Source: Michigan Sugar Company
As a young boy in the early 1930s, Erwin Schave remembers the daily harvest time routine at his family’s farm in Huron County, Michigan’s Bloomfield Township.
“We had a wooden-wheel wagon with a wooden box pulled by two horses,” says Schave, who still lives in the house where he was born on Jan. 14, 1924. “We would load it up at night and then deliver the beets the next morning to Harbor Beach, where they were loaded onto railcars and sent to [the factory in] Croswell. Then, we’d return home, load up the cart again and deliver one more load.”
The day ended late at night with another load of beets prepared for delivery the next morning.
“That wagon had a spring-loaded seat that my dad and I would ride on to take the shock off. There were not too many beets in a load back then, not even two tons,” says Schave, who at almost 98 years old is still growing sugarbeets as a shareholder for Michigan Sugar Company. He gets some help these days digging his 15 acres, but says he still drives the tractor during harvest.
This year marks his 75th harvest. He grew the first crop of his own beets in 1947.
“I’ve always liked sugarbeets,” he says.
Schave (pronounced “shave”) was the oldest of eight children born to Adolph and Alice Schave. His grandparents, Joanna and Annie Schave, immigrated to the United States from Germany and started the farm in 1883.
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Erwin Schave attended the one-room Ingram School through the eighth grade. He says he wanted to go on to high school, but was needed on the farm, something common in those days. He worked alongside his father for several years until the early 1940s, when he left for Detroit and a job at Hudson Motor Car Company.
“I went down with a buddy and stood in line, and they called my name,” Schave says. “I had a doctor examination and they put me to work.”
He returned home in 1944 and began farming full-time. He also later operated a sawmill, cutting logs for the former Michigan Lumber Fabricators in Elkton, until 1974.
On Aug. 22, 1951, Erwin Schave married his wife Myrtle. They had eight children: Jerry, Linda, Sharon, Joanne, Gary, Charlie, Connie and Faye. Myrtle passed away in 1969 after a battle with cancer. In 1975, Schave married his second wife Helen, and they were married for 38 years before her passing.
Today, Schave has 12 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren, as well as his step-relatives from Helen’s side of the family. The family farm now comprises about 80 acres of sugarbeets, soybeans, black beans and wheat.
“I tell people I’ve been growing sugarbeets my whole life,” Schave says. “My grandpa grew them, my dad grew them, and they’ve always been a part of my life—for 97 years.”