BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Ty Baker pulls visitors to the pumkpin patch in a tractor that his grandfather bought in 1960.
(Tony Jones photo)
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MORROW -- The yellow school buses haven't yet arrived at Maplewood Orchard this chilly October morning.
When they do, Dixie Baker will be there to greet youngsters, take them to the man she married 39 years ago, and say: "Boys and girls, this is Mr. Baker. Can you say good morning to Mr. Baker?"
Loron Baker will lead the barn tour, and Dixie will guide kids to the orchard. Before they leave, children will have wandered the fields, watched a machine wash and sort fruit and marveled at a contraption that peels an apple in the blink of an eye. They'll have learned about making cider and will have sipped some.
The Maplewood tour teaches little kids that apples don't originate in a back room at the grocery store. Apples, though, aren't the orchard's only story. Nor are they the most important one.
The busiest season
It's quiet before the buses arrive, and the place looks like an autumn postcard.
Bright orange pumpkins line the steps to the white, two-story farm house. An autumn wreath hangs on the door. An American flag is prominently displayed.
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ABOUT THIS SERIES
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Today marks the debut of John Johnston's Tristate Scenes, a periodic series of stories on the people, places and events that help define Greater Cincinnati.
Look for Tristate Scenes to appear throughout the year in Tempo. If you have a story suggestion, write:
John Johnston
Tempo
Cincinnati Enquirer
312 Elm St.
Cincinnati 45202
fax: 768-8330.
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Across the blacktop driveway, the outside of Baker's Country Store is dressed for the season: cut corn stalks, more pumpkins and multicolored gourds. Johnny Appleseed, with a frying pan on his head and seed pouch slung around a shoulder, stands at the entrance. Loron waits for the buses in the dimly lit, rustic barn, where smoke from an outdoor fire veils the aroma of fresh-picked apples.
He wears a faded denim jacket over a green Maplewood Orchard sweat shirt. A blue cap covers graying hair. Both hands are shoved into his jeans pockets.
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Myron and Lois Baker, left; Ty and April Baker, center, and Loron and Dixie Baker
(Tony Jones photo)
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He doesn't look like a former bank president.
"Soon as these tours are over (at the end of October) we have to make cider," he says, pausing to spit a stream of tobacco juice into a bucket. "Just on the run all the time."
He is retired from banking, but "workin' like a fool. I call (the orchard) my hobby now. When you work hard and don't make any money, you call it a hobby."
Truth be told, he doesn't need the money. Doesn't need the muscle aches every morning, either.
Four years ago, he and Dixie, both 59, made the decision to return to Maplewood, the place where Mr. Baker was raised.
He glances around.
"This big old barn here came out of Morrow," he says. "It was a horse stable. My grandfather tore it down, brought it here and rebuilt it."
First generation
Charles S. Baker must have been as sturdy as the wooden beams in the barn he rebuilt.
In 1903 he was a young newlywed hoping to buy 30 acres on Stubbs Mill Road in south-central Warren County, but he had no money. The landowner agreed to accept a turkey hen as down payment.
Charles cleared the thicket and began working the land. He set up a roadside farmer's market, even before he built on the property. And he planted apple trees.
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Loron Baker fills jugs with cider.
(Tony Jones photo)
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Over the years, parcels were added in piecemeal fashion. One 40-acre tract had a stand of maple trees. When the sap ran in late winter, Charles collected it in buckets and boiled it into syrup. Hence the name, Maplewood, which has 265 acres today, 15 of it orchard.
Second generation
Charles' only son, Myron, began running the farm in 1940, when he was 26. Four years later, he replanted the orchard behind the farmhouse. In the early 1950s, he had an idea "to get people to come out" -- let customers pick their own apples, if they wished.
For a long time, the school tours were led by Myron's wife, Lois. Groups began coming 50 years ago when one of her daughters' teachers asked if a class could visit the orchard. Then the teacher attended a regional conference, and spread the word.
This year some 4,200 children, most of them from the Cincinnati area, will take part in school tours, Scout activities and birthday parties. That doesn't include the families who pick apples and take hayrides on weekends.
Myron and Lois, married 62 years, live in the white, two-story farmhouse where Myron was born 84 years ago. He has survived three heart attacks, but keeps active in the orchard's affairs.
The couple have three children. The oldest, and the only boy, is Loron.
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IF YOU GO
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What: Maplewood Orchard.
Where: 3712 Stubbs Mill Road, Morrow.
Activities: Hayrides to the pumpkin patch are available 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. $5 includes pumpkin. (Call about pumpkin availability after Sunday.) The country store is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m. daily (closes at dark in winter).
Information: (513) 932-7981.
School tours: Monday through Friday in September and October (slots are filled this year). Reservations are taken beginning July 1. Information: (513) 932-7845.
To get there: I-71 north to Exit 32 (Morrow). Turn right on Ohio 123; then immediate right on Phillips Road. At dead end, turn right on Shawhan Road. Go about 1/4 mile and turn left on Stubbs Mill. Orchard is on left.
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Third generation
When he was 21, a newlywed with a few years of college under his belt (but no degree), and in need of more income than the farm could provide, Loron got a job with a Morrow bank.
On his days off, he worked on the farm. Even after he became a bank examiner and traveled throughout Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, he often returned to Maplewood on fall weekends to help out.
In Wilmington one day, a banker who didn't like being told what he was doing wrong, barked: If you're so smart, why aren't YOU running a bank?
"That stuck in my craw," Loron says.
It did until 1978, when he became president of a bank in Brookville, Ind. After 8 1/2 years there and 4 1/2 years running a bank in Williamsburg, Ky. -- and after some shrewd stock purchases that made him a millionaire -- Loron Baker retired, at age 55.
And he and Dixie returned to Maplewood.
Their 80-year-old farmhouse is made of bricks salvaged from the one-room schoolhouse that Loron's father and grandfather attended. Loron and Dixie have two children, Ty and Kathy.
Fourth generation
Kathy is a systems engineer in Houston. Ty lives in Loveland, and sells fasteners for the construction industry. Both were raised at Maplewood.
On fall weekends, 34-year-old Ty drives a weathered Massey-Ferguson tractor that his grandfather bought new in 1960 for $1,000. It pulls the hay wagon that hauls families to the farm's pumpkin patch.
"My boss was out (this month) to take a hayride," Ty says. "He said, "Do you realize how lucky you were, growing up?' "
He knows. He remembers exploring the orchard when he was 5 years old. Walking through fields to grandma's house for dinner. Coming home from school and knowing a treat awaited if he could hear a certain machine -- the one that inserted sticks into hot caramel apples. April Baker, who married Ty three years ago, runs the country store's cash register on weekends. People often tell her it's a family tradition to visit Maplewood in the fall.
Some visitors don't even fill one bag with apples, but they leave satisfied. Because it's not just apples they've come for.
Ty Baker says people want a glimpse of the way things used to be.
A season ends
The trees have been picked clean now, except for the highest branches. Apples didn't grow very big this dry summer, and they dropped earlier than usual this fall.
With morning tours done, Loron Baker stands outside the country market, hands in pockets, pensive.
"It'll reach the point where the city will grow out here and swallow us up," he says.
Already, his family feels pressure. "You can't raise apples or anything else and get the return you would by selling (the land) and taking the money."
But it is no easy thing, putting a price tag on a place like Maplewood. "All of this was put together over many, many years, and a lot of hard work," Loron says.
Ty Baker understands why his father, who could have settled into a comfy retirement, returned instead to the orchard.
"It's kind of like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz," he says. "There's no place like home."
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