It’s a day nobody ever really thought would arrive. The dean of Southwest Michigan fruit growers has died, but his legacy will live on for decades. Herb Teichman died Monday at the age of 88 at the Hanson Hospice Center in Stevensville surrounded by the family that will assure his legacy continues through his beloved Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm just outside of Eau Claire.
He was a man of the earth who brought forth tremendous fruit crops that thrilled tens of thousands of buyers all across the Midwest and well beyond. He established a Heritage Apple Orchard in 1976 to preserve varieties of the past. That orchard has contained more than 250 varieties over the years. His sterling reputation as a man of his word and a gentle giant who knew his trade exceptionally well reverberates through his renowned farm famous for the decades long run of his invention known as the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship.
In fact, when former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm conducted her “Hidden Treasures” Tour of the Great Lakes State she insisted that a “pit stop” be made at Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm so she could take her turn on the championship court, much to Herb’s delight. As Herb was quoted way back in 1974 about the championship, “The contest is a global demonstration that healthy eating, deep breathing and physical exercise can be accomplished simultaneously, in public, with only a minimal loss of dignity.”
The whole Tree-Mendus story begins nearly 100 years ago when an enterprising young man sold some of his carload of fresh apples to a young lady with sparkling eyes. When William and Leone Teichman married two years later, they planted their dreams of growing sweet, juicy fruit atop a high ridge near Eau Claire on 160 acres they named Skyline Orchards.
Because their romance sparked over a basket of Jonathan apples, William’s first planting was 15 acres of Jonathan’s. It was unheard of at that time to plant so much of one variety, yet two rows of those Jonathan apples still exist on the farm today and are offered up on tours of the farm.
Today, Skyline Orchards has evolved to encompass more than 450 acres known as Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm, and is now four generations strong in the Teichman family. William and Leone’s son Herb and his wife Liz bought the farm from his parents in 1969, with the goal to have enough land to operate a recreational “U-Pick” farm. That goal was achieved in 1972 and today their children and grandchildren continue the family tradition of growing the finest apples, cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, pears, and raspberries available.
Herb’s reputation as a showman evolved from the Cherry Pit Spit Championship which has been chronicled by the Guinness Book of World Records since the beginning and continues to draw international crowds. His family says he was a prolific story teller, with many of his stories of the “tall tale” variety thanks to his outstanding sense of humor. He frequently traded stories with tour groups that would visit the farm, and was notorious for his “knee-slappers.”
His reputation as a purveyor of quality fruits and a specialty grower have placed him at the top of the agricultural world for decades. As an innovator, he established the first ever Family Tree Orchard in the 1970s, allowing families to “rent a tree” and pick their own fruit when things were ripe.
He was renowned in the agricultural industry in Michigan, and was given the Michigan Agricultural and Natural Resources Product Pioneer Award in 1995, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Michigan State Horticultural Society a year later in 1996. A perpetual promoter of the industry, he was recognized in 2006 as the Berrien County Farm Bureau Agricultural Promoter of the Year, and an identical award two years later in 2008 by the Michigan Farm Bureau.
His dedication to perfection and attention to detail led to his legendary observations of weather conditions high atop his farm for the National Weather Service. In 2012 he was cited as being the man who knows more about the weather in Michigan’s Great Southwest and its impact or potential impact on the fruit crops than anybody else in the region. At that point he had already spent more than half a century documenting weather conditions and sharing his observations.
That year he was given a Thomas Jefferson Award in Honor of Excellence by the National Weather Service for something he generally dismissed as “just sort of a routine, like milking a cow or whatever.” He added, “Every day you have to be there to do it.” It was an honor his father had also received back in 1967 for his perseverance in the field.
A year later in 2013 Herb was given the Dick Hagemeyer Award for 45 years of service as a volunteer Cooperative Weather Observer from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Association and the National Weather Service. By that time, the Teichman family had provided an 88-year climate record to help future forecasters determine when conditions are ripe for adverse growing seasons and conditions.
In 2006 he was also given the John Campanius Holm Award by the National Weather Service, named after the man who had kept meticulous weather records in what is now Wilmington, Delaware without benefit of instruments back in the mid-1600s.
Weather was obviously important to him, but Herb Teichman learned long ago that “You just have to learn to live with it.” That’s what he told Farm World Magazine in 2010. He told the magazine, “There’s not really anything you can do to minimize the loss,” when mother nature takes her toll.
That was an attitude that earned the undying gratitude and respect of Professor Dale Haywood of Northwood University who wrote about Herb in a Midland Daily News Forum 18 years ago. He started his piece by saying, “It’s so old, it’s brittle. Along with it is one of my prized personal possessions, a letter dated February 24, 1990, sent to me by Herb Teichman. I’m using it and the letter again this fall term, to help me teach Philosophy 110 and Philosophy 401. What is ‘it’? It is a clipping from the December 11, 1989 Midland Daily News. It’s an Associated Press article. The headline reads, ‘Drought relief helped Michigan’s farmers, some more than others.’ Here are the first three paragraphs from the article: Herbert Teichman lost several hundred trees on his 600 acre fruit farm last year as a result of the drought, and would almost certainly have qualified for federal aid. He didn’t apply. Never even thought of it. ‘Farming’s a risky business,’ he said Friday from his farm in Eau Claire. ‘If I were to bet on a horse and he didn’t win, I’d throw the ticket away; I wouldn’t go to the government.'”
“Much later in the article” writes Professor Haywood, “its author describes Mr. Teichman as ‘philosophically opposed to government bailouts.'” Haywood goes on to say how he was thrilled by the article and held Mr. Teichman in high regard, and explains his applause for the farmer’s attitude and acceptance of responsibility, while bemoaning that not enough others ever match it.
That’s the kind of guy that Herb was, although he admitted in his letter to Haywood that, “As you might realize, I am not very popular among growers that are under stress financially nor those ‘farming the government.'”
Knowing full well that he would be at the mercy of nature didn’t make it any easier to weather long cold nights at the wrong time of the season or hot, dry conditions that baked his crops, choking them at the worst possible times, but living on the edge of his seat made him all the more ready to deal with untenable situations, a shrug of the shoulders, a lot of sleepless nights, and the drive to get right back onto the tractor and find the good in whatever was left behind.
Herb served many industry groups and associations over the years from the Michigan State Horticulture Society and the Southwestern Michigan Tourist Council to the West Michigan Tourist Association, Blossomtime, and the National Apple Institute.
Herb served on the Board of Directors of the Berrien Springs/Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce and was given their Business Man of the Year Award in 1994.
A little known fact about Herb was his love of the art of panning for gold. He and Liz would make frequent trips over the years to the San Andreas region of California in search of gold, inevitably returning with, at best, a tiny vial of gold dust decidedly too small to even cover the cost of the trip, but a great adventure nonetheless.
Despite the fact that he came up short while panning for gold, he was always willing to share his personal treasure, a truly generous and sensitive man who would frequently reach out to those in need with gifts of freshly made cider or peaches just picked from his orchards delivered with a comforting hand.
In fact, Tree-Mendus was the first orchard to ever plant and harvest the famous Red Haven peach variety and deliver it to the Benton Harbor Wholesale Fruit Market, a stellar choice that has long been a favorite of peach lovers everywhere.
Thanks to his association with the Blossomtime Festival and hosting of the Blessing of the Blossoms ceremonies over the years, Herb had the chance to rub shoulders with and become great friends with renowned WGN Radio personalities Orion Samuelson and Bob Collins in Chicago, and Collins was a decades long emcee for the International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship.
Those left behind will mourn his loss and keep his legacy moving forward as he would want them to. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Mary Elizabeth “Liz” Teichman, his brother John from Traverse City, two sisters, Judith Teichman of Point Reyes, California, and Emily Foster of Niles, his son and daughter-in-law William & Monica, his daughter Cindy and her husband Glen DeValk, and his daughter Lynne Sage and her husband Grant, along with four grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are being handled by the Bowerman Funeral Home in downtown Eau Claire with visitation slated from 11am until 1pm and the funeral following at 1pm on Saturday, January 19, 2019. Herb would have turned 89 next month, having been born on February 27th, 1930. He served in the U.S. Navy’s Pacific 7th Fleet aboard the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Wasp from 1950 to 1954, where he received the American Spirit Honor Medal and was voted his company’s Honor Man at the Great Lakes Naval Academy. He was present when the former President of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek boarded the U.S.S. Wasp on January 10, 1954.
A little over five years ago author Kath Usitalo shared Herb’s very simple but great applesauce recipe in an edition of the Great Lakes Gazette and quoted him as saying, “There’s nothing like just sitting around the kitchen table with some friends, a selection of apples, a sharp knife, some cheese and maybe some wine.” He added in his own inimitable words, “I always compare the taste of just-picked fruit to a sunset; it’s only there for a fleeting moment and it’s gone. And all you have left are the memories.”
While we had Herb for more than a fleeting moment, most will agree that still wasn’t long enough…but, at least we have some great, great memories of a colorful character that will long be loved by everyone who knew him.
