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Horticulture in Oceana County seems to have grown in interest in every year since the first settlers pitched their tents here in the unbroken wilderness. And as this county has been settled by people who are intelligent and enterprising, they were not slow to discover that if there was any real merit in the claims commonly put forth in favor of what is known as the Great Fruit Belt of Western Michigan, Oceana County must be the "Hub" - for a glance at the map will show that, from the location, she certainly is better protected by the lake than any other portion of the country bordering on the lake shore. And the abundant success that has followed the efforts of the intelligent horticulturist, fully establishes the fact that they were not mistaken, and from present prospects it will soon be said of the orchards, as it was said of a certain man's cattle of olden time, that they are upon a thousand hills. The first ten or twelve years after Oceana County began to be settled up, of course, there was but little fruit raised in the county, and the early settlers found a very good substitute in wild berries, of which this county produced so abundantly that hundreds of times when whole families, and sometimes two or three families together, rigged in almost anything except their Sunday clothes, with their baskets, well filled with dinner, and with an ox of team, went berrying, and when a group of merry raspberry and blackberry gatherers returned, the question was how many bushels, and if blackberries, raspberries and huckleberries did not come from spontaneous generation, they certainly did grow very abundantly. But since the first fruit trees began to bear , many facts have been developed, indicating that this county is second to none in its adaptability for growing a great variety of fruit. Lake Michigan, a body of water about 350 miles in length, and nearly 100 miles in breadth, and 900 feet deep, maintains a comparitively uniform temperature; and as this county is located so as to receive the north and west and south winds from off the lake, it has quite a perceptible influence during the whole year. In the Winter, on account of the great depth, the lake does not freeze over, and during very severe cold the winds are tempered, and the result is that the fruit and fruit trees escape uninjured, while at the same time the mercury runs from ten to twenty degrees lower in the latitude of Cincinnati or St. Louis than it does here. Another climatic advantage is in the Spring of the year there are miniature icebergs, the result of accumulated ice and snow along the shore during Winter, and heavy ice on the numerous lakes, of which there is one at the outlet of each stream, on the east shore of Lake Michigan (besides these there are many other small lakes), and these serve to keep the atmosphere cool, and consequently the fruit buds are not developed until well on in the season, and when the ice is all gone we have Summer. |