Garber Spitzer

Description

The Last Garber Harvest Reardan, Washington (Click on Map to enlarge) Click each picture to see an 800x600 enlargement. Download for personal use only. Pictures & story are the property of Steve & Peggy Garber. Contact Peggy@Garbers.com for original quality pictures. On Saturday, August 17, 2002, my cousin Jay Garber was harvesting wheat on what we have always called the Carsten Place, 8 miles north of Reardan on the Oehlschlaeger Road. Reardan is 22 miles west of Spokane, the first farm community out of Spokane when heading toward Grand Coulee Dam on US Highway 2. This year is Jay's last harvest before he retires. This harvest will represent the end of 122 years that Garbers have farmed in Reardan. I wanted to be present for at least a part of this signal event. (Garber Farms Homesteaded 1880 Logo) (Garber Farms 2002 Logo) In the 1950s, my dad Glen Garber and my uncle Harry Garber bought the Carsten Place indirectly from Albert Carstens. Albert and his wife Lucille were an old Reardan family and life long friends with and neighbors of my grandparents, Charlie and Iva Garber. I remember Albert quite clearly from my childhood as a kindly old man who was, I suspose not unsurprisingly, rather like my Grandpa Charlie. I know Albert thought highly of my dad. (Carsten Place, June 2002) I myself am a fifth generation Garber in Reardan. My great grandfather Gottlieb came north to Reardan from California in 1880. His mother and brothers followed in 1883. There were a number of Garbers in Reardan in the late 1800s, but after about 1912, only my grandfather Charlie and a girl cousin or two were left. So the Garber farmers in our line were Gottlieb, Charlie, Glen and Harry, and finally Jay. When I was born, we lived in what we called the Moon place, a little house 3 miles north of Reardan, built in the 1880s about 1/4 mile south of the main Garber homestead where my grandparents lived. When I was still a toddler, we moved to a rather larger two story house 5 miles further north on our acreage at the Carsten Place. Neither of these houses, the Moon house nor the Carsten house, exists today. But the enormous ancient pine tree and the old windmill do remain to this day, side by side just a few feet from where the Moon house stood. They have been landmarks the whole family has known for decades. (Moon House, 1940s) (Carsten House, 1950) We lived on the Carsten Place until 1954 when I was 10 years old. Only the garage remains there now. (The white shed in the Carsten Place picture above.) In 1954, my folks built a new house for $10,000 cash about 100 feet from the old Moon house where Harvey and Carolyn Bergeron were then living. This new home, in the midst of the majority of the Garber farmland, was much closer to town and not nearly so isolated as the Carsten Place. My folks lived there for the rest of Dad's life. (Glen & Florence Garber House, 1954 - 2000) Dad and Harry farmed the home place, the Carsten place, and sometimes other land as "Garber Brothers" after Charlie retired in the late 1940s. Charlie died in 1960, but Grandma Iva lived a rich and active life until she died in 1989 at the age of 91. Grandma Iva was an important and treasured part of her numerous great grandchildren's and of all our lives. After Grandma Iva died, her children -- Dad, Uncle Harry, Uncle Carl and Auntie Marie -- divided up the Garber land in a way that simplified ownership. As a result of that division, Dad and Mom wound up as sole owners of the approximately 475 acres of the Carsten Place. Although the Carsten Place wasn't part of the 1880 Garber homestead, Garbers have farmed it for over 50 years and owned it for over 40. After Harry retired in 1978, Jay and Dad farmed together for 3 years and "Garber Brothers" became "Garber Farms." Jay took over by himself in 1981 when Dad retired. There are no Garbers around today who want to farm. After this year "Garber Farms" will no longer exist as a family operated farm. On this particular Saturday afternoon, I had been riding the combine with Jay on the Carsten Place for most of an hour, enjoying the camaraderie of us having both grown up working on the farm, inhaling the old familiar smell of freshly cut wheat and heavy machinery. Suddenly, about 3:30, we noticed smoke rising from a fire a couple of miles southwest across the canyon in what we knew to be our neighbor Bergeron's field. We later learned that a hot oil line had broken on one of the Bergeron combines, igniting the tinder dry ripe wheat. It was a hot and windy Saturday. A fast moving front was pushing out of the Columbia Basin headed through Lincoln County on its way to the distant Rockies. The temperature was a little over 80

Products & services

Similar companies nearby