Junior Farm Center Formed at High School
100 years ago – October 8, 1925
The Aggie boys met Thursday to organize their local junior farm center. There are five other junior farm centers in Sonoma County with a total of nearly thirty in the state. These junior farm centers will send two representatives each month to meet with the representatives of the Senior Farm Bureau at Santa Rosa and the Farm Advisor in his office. Here local and state matters will be discussed, policies arranged. The local Center will meet once a week to manage the activities of the Aggies. At present many problems are confronting the boys such as the organization and coaching of their Aggie basketball team; arrangement of judging teams and judging schedules; establishing policies and traditions for the future classes; and preparations for a get together. Chester Frost was elected Director of the local center and has already started active plans for the future. The future outlook for the success of this organization is very encouraging for the boys who have shown a keen interest and hearty desire to “put the job over.”
Grape Pickers Needed Here
75 years ago – October 5, 1950
Transient farm workers in the Healdsburg area are urged by the local Farm Labor Office to remain here for the completion of the grape harvest. Growers are still desperately in need of help to save their grapes. The crop is light in certain sections but picking prices are good.
Workers planning to go into the San Joaquin Valley for cotton picking have been warned by radio and newspaper to refrain from doing so. Cotton picking will not start in that vicinity until late in October and unemployment is already very acute in that section.
Since the start of harvesting only three hundred and three actual visits to the Farm Labor Office have been made, according to Helen Carten, representative, as against one thousand, five hundred and ninety-eight visits last year, at this time. This is due, in part, said Miss Carter, “to defense activity and the poor apple crop.” Many pickers left when the apple crop did not materialize greatly and did not return for the hop, prune and grape harvesting.
Partnership, expansion plans announced at Garrett Hardware
50 years ago – October 2, 1975
Mark and Joyce Klein have joined Clint DeWitt, owner of the store for the past four years, as partners in the Garrett Hardware and Plumbing Corp. DeWitt and Klein explained plans to relocate their business from 106 Matheson St. to a larger location within the next six months.
DeWitt said, “We will be doubling the size of our inventory and our floor space. One of the big advantages to the new store, the partners feel, is that it will have sufficient parking. Lack of parking space in the downtown location has been a drawback to Garrett’s in the past.”
The new expanded inventory will allow Garrett Hardware to open a “home improvement center”, a larger supply of farm equipment, double the size of the garden department, increase the housewares department, and offer Northern California’s “biggest nuts and bolts supply,” DeWitt said.
Flashbacks are provided by the Healdsburg Museum & Historical Society. The museum at 221 Matheson St. is open Wednesday through Sunday, 11am to 4pm.
