Day six in the archives: “Arbutus,” the Bailey farm — with surprises
Today was a deep dive into Box 4 — a box that I had never requested before over the several visits I have made to Cornell’s Rare and Manuscript Collection over the years. I’m not yet done with the materials related to the Commission on Country-Life, but at this stage in the summer I am still trying to get the lay of the land (if I can be permitted an agrarian metaphor) and it seemed time to transition from Bailey’s farmer outreach on the Commission to his own work, to the extent that he could claim it, as a farmer.
My friends from South Haven and the Bailey Museum know well that Bailey grew up on a working farm on the frontier in Michigan. One of my favorite stories connected to that homestead has to do with Bailey’s birth mother, who died of diphtheria when he was four. At his 90th birthday, he would recall his earliest memory was standing at the bedside of his mother, watching her “pass into the silence.” After that day, his father gave him the task of tending the small garden of pinks (Dianthus) in front of the house, and he claimed that, starting from that young age, every single year he would keep some sort of garden in which to grow things, whether at home in Ithaca or abroad in China. His mother gave him, in a way, that gift of love for the soil and plants.
What I wanted to know was to what extent he continued to farm. This is not only the “Father of Modern Horticulture,” but also the founder of the New Agrarianism, right? Is an ag college deanship enough? Shouldn’t one also be a farmer?
I also knew about Bailiwick, what I had heard referred to as the Bailey family’s “summer home” up on the west shore of Cayuga Lake — just across the lake and north of the cottage where I’m spending the summer on the east shore. I’ve visited it before with a retired Cornell professor — the handsome field stone building (seen above) still stands, although the property was long since donated, by Bailey, as land for a Girl Scouts camp that still exists today. I knew that the property had, when the Ithaca Baileys owned it, a number of apple orchards, but I didn’t know more than that. Bailey had grown up working on his father’s apple orchard, which I also knew from my time at the museum; another professor at Cornell (although not an Ag professor) on a former visit, when I brought this up, responded by saying, “yeah, but… orchardists aren’t really farmers.” (Dear orchardists of the world: I don’t espouse this opinion — more below.)
Well, Box 4 had the Bailiwick records, so I thought it ought to set the matter straight. But, first, I had some surprises. I peeked into the scrapbook belonging to Bailey’s wife, Annette — in addition to a flattering portrait of her husband and a snatch of love poetry he had written her, there was a clipping from the South Haven paper, back home, in appreciation of a major donation of Bailey’s published books to the South Haven Memorial Library, written by a childhood friend of Bailey’s and including some lovely characterizations of old “Libby,” as his hometown friends ever knew him. I had discovered piles of some of those same books, probably 75 years later, sitting in the break room of the same library, many with Bailey’s signature in them, and after a few discussions with the wonderful library staff there the books had been donated to the museum for proud display. As I moved further into Box 4 I also leafed through a full journal and a half packed with detailed daily narrative of Bailey’s first trip as a young professor to Europe, the semester before he began his teaching engagement at Cornell in 1888, to observe the local agriculture. It turns out that on that trip he also had a bad case of the boils, homesickness, and a love of the Irish countryside. But the journals were particularly special for being written in Bailey’s most writerly voice— they read like a book, and I have to imagine Bailey considered working them up into one. I can’t wait to devote more time to reading them… another day.
The most exciting accidental discovery took me back to South Haven again. In a folder labeled only something vague like “Plant Collecting Journal, 1877” I first found this, undated, written in a light, young hand: “Preamble: We, the undersigned young men of South Haven, in order to secure for ourselves and others, social, mental, and moral improvement, and to promote the general welfare of the young men of South Haven, do hereby adopt the following Constitution and By-laws.” Article 1 simply states, “This society shall be called the Young Men’s Literary Union.” I love imagining this “Union” of young adults, all under 20 presumably (since Bailey left for college at 19), starting something grand and literary in their small village. The club’s by-laws continue for several paragraphs, and then cuts off, and right where we should get Section 3 of Article 2, we suddenly find a serious young botanist: “№2. Apr. 16. Bloodroot. Papaveraceae — Sanguinaria canadensis,” an entry evidently corresponding to a pressed plant somewhere. And there is Bailey, collecting plants in and around South Haven for most of the remainder of the journal with a certain sudden urgency in the summer of 1877, until a section break is heralded by the underlined word “Lansing,” and Bailey has arrived at college. The most impressive thing to me was reading the locations of the plants he found — “From E. orchard,” “From Chatfield’s peach orchard,” “From Burton’s ravine,” “From Mrs. Hale’s garden,” “From Dyckman’s field” — ghosts from my hometown’s deep past litter the factual budget of observations, more references to hometown acquaintances than I have ever seen in any piece of Bailey’s writing. The rough contours of a town where I once romped in the ravines, but all as it was over a century before my time, began to show itself to my imagination. And all this was nothing like what I came to this box to find.
Finally, the Bailiwick materials. But I open the first item — a tall, skinny hardcover, maybe just five inches wide by eleven tall, with “Planting Journal” written on the cover — and I do not see any mention of the familiar, delightfully witty property name. Instead, in big letters, “Sunshine Farm.” My eyes widened at seeing the name of an early farm project run by our own modern prophet of agriculture and plant breeding, Wes Jackson. Wes is a Bailey fan; could he have known that Bailey had a farm of the same name? In Bailey’s hand, the journal lists plantings of all kinds of fruit — apples of many varieties, but also peaches, pears, the occasional plum or apricot, strawberries, and, in 1901, a full vineyard. And I quickly learn that the Sunshine Farm name didn’t last very long; immediately after the first page, it disappears, but is replaced by the name “Arbutus” — a genus of berry-bearing plant, native to North America, also called madrones or strawberry trees (see picture).
And then I open the real prize of the day, which is a large, detailed journal, spanning 1894 to 1903, that tells the whole history during that time of Bailey’s time on his farm on the lake. Again, it’s a rare Bailey journal in that it includes details. And, based on those details, it would be hard to describe it as “not a real farm” — while Bailey certainly hired help to keep it going (he was a full professor and director of the New York State Experiment Station at the time, after all), it included six fruit orchards plus all kinds of farm crops, including potatoes, buckwheat, beans, squash, turnips, and even chickens and hogs. And Bailey seems to have spent an incredible amount of time there at Arbutus (as it continued to be called at least through 1903, where the journal ends), at least in the early years, and even a significant amount of time during school months as he worked to get things off the ground (or into it — ha!). He describes taking day trips with Sara or Ethel, his daughters, as well as with Annette. A farmhand named Horner turns out to be “a bad egg,” skips two days of work to go to the fair, and most of the chickens go missing the day after he stops working; he was the subject of a lawsuit by the year’s end. On September 16, 1895, Bailey writes in the margin, “House begun!” and it seems to be largely finished, with a roof and porch, by October 22. A pier is built into Cayuga Lake, and he sails one day and notes that he lands on his own pier for the first time on September 3. He seems to have been incredibly refreshed to finally have a productive piece of ground in the country to escape city life. He often notes the progress he makes pruning, grafting, and otherwise tending to the trees, doing the things he loved to do as a boy on his father’s farm.
And I sort of like the name Arbutus; whereas “Bailiwick,” pun aside, implies a certain kind of ownership or control, Arbutus is a statement of wild nativity — on April 18, 1896, he notes, “Hepaticas and arbutus are out,” so the native “cherry trees” did indeed live on the hills of the Bailey farm. In other words, he named the farm after the landscape.
In early April of ’95, before the house had been begun and as the first orchards are still being laid out and planned, he makes a brief trip to check on the progress his hired hand is making, and he writes:
The land looked warm and pleasant in the bright sun. The white-throated sparrow was calling from the thickets, flocks of ducks and gulls were upon the blue waters of the lake, and the whole countryside was shimmering and peaceful. I ought to see more of Arbutus!
For some context, see my intro post. To get in touch, use my website.
The archive archive: Intro | Days 1–3 | Day 4 | Day 5
Insights all gleaned from Liberty Hyde Bailey Papers, #21/2/3342, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
