Poppy's Orchard

Marv posing in his orchard.

Tucked away in a small Mt. Zion neighborhood is my grandpa's orchard, in the last neighborhood one would expect an orchard to reside in. My grandpa’s name is Marvin. I call him “Poppy,” and so do his 11 other grandchildren. However, to his many customers who have purchased honey, peaches, apples, and pears over the years, he is known as Marv, and his backyard is known as Marv's Orchard.

Marv’s Orchard is a place where anyone can go to get delicious fruit, including Millikin students.

And this year, Marv is giving away the fruit for free. Due to the expensive prices of spray, which prevented Marv from spraying every tree, and the dry spell that hit Macon County, the apple crop is not as abundant as it was last year. However, that is not to say that the harvest was unimpressive in the slightest. If you ask Marv, he will tell you that he is disappointed with the way his apple harvest turned out this fall. However, one look at the counter in his shed will tell you otherwise.

The apples Marv harvested this fall.

The world around Marv has changed dramatically, but his orchard has remained just about the same. Marv is old-fashioned, through and through. He still takes care of the apple trees. He still grows tomatoes, green beans, pumpkins, and much more for his family to enjoy.

In addition, his orchard is a fan favorite for the deer living in the woods that border his house. Although he has an electric fence to keep them out of the orchard, he ensures that they are fed apples that humans shouldn’t eat. While the fence is there, Marv has been known to hand-feed deer, such as his old friend “Bucky.”

“I had some stuff in the back I wanted to burn, so I went back there one day to light the fire,” Marv says. “As I knelt down and put my hand down to light it, here’s this head of a deer that comes down right by my hand. He was in velvet, and I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

Naturally, Marv decided to feed the deer.

“I said, ‘what are you doing here?’ I didn’t know if he was going to attack me or what. But he thought I was going to feed him. So, I stood up and petted him. I went up and picked some apples for him. At night or during the day, I could go pick apples and he’d be back in the timber and I could feed him.”

He loves working with his hands. In the back of his shed is a woodshop where he has made birdhouses, coat hangers, and tables, such as the one that resides in his kitchen, where the family gathers around every holiday.

Marv loves the little things. He loves watching things grow. Whether it be spending an entire afternoon mowing his one-and-a-half-acre lawn or watching his family grow in size, there’s something about seeing something small turn into something much bigger. Take his house, which he built with the help of his family in 1968, after purchasing the land from Gary Florian, the subdivision's owner.

“We started looking for houses, and we had rented for about a year,” Marv says. “We rented from Gary Florian, and he said, ‘I’ll frame your house out here and you can finish it.’ He framed it for us, and we finished it and everything else for $16,000.”

The lot behind the house was wild and untamed, but Marv had a vision for it from the moment he finished the house. If the price of the house wasn’t enough to convey how much prices have changed over the years, Marv bought the one-and-a-half-acre lot for a grand total of $2,500.

“We had great big ravines out there. It was just a wilderness—all kinds of crud. We had big thorn trees that had thorns on them this long,” he says, measuring nearly six inches with his fingers. “It was terrible.”

Not only was there lots of vegetation in the backyard, but there was also lots of wildlife.

“At night, pheasants would go to roost, and they’d flap up in the trees,” Marv says. “The quail mother would run, and she’d go ahead, and behind her would be a bunch of babies following her.”

The first major change the future orchard would undergo was the neighbors moving in and bringing cats with them. After the cats arrived, there were no longer any quail to listen to.

This is around the time when Marv figured he could put the land he now owned to work.

“I thought, ‘well, I ought to plant something back there,” he says. “So, I started buying trees.”

Marv could’ve simply bought trees that didn’t produce any fruit, just to take up space in the backyard. However, when asked why he chose fruit trees, he smiles, and his answer is simple.

“Why not?” he says. “I just like to grow stuff, and I like to see things grow.”

Marv’s love for seeing things grow resulted in around 115 trees being planted in his backyard.

This would be the second big change that happened in his backyard– taming the wilderness so that Marv’s Orchard could be born.

One of the 115 trees in Marv's backyard.

With all the equipment needed to care for the trees and other plants, Marv needed to make a new addition to his orchard, leading to the creation of the shed, which, of course, he helped build.

“I wanted some storage, so I framed it,” Marv says. “I did that one, and I helped my neighbor build his, and I built Uncle Franz’s (Marv’s brother-in-law) shed as well.” The shed has undergone three additions over the years, with the latest being Marv’s woodshop, added in 2010. This allows Marv to spend the wintertime working with his hands to create whatever his heart desires out of wood, which he outsources from any burn pile or area where perfectly good lumber is in danger of going to waste. Additionally, he can store any plants in the workshop, allowing them to have warmth during the cold season.

If you go out to visit the orchard this fall, expect to stop in the workshop to see the latest project that Marv has been working on.

Additionally, expect to hear about the bees. The bees that aren’t there anymore, but the bees that left a lasting impact on the orchard.

As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the hives.

“I told Judy (Marv’s wife) that we can’t continue doing this,” Marv says. “I just can’t afford it. It’s too expensive. So, I sold all my hives, all my gear, everything.”

In the last decade, Marv was known for the honey that his hives produced as much as he was known for the sweet fruit that currently grows on his trees. 

Although I was terrified of being stung by a bee, I enjoyed the delicious honey that arrived every fall, and I enjoyed helping spin and bottle the honey.

Marv would produce around 250 bottles of honey per year and sell each bottle for approximately $8. And this wasn’t the ultra-processed honey that we find on the shelves of our stores today. 

This was honey that was all-natural in the purest sense of the phrase. Marv is grateful for the unique opportunity he had to connect with people in such a kind and genuine way.

“It was fun. I enjoyed it,” he says. “It was very educational. Sometimes I [miss it], but then I don’t. I think about all the work.”

People flocked from all around the area to buy Marv’s honey. He still maintains a list of all his customers, organized by name, phone number, and address. There are likely over 100 people on that list, and Marv knows each of them personally. It’s just the type of man he is.

One of the biggest changes that the orchard has undergone over the years is the absence of honeybees. Now, Marv has mason bees, which are solely used to pollinate the trees, not to produce honey. Keeping track of several hives and spinning honey has become too much work for Marv, especially considering that several of his grandchildren now live across the country. “It’s just hard to maintain all of that, plus the bees,” he says.

Marv posing with the honey his bees produced in 2011.

Although Marv’s crop is not what he wanted this year, he remains confident that next year will bring big results.

“Next year I’m going to spray them all good,” he says. “I’m not going through all that effort if I can’t be proud of the fruit that I raised.”

If you are interested in visiting Marv’s orchard, please reach out to Kemper Koslofski at kkoslofski@millikin.edu. The orchard is a place that students will not want to miss, especially since the fruit is free this year. Marv’s orchard is a priceless experience, so be sure to take advantage of this opportunity before the cold season arrives.