery flavored herb. More important than experience with a particular type of crop grown, the Dutch brought experience with heavy wet soils and labor intensive one crop farming versus multi crop farming generally for home consumption. (Also, see the DUTCH HERITAGE PAGE) |
The Hard Work of Growing Celery
| "It's no genteel, light work or child's play to grow celery." wrote Frank Little, Kalamazoo's first chronicler of the industry in 1886."The drainage and subjugation, cultivation, and gathering the crop almost entirely hand work from the commencement to the close is laborious in the extreme. "Kalamazoo County's many plats of wet muck land proved ideal for celery culture, but to transform the muck into miles of smooth and fertile gardens required extensive preparation. The pioneer celery growers, almost exclusively immigrants from Holland, first faced "a long and violent, or rather patient, wrestling with many and sundry tamarack stumps, above ground and below, willow and alder-brush, or the tough and wiry massasauga grass." |
Dutch Wooden Shoes - useful for working in the muck of the celery fields. |
Wooden shoes for horses too.
| More wooden shoes and one of the patent medicines created from celery in the heyday of celery before WWI. |
click on images to enlarge them
Explaining old equipment
click on images to enlarge them
| The labor intensive nature of celery farming is described in the displays for seeding, transplanting, and blanching. |
Celery Seed
| The cycle of
the celery season began with the seed. Seed, so minute that one
ounce could yield up to 10,000 plants, was started in shallow pans
that were kept indoors in a warm damp environment. By the early
twentieth century when improved technology and now varieties of
celery permitted marketing by June, some grower started seed for
the first crop in early February, traditionally on Ground Hog's
Day.
Most commercial growers also maintained their own greenhouses. Small greenhouses covered with removable sashes and heated by a small wood, coal, or later fuel oil stove were widely used in Kalamazoo County. After evenly distributing the seed in elevated seeds beds within the greenhouses, a layer of burlap was laid down. This was kept well sprinkled. |
click on images to enlarge them
Blanching Celery
| The
type of celery grown in Kalamazoo County required blanching or, as
it was sometimes called, bleaching. The blanching process excluded
sunlight from the celery stalks and produced an effect similar to
what occurs to grass that has been covered with a board for
several days. Blanching "promoted flavor, crispness and
tenderness in edible leaf stalk, by destroying the green coloring
matter and reducing the amount of fibrous tissue present."
|
Other aspects of celery cultivation is explained in the displays for harvesting, marketing, recipes, and the old use of celery for medicinal purposes.
click on images to enlarge them
click on images to enlarge them
Near the Interpretative Center is a working celery farm.
click on images to enlarge them
returning to the Interpretative Center
See the Portage Bicentennial Park for more views of the Park
Return to Kalamazoo Co. Michigan USGenWeb page
