John Lewis believed the first turned furrow was one of the highpoints of a farmer’s year, second only to his harvest.

He had come to Newaygo County in 1854 when he was 19 years old and settled in Dayton Township where he built a shanty with a small amount of lumber brought over from Weaver’s Mill. In but a few years he had replaced the shanty with a large, imposing farm house. This man stands as a symbol of a new breed of enterprising pioneers who settled in Newaygo County.

When it seemed the land was not ready to be worked or the farmer needed to supplement his income, he turned to joint a crew working in the forest. Sometimes that party would be peeling hemlock bark. The bark was peeled of in rectangular sheets about four feed square, and his operation was usually confined to Spring and Summer when the bark "slips" easily. Some hemlock timbers were used for railroad ties, but the greatest market for hemlock was for the bark which could be used for the tanning of hides for leather. The tannin-bearing bark was generally two to three inches thick. The value of the tannin was so high by comparison to the coarse, crooked-grained lumber that the trunks of mammoth trees were frequently left to decay in the forest after the bark had been removed. It was also rated very low in fuel value. Like many others, John Lewis supplemented his income by harvesting bark, but the soil was his first and last love.

Farming became a new way of life to many pioneers after the death-blow had been struck to the lumber industry. In a new land that lacked good roads, rural electricity, and the daily delivery of mail, many Newaygo county farmers had to start from scratch, without the benefit of basic farm knowledge or experience. Because not all men were farmers by choice and because there were some who found the land offered little more than a hard, uncertain way of making a living, some farmers were not contented. But there were those whose farming roots went back to the states of the countries from which they came. Most of the latter had one thing in common: they learned to love the land and looked forward to Spring and the breaking of the sod.

From an old diary we obtain the following facts: John Lewis and his elder son had gone to peel bark on June 2, 1893. On May 9 of the following year a Mr. Lapp came to the Lewis Center Farm and went to work peeling bark. At this time the Lewis’s were farming; on June 22, Mr. Lewis and his son had finished plowing by mid-afternoon. Skipping to Dec. 27, John and his son began getting out bark. On Jan. 24, 1895, Mr. Gerber called to see the bark. On Jan. 28^th, the son "Bud" went to Fremont with the bark.

The Lewis’s raised a great deal of hay and potatoes and grew most of the usual fruits. In 1894, beginning on March 8, the Lewis’s had plowed in the large orchard which contained apples, pears, plums, gooseberries, currants, and crabapples. Over the years many loads of apples left the farm bound for Hesperia and Fremont. Ed Carbine of Hesperia arrived at the Lewis Center Farm in late August to begin packing apples, and apple packing teams (as many as nine in a crew) came in October to pack the apples in big barrels.

Even with the increasing appearance of farms, it was just a short walk to enter the solemn silence of the ever changing wilderness. John Lewis chuckled, recalling what he had heard about Daniel Weaver’s remarks in 1866 when he hauled the first load of lumber from Fremont for a farm building in Hesperia. Dan had to conclude it a rather hazardous undertaking to think of a village there; the woods were less than 20 rods form the road that separates the two counties.

The people at the Lewis Center Farms were a close-knit group made up of the Lewis family with its grown up sons and daughters along with the considerable hired help. The Lewis’s used buggies, cutters, and sleighs for socializing. There were frequent upsets and breakdowns, not so much because of the carelessness, but from the considerable use. On July 1, 1893, "Bud" had bought a new buggy. When the buggy was nicely broke in on the 5^th of April of the following year, his horse ran away and broke up the buggy. Them Mr. Lewis had gone to Hesperia with a load of hay on the afternoon of April 14, and he has surprised the family when he returned home with a new buggy. It was customary, to take the farm produce to the markets and trade for store bought items