Bigley's Orchard

Bigleys made apple season year-round in Culver

Pioneer-era family’s orchard made headlines, won hearts for seven decades

By Jeff Kenney Citizen editor
Thursday, September 24 2009 Vol. No. 115 Issue No. 37

During the more than 70 years of its operation, Bigley’s apple orchard and farm on 18B Road east of Culver became a destination and cherished landmark for generations of locals and visitors. Bigley’s provided customers with happy memories of its rustic beauty, the sweet smells of its orchard store, and of course the taste of its apples, cider, apple butter, and other products.
Carefully preserving the legacy of the orchard – which operated from 1929 to 2000 and won recognition from the state of Indiana as a Hoosier Homestead farm in 1978 – are brothers David and Bryce Bigley, inheritors of several generations of apple-cultivating Bigleys.

That legacy began even before the arrival of the first white men to the Culver area, when Potawatomi Indian chief Nee-Swau-Gee governed the Bigley land as well as a wide swath of property on the east shore of Lake Maxinkuckee.

As the story goes, says David Bigley, the first permanent cabin on the lake was built by one of the first wave of local pioneers on top a hill on what would later be Bigley land. Allegheny house, which is possibly the oldest structure in the county, dating back to the early 1850s.

There's been some difference of opinion on the exact location of the cabin over the years, Bigley acknowledges, but it likely was on Bigley land.

After the cabin’s owner abandoned it, says Bigley, Nee-Swau-Gee supposedly moved out of his traditional wigwam and into the cabin.

In the ensuing years, Bigley family members have found a variety of evidence of Native American presence on the land. Bryce and David’s father collected a number of arrow and axe heads, among other artifacts, from the family land.

Daniel and Susanna Fisher (she was born in 1789) lived in Peru, Indiana, when Daniel died in 1833, leaving Susanna with the couple’s several children. Son John was sent to scout a locale for the family to prosper and arrived around 1835 or 1836 just east of Lake Maxinkuckee.

According to Bryce Bigley, Susanna and family arrived in the area around 1837 (the same year most Potawatomi Indians were removed from the area in the infamous Trail of Death). They initially settled in a small cabin John had built, and in 1840 purchased today’s Bigley land from the Wabash and Erie Canal Company – to whom it had been ceded by the government via the State of Indiana after various Indian treaties.

Susanna’s daughter Amelia married Edward Bigley in 1850 (he later died at sea after failing to make his fortune in the California gold rush).

Their son Thomas Bigley was born in 1851, and over the years he cleared the Bigley land.

Thomas married neighbor Jane Benedict, whose father had dammed a creek on Bigley land, allowing for creation of a saw and grist mill (the Benedicts have remained on long held family lands; descendant John is a retired Plymouth School teacher).

Thomas and Jane’s son Guy actually inherited the family lands, notes Bryce Bigley today, though a childhood injury prevented Guy from working the land.

Guy and wife Mable’s son John Fisher Bigley (born in 1907) would make the Bigley name known the area for fruit. He grew up hearing his great-grandmother Amelia’s (she had named the boy for her favorite brother) pioneer memories prior to her 1917 death.

In 1907, the same year as John’s birth, Guy and brother Chester Bigley constructed a two-story brick building on the northwest corner of 18B Road and East Shore Drive near the Maxinkuckee landing.

For many years the two operated a popular grocery, general store, meat market, tea room, and ice cream parlor which also sold kerosene and gasoline. Upstairs rooms included living quarters, rental rooms, and space for the telephone company. A flowing well turned a large water wheel on the side of the building, from which many longtime lake residents recall filling water jugs. The water wheel, though no longer in use, can still be seen on the property, which was later purchased by the Rocap family, who bulldozed the former store building.

John Bigley, recognizing the family lands on 18B Road weren’t conducive to grain farming, also recognized their usefulness as a site for fruit planting in spite of his uncle Chester’s cursing admonition 'that no money was to be made with apples'.

John planted 25 acres of apples and peaches in 1928, though Bryce Bigley notes it took about ten years for the fruit to really come into production. In those early years, he says, his father John had only bushel baskets which were stored in the basement, the fruit sold from the family’s front yard.

John borrowed $1,000 in 1929 and built a new house on 18B Road

An early picture of the Bigley Homestead



more recent one of today...

(grandfather Thomas’s house had been on Queen Road in the eastern section of the family’s land and currently is being restored).

It took John ten years of gardening, building seawalls around the lake and other work to pay back the money

The fame and renown of Bigley’s orchard grew in the ensuing years. John Bigley, in fact, was photographed for the September, 1940 cover of Hoosier Horticulturalist magazine, a publication of the Indiana Horticultural Society. John became president of the IHS in 1952.

1940 - Sep 18 - John Bigley Featured As Apple Club Winner In Horticulture Paper

John Bigley, of Bigley's Orchards near Maxinkuckee, received an outstanding recognition in the September issue of "Hoosier Horticulture," issued by the Indiana Horticulture Society. Mr. Bigley's picture appeared on the cover, with the caption stating he was a winner in the Quality Plus Apple Club. On an inside page was an article by Mr. Bigley on "Profit With Quality Plus Apples." The account follows: "As a result of the 1938 freeze out and the general short crop the country over, the season of 1939 found us facing a large crop and poor prices. We had this object uppermost in our minds--a crop of clean fruit produced with the smallest possible cash outlay. To do this we decided to have our spraying so thoroughly done that we would have moth control at the end of the first brood hatch. We pruned our trees so that it was possible to force the spray materials through to the other side of the tree. However, we were able to prune only about two-thirds of the orchard. We found that pruning was a pretty fair way of helping the thinning of heavily loaded trees. The last of March we overhauled all our spray machinery, from guns to storage tank, to avoid costly delay while spraying. Immediately after this check-up we applied our dormant spray using 3 per cent oil. We apply a dormant spray every other year doing a thorough job. This business of doing a thorough job is streesed more than any other point In our program. We believe it to be almost as important as the materials used. I know my helpers got tired of hearing me talk thorough coverage. We omitted the commercial fertilizer in 1939 in accordance with our economy program believing our past practices to have our trees in thrifty condition. Up to three years ago we mulched our trees with horse manure obtained from a Government stable near here. This manure was purchased at the stable for 80c per ton and we used about 300 tons per year. This manure contained a great deal of straw and made a wonderful mulch. We used about 400 pounds per tree and were able to mulch the entire orchard yearly. We can still see some of the mulch. The price was raised from 80c to $2.00, and we did not think we could aftord to continue this practice. We applied 10 tons of manure this year from our own stables using about 200 pounds per tree. Straw mulch was applied to about one-fourth of the orchard. From now on it will be commercial fertilizer. "We keep our orchard in sod and go over it with an orchard harrow about every three or four years. The grass was mowed twice this season and in future years we intend to rake this grass and use it for mulch around the trees. The trees are planted 40 feet apart, leaving quite a space in between where we can rake up a lot of mulch material. One of the things we like about mulch is the condition it leaves the drops in. Many a year we are able to get practically as good a price out of our drops as No. l's. This alone would go long way toward paying for the cost of mulching materials. Our spray schedule was as follows:
* April 1-53 Dormant for scale. We apply this every other year.
* May 3 Full bloom on four rows on west side of orchard using 2-6-100 Bordeaux.
* May 16, 17, and 18 Calyx, 3 lbs. arsenate, 3 lbs. lime, 2 gal, liquid lime sulphur, per 100 gal.
* May 28, 29, and 30 7-10 days after calyx. 4 lbs. arsenate, 4 lbs. lime, 1 1/4 gal. liquid lime sulphur.
* June 12, 13, and 14 Cover. 8 1/2 lbs. arsenate, 3 lbs. lime per. 100 gal.
* June 19 and 20 Top-off mainly, and covered rest of tree lightly. Used 3V2 lbs. arsenate, 3 V2 lbs. lime, 2 qt. Summer Oil per 100 gal.
We find picking for color is a very good practice and we were able to get top prices this year both locally and on the Chicago markets for our high colored fruits. Color picking in our opinion pays for the extra cost of going over the trees the second time. Our orchard showed a profit this year largely on account of our high percentage of No. 1 fruits.

By 1947, the Bigley’s first storage building was built for the orchard operation, with two insulated rooms for refrigeration (a 6,000-bushel capacity) and three large, garage door sized openings for orchard truck parking. The space allowed the orchard to sell fruit from about mid-July each year through the following April.

Bryce believes the first Bigley store might have been built a few years earlier, constructed of sweet gum lumber due tothe shortage of better lumber during the war years

The Bigley brothers also believe their father John was the first – possibly in the entire US – to prepackage apples. Bigley’s Orchard labels were affixed to four-pound plastic bags delivered ten per carton to area stores, though customers could purchase individual apples in the orchard store.

Bryce and David naturally started at young ages working at the orchard, Bryce later joining the Army and eventually earning a degree in horticulture (specializing in apple growing). Ten years later he added a teacher’s certificate, teaching science for 25 years at South Bend and John Glenn in Walkerton.

As a youngster, Bryce says he missed attending school at the one-room Maxinkuckee school house at the southeast corner of the Bigley land by just one year before the school’s closing in 1936.

Later, when the 1947 storage building proved to be too small for adequate storage, David Bigley poured a cement floor in the school house and used it for apple storage.

Over the years since the orchard’s opening opening, it expanded to 65 acres, stretching along Queen and 18th Roads north and east of the store and becoming one of the largest orchards in Indiana.

Other nearby properties, including Oberlin and Norris farms on the same side of the lake, had active orchards, but none – not even the also-renowned Vonnegut orchard further north on the same shore – competed with Bigley’s in volume. At its peak, Bigley’s maintained some 3,000 trees

Delivery of apples was a part of the Bigley operation, says David, from early on He recalls starting out with a small panel truck destined for stores in Culver, Argos, Knox, Plymouth, and North Judson. Later, expanded routes included Monticello, Monon, and other communities within a 75-mile radius and much larger trucks.

Produce was also sold at community sales in Culver, Plymouth, and other areas.

A long-term staple of the orchard’s economy began by accident, really, says David, when his father headed to Kentucky, where he could pick up a load of coal for less money than he could locally.

“So he loaded up the truck with apples and stopped at each little town (and in) some he would go door-to-door or pull over to the side of the road and set out a display of apples. People would stop and really buy from him! Just outside Frankfort, Kentucky… a guy hollered out at him, ‘Hey mister, you got apples?’ Before that guy was gone, another one pulled in and within a few hours he had sold every apple on the truck. The next time, we went to Lexington and tried again, and you know we were going every week selling 100 to 150 bushels at that (Frankfort) stone quarry in two days! I continued that up to the year 2000.”

The Bigleys attribute the popularity of their apples in Kentucky to a climate there not conducive to good apple growing from year to year.

Of course, Bigley’s own orchard and store was a regional destination itself.

“Dad always told the story,” says Bryce, “that if you get within 100 miles (of Bigley’s), just ask directions and they’ll know how to get to our place; it was known a long ways around.

On Memorial Day, Illinois always had the day off and we would get a flood of people coming over and buying apples from us. It was a popular place locally too.”

David Bigley, born in a February snowstorm so fierce the doctor couldn’t make it, graduated in 1958 from horticulture school. Besides a stint in the military, he grew up ssisting with the orchard, officially taking over the family business from his father in 1970.

He created a popular sales room and added pies, donuts, apple butter made from Bigley apples by nearby Amish cooks, and various fruits and vegetables to the already-beloved Bigley’s cider (a family recipe).

John Bigley died in 1994 and his wife Bea three years later. Through the years, the entrepreneur of Bigley Orchard was recognized in a number of articles, local and regional, and was Lake Fest parade marshal in Culver in 1986.

In August of 1978, the State of Indiana – under the Department of Commerce, recognized Bigley’s as a Hoosier Homestead Farm in operation for over 100 years, and a sign was erected to that effect which still stands outside the family land today.

It was around that era, however, the decline in sales began for Bigley’s (and undoubtedly for apple growers around the nation). In the past, says Bryce, “people would buy a few bushels to store in their cold basements, which are a thing of the past now. People don’t have time to cook, and they can get apples from all over the world now, including China, any time of year. People only buy a few pounds at a time now.”

When women entered the workplace in force, too, say the Bigley brothers, far less cooking from scratch went on.

“Now you think of apples as hand to mouth,” Bryce explains. “But in earlier years, women made apple pies, applesauce, fried apples, and more.”

“When I was doing deliveries (prior to the 1970s and 1980s decline),” says David, “I had 30-some stores I delivered to, which gradually went by the wayside. I had a big truck before, but at the end I could fit all the apples in the trunk of my car; I was just selling to small, independent stores.”

Bigley’s wasn’t able to produce the massive quantity demanded by large chain groceries, and by 2000, says David, “the red ink was getting deeper than the black ink, so I just decided we had to quit.

There was a big whoop-de-doo about insecticides, and the FDA made chemical companies re-label and retest their products, which caused a huge increase in the cost of insecticides.”

Labor, adds Bryce, had gotten difficult to find as well. Migrant workers had been employed during picking season at the orchard for decades, but many headed to area factories in the latter years of the orchard’s existence.

“The last year,” says David, “I had two (migrant workers from Mexico) part time and full-time, one 80-year-old man and myself. Of course we couldn’t begin to keep up with the harvest. I can remember about six inches of apples under the trees didn’t get harvested. I said, ‘There’s no point.’ I gradually took out some of the older trees over the years and had got down to about 15 acres (but it was) still too many

David had his own children helping in years past and in 2000, one of his sons wanted to take over the business. David knew it was too much for the son and his wife, so “I talked him out of it...I think he just finally realized you can’t do it all by yourself.”

For several years, folks still occasionally pulled into the drive in hopes of reliving cherished memories at the Bigley store on 18B Road, says David, though by now everyone seems resigned to the end of an era.

Still vivid, though, are memories heightened this time of year by the taste and smell of apples, cider, and recollections of one of Culver’s longest-running and most celebrated businesses

Of interesting note - even tho not in business today when I "Googled" Bigley's orachard today (Aug. 27, 2016) this came up :

Indiana Fruit Growers Home Directory > Bigley Orchard
Bigley Orchard
16864 18 B Road
Culver, IN 46511-9730
Apples , Pears , Strawberries , Blueberries , Peaches , Cherries , Vegetables
U-pick , Corn maze , Petting zoo , Bakery , School tours

School bus tours of the orchard were also conducted