Albers family tradition builds on rich German and agricultural heritage

by | Sep 19, 2017 | Ohio Country Journal

While small towns and villages were forming in the wilderness of what is now western Ohio there was a steady stream of German immigrants coming to the area, regularly noted at the time for their hard work ethic and ingenuity. Part of that rich German tradition continues on the many farms in the region, including the Albers Ohio Century Farm in Shelby County, near McCartyville.

The family founder, Henry Albers, left his farm in the Minster area and settled on the farm in 1884 where his eight children grew up. The farm had a home and barns when he moved there. Henry raised hogs, dairy cattle, chickens and crops.

Henry died of a heart attack during planting season when his son, John, was 16. John eventually took over the farm and his son, Leonard Albers, grew up in the same house and has farmed the same ground. Leonard was the youngest of 13 children, and with his parents (John and Caroline) and two of his uncles (Herman and Ben, both Henry?s sons), there were 17 Albers living in the house for a few years during his youth.

?The only heat we had upstairs was a hole in the floor and we heated the house with a coal stove. We

All 13 of the Albers children were all together for this picture in 2012. Leonard is the second from the left in the back row.

All 13 of the Albers children were all together for this picture in 2012. Leonard is the second from the left in the back row.

had big feather blankets to crawl under to keep warm,? Leonard said. ?I think it was a blessing to grow up with that many people. You learned how to get along with people. We played a lot of monopoly and checkers. I remember the outhouse and I was in high school when we finally got a telephone. We were one of the last ones in the county to get a telephone. In the summer they would always prepare the meals in the summer kitchen.?

With his father and two uncles on hand, the children still had plenty to do around the farm growing up.

?We always went out to the barn but I don?t know that we really helped out a lot. We had two uncles living here and they did most of the work and I think my dad even had a hired hand,? Leonard said. ?We had hogs and chickens ? we would sell cartons of eggs. We grew a few beans, corn, and sugar cane ? we?d strip it and take it to the press at Maria Stein. Dad cleared a lot of the woods off too. I remember getting the eggs one time and the rooster came after me. I still don?t like roosters to this day. I didn?t do much with the milking or the hogs, but we had to clean out the farrowing stalls every Saturday. No matter what the weather we had to do that.?

Leonard remembers the bread dipped in lard with molasses as one of the favorite treats of his childhood

Leonard Albers got his American FFA Degree in 1973 and then returned to the farm full time.

Leonard Albers got his American FFA Degree in 1973 and then returned to the farm full time.

that always followed a visit from the butchering crew that would travel the community and process the hogs in the winter. He also remembers the close adherence to German traditions and customs.

?When my older sister went to school, she couldn?t talk in English at all,? he said.

Most of his siblings settled nearby. Leonard and his brother, Vernon, took over the home farm with the original acreage.

?Now it is a pretty large tract of Albers here around McCartyville,? Leonard said.

Leonard came back to the farm after high school, earning his American FFA Degree in 1973.

?I was never much of a hunter or anything but I always loved the outdoors. All I knew was farming. I had that in my mind when I started high school to come back and farm,? Leonard said. ?When I finished high school, I took over the dairy and my brother put beef cattle and hogs across the road. The dairy had

Albers farm photograph in 2016 — the farm has changed quite a bit but the dedication to agriculture has not.

Albers farm photograph in 2016 ? the farm has changed quite a bit but the dedication to agriculture has not.

Albers farm photographs in 1953

Albers farm photographs in 1953

been here as long as I can remember. When I started in ?73 we were milking 45 or 50 and we got up to 55 or 60. We fed out a few of our own for beef. We got up to 30 or 40 sows farrow to finish.?

There were several opportunities during that time to expand the farm.

?The neighbor?s farm went for sale and we bought that 160 acres in 1973. I bought it with my brothers,? Leonard said. ?We tiled it and tore the fence rows out. We started growing beans a couple years before I got out of high school. We grew corn, beans and wheat and we grew a lot of alfalfa because we had cows.

?Then we bought the next 80-acre farm on down from that. It was originally one of my uncle?s farms and we were able to buy it back. By buying that ground, the farm had just about doubled in size since I came back. It evolved quite nicely. We had local properties come up for sale and we had the good fortune that we could buy them and we kept expanding the crop ground. Later I had two back surgeries and got out of the dairy business after the second surgery in the early 1990s. We got out of hogs too and I started buying Holstein feeder steers. I can usually run about 200 head here. We get them at 500 or 600 pounds and finish them out. Now we farm around 1,150 acres of corn beans and wheat with the cattle and a few chickens.?

The farm has a long history of conservation.

?The first time we tried no-till it didn?t look very good. Dad said, ?You?re better off to farm half as much and do it right.? It was harder in those earlier days without Roundup or any of today?s equipment. We got the first no-till drill that John Deere sold. It took dad a couple of years to think it was OK. Some of that first stuff was pretty bad. You?d do it way back on the back 40 where only one neighbor could see it,? Leonard said. ?My dad was a pretty progressive farmer. We hosted the Ohio No-Till Field Day in the 80s and I?m pretty engrained in no-till. We have everything systematically tiled. We bought a ditching machine in ?73. We?ve done some work with cover crops ? clover and radishes. This year we are going to try barley. We put it out so we can put on manure. We?ve also added filter strips and quail habitat and more manure storage for the cattle. And I have served for more than 25 years on the Soil and Water Board.?

The equipment on the farm has changed drastically in Leonard?s time there.

?I remember the first self-propelled combine we had. It didn?t have a cab on it. My dad had one of the first grain dryers too. It was very inefficient, but at the time it was better than anything else,? he said. ?We thought it was really great when we got a corn planter with a monitor on it and now the auto steer Albers6equipment and yield mapping has changed a lot. When we put the light bar on the sprayer it was one of the first ones around.?

Leonard still lives in the same (though renovated) house of his forefathers and farms with his brother Vernon. His son-in-law now also works full time on the farm. He never gave the history of the farm all that much thought, but his wife, Lou Ann, encouraged him to really appreciate his family?s farming tradition.

?I grew up in Cincinnati and I am a public health nurse. I think we?re spoiled these days. There was no heat, no bathroom and they had an outhouse here when they grew up. They had the boys in one room and girls had to share another room ? there were six boys and seven girls. They had to learn to get along well and they still do,? Lou Ann said. ?It took that whole family to make this farm last this long. They were all very hard workers. I am a city girl looking in and I always appreciated farming. When I met Lenny I just appreciated a family that has had a farm for this long. How awesome to have a family to support this farm for four generations. He and his siblings don?t even think about that.?

Leonard never knew his grandpa, who died when his father was only 16, but he does understand the love of farming shared by the founder of the Albers generations on the land.

?You want it to always be a farm. You have to have it in your heart to even know what I am talking about,? he said. ?It is something that is instilled in you.?