Howell County - Land of the Big Red Tomato

I have been connected to tomatoes since I was a toddler. I dislike their taste, but I’ve lived among the plants since I could crawl (literally, among them). Mountains of bright red, vine-ripe tomatoes spread out on big tables in our basement are a summer memory extending from my infancy through adulthood. My parents market-gardened in town my entire life. Operating a produce-and-flower shop out of their basement, they helped start the Willow Springs Farmer’s Market. Dad always said the money was in fruit and the easiest to grow fruit is the tomato. We grew rows and rows of tomatoes and I watched them turn into cash.

 

While many are familiar with Howell County's fruit production boom in the late 1800’s into the first couple of decades of the twentieth century, the larger story is how the lowly tomato helped drive our economy for fifty years. The arrival of the railroad in 1882 provided an opportunity for larger-scale farming operations in Howell County. Where orchards required a large investment in land and labor with years of waiting before a profit or small return could be expected, tomatoes could put cash in a farmer's pocket the same year they were planted. 

 

Howell County until World War II was a largely cashless economy. There wasn't much hard money in circulation. Often farmers bartered farm goods with neighborhood stores for the things they could not produce themselves or traded with their neighbors. Country store ledgers like my community’s Gulley Store in Hutton Valley show farmers trading their eggs and butter for coffee and milled flour. No money changed hands. Any crop that put cash in a small farmer's pocket in a single season of work was attractive. Apples and tomatoes share a desirable trait for the Ozark farmer. They both grow well in our rocky soil and hillsides, but tomatoes produce a salable crop in a single year.

 

The railroad became vital to scale the market beyond local and to export farm products in volume to metropolitan markets once a local glut was created. The apple orchards that gave Howell County the moniker "The Land of the Big Red Apple" could quickly ship their products to market without sacrificing quality. Tomatoes don't keep like that. In an era before refrigeration, they could not be vine-ripened to their best flavor without spoiling before they reached a distant market. So canning became the solution, and in Howell County, a cottage industry was born that helped the local economy at many levels.

 

Canning, as we know it, was invented in France in 1804 but caught on in the United States during the American Civil War. There wasn't much interest in canned goods in an agrarian society when fresh food was readily available from neighbors at lower prices. The market for canned foods mostly consisted of specialty and luxury items. The war changed that, making canned foods attractive to soldiers sick of their restricted diets in the field. The nutrients supplied by foods not available in rations often literally cured illness caused by deficient diets. Many men had their first experience with canned food as soldiers. The war drove development in canning technology and improved products.

 

In the years following the war, the popularity of canned goods increased, and with industrialization and population movement into larger and larger cities, preserved foods became a necessity. The development of the railroad provided a connection between this market and farms in Howell County, and the promotion of tomato farming and canning began around the same time. Our local newspapers began carrying articles in the mid-1880's describing the mechanics of setting up canneries of various sizes, from a small farm operation to a factory, with cost estimates in each case and the profits that could be expected, all delivered on the railroad!

 

Canning operations in Howell County seem to have started small, with individual farmers using their crops and perhaps those of neighbors, in a brief run of unlabeled cans sold locally and to brokers who labeled them with their own brand. In 1913, the Mountain View Standard reported plans to escalate production to a much greater level. In April, the paper identified the main problem in creating a tomato canning factory - getting a reliable supply of the stuff to can. It wrote, "the gentlemen who are planning on operating a canning factory at Mountain View this season are becoming anxious regarding whether or not they are going to get enough contracts signed up to warrant them coming here. They are ready; the businessmen of Mountain View have pledged a building, but the farmers have so far failed to come through and do their part by signing contracts for enough acreage to run the plant at about its full capacity. A week ago Saturday, Mr. Buffkin and his wife came down here at his own expense, bought 20 pounds of tomato seed, which meant about a $30 or $35 cash outlay, had contracts printed, and publicly announced that the contracts were ready to be signed. During the day, only about 30 acres were pledged, with fewer men signing. Some say they will wait and see if the thing is coming before they promise anything. If all the farmers do that, it is a certainty that it will not come. These gentlemen cannot afford to bring this plant here unless they know you are going to raise tomatoes."

 

It is easy to understand the reticence on the part of the farmers here if you have had experience in growing a long single row of tomatoes, let alone an acre or several acres of them. During this period, little time was spent preparing the soil. A piece of new ground was selected, preferably on a north or east-facing hillside. Any trees on the lot were deadened, and the brush was cleared and piled. That brush was burned, and the ashes left behind made a perfect seedbed. Seedlings started earlier inside were transplanted outside when the ground warmed up. The work comes in the hot summer months in pruning, staking, weeding, watering, and harvesting. But there were many willing to do the growing, and tomato-canning factories sprang up in nearly every community in Howell County near enough to the railroad to make shipping the output feasible.

 

In 1917, West Plains created a Commercial Club of prominent businessmen and community leaders to promote the cultivation of tomatoes and the establishment of a cannery. Entrepreneur F.M. Thompson proposed a cannery if a commitment of 300 acres could be secured. A series of meetings were held in schoolhouses in the small communities surrounding West Plains. As an enticement for attendance, a "singing" was held, and a humorous reading given. Local businessman C.T. Aid passed around a basket of candy. The goal of securing signed contracts was eventually achieved, and Thompson built a cannery. He was already operating canneries in Webster County. The West Plains Journal reported in January 1917 that, "It was shown that in a fair season with good cultivation, growers can average ten tons per acre. If some of our young men who go away to seek work would put a few acres of dad's land into tomatoes, they could make more money. Tomatoes are so much benefit to the land that in some places land owners are giving their land rent free."

 

A few individuals were successful on their own. William Sidney Coleman was born in Burnham in 1892 to Frederick and Permelia Coleman. His father was an immigrant from England, and his mother was born in Michigan. "Willie" Coleman was in his mid-20s when he went into the canning business. He was a talented promoter and ran ads for contests in the local newspapers offering "$10 in cash prizes for a trade name for the fine brand of Howell Co. Products. We are putting out one of the finest brands of canned corn, tomatoes, beans and other Ozark grown products and we are looking for a trade name that is attractive and one that is appropriate to or suggestive of the Ozarks or the quality of our goods, or both." In a stroke of genius, Coleman required contestants to accompany each entry in the naming contest with a "label from one of our cans of high quality canned goods. Try them and their superior quality may suggest to you the prize-winning name." Coleman's product line was further extended to include sauerkraut and canned blackberries, and in the late 1970's one of the Coleman Cannery buildings still stood near the old croquet grounds at Burnham. Descendants of Willie Coleman continue to live in Howell County today.

 

Beyond the work of growing tomatoes, the canning process was labor intensive. As late as 1931, the Willow Springs News reported on the operation of the Willow Springs plant, "A visit to the canning factory last Friday, which is located across the tracks and is owned by Judge Bever of Willow Springs, revealed many interesting and surprising facts."

 

"Mr. Frank Bever, a son, is managing the plant, and in a hurried interview, we learned that the plant is now producing a large quantity of canned tomatoes, which are contracted for by a company in Mountain Grove. Previous shipments by truck within the last few days to a St. Louis firm amounted to about sixteen tons of the finished product."

"A visit through the plant showed the tomatoes being unloaded, put into wire baskets and weighed, passed through a scalding process and on into a long shallow trough, on each side of which rows of girls peel the tomatoes by hand, after which they are ready to be packed into cans. They are then put on a carrier and run through steam, where they are slightly preheated, passed on, where the tops are dropped from a revolving machine onto the filled cans, and sealed at a rate of about 3,000 an hour when running at full capacity. The cans then fall into iron baskets and put into iron vats where they are cooked for thirty minutes. On removal, and when cooled, they are packed into pasteboard containers and made ready for the consumer, each holding twenty-four cans. The present contract does not call for labels, although Mr. Bever stated they were prepared to label should a customer desire it."

 

"This canning plant is now operating with 25 to 30 girls employed, and during the past week they have been receiving large quantities of tomatoes from the surrounding country. This has grown to be quite an industry, and many additional acres are planted each year as one of the acknowledged paying resources of the Ozarks."

 

Alas, the canning industry in Howell County did not last. World War II impacted canning here due to a labor shortage with so many men who grew the tomatoes away from their farms in the military. By this time, too, the trend in canning was moving away from small operations toward much larger ones in the Southern states and on the West Coast, closer to some of the crops in demand. Canning remains an important industry in parts of the Arkansas Ozarks but is gone from Howell County. Tomatoes, on the other hand, have begun to ripen on the vine in our hot sun here in the Land of the Big Red Tomato, and I hear nothing is better.