Family, Farming and Freedom: Fifty-Five Years of Writings by Irv Reiss

By Stephen W. Reiss

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• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781467053136

Stephen W. Reiss

About the Authors Stephen Reiss and Diana Peterson were married in Peoria, IL on July 10, 1971. Their first son Adam Stephen was born in Peoria on August 8, 1976 and their second son Grant Andrew was born in Peoria on May 19, 1979. Steve has a BS in Electrical Engineering plus an MBA and worked for Caterpillar for 40 years including 5 years in Asia. Diane has a BA in Elementary Education plus a Masters in Guidance and Counseling. She taught 4th grade, ESL, GED, and was Handicap Coordinator for Illinois Central College. The family of four enjoyed living in Seoul for 3.5 years and in Hong Kong for 1.5 years 1987-1991. Here’s our 50th wedding anniversary. Adam married Heather Pottgen on April 26, 2008 in Phoenix, AZ. They have a son William Stephen and daughter Ava Brooke and live in Springfield, IL. They are on the right. Grant married Hany Sober on August 29, 2009 in Peoria, IL. They have a daughter Kayla Marie and a son Blake Saber and live in Chicago, IL. They are on the left. All four grands are co-authors on this second edition.

Book preview

© 2010 Stephen W. Reiss. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 2/25/2010

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4226-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-8873-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5313-6 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 30.99

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION OF FAMILY

INTRODUCTION OF FARMING

INTRODUCTION OF FREEDOM

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS

PIERRE F. GOODRICH

LIBERTY FUND, FROM ITS WEBSITE

WWW.LIBERTYFUND.COM

ANOTHER SULLIVAN CONNECTION

PHOTOGRAPHS

PERSONAL WRITINGS

OBITUARY AND EULOGY OF IRWIN H. REISS

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

This book is a 55-year collection of writings by Irwin Irv H. Reiss. It is titled Family, Farming, and Freedom because those were his three great passions in life. They are common threads running through virtually all of his writings. To better understand who and why he was in each of these areas, we need to look at his background and history in each – consequently there are three sub-introductions which follow.

The other general introduction tidbit appropriate at this point is that all the newspaper articles in this book by or about Irv Reiss appeared in the Sullivan Daily Times of Sullivan, Indiana unless otherwise noted. Current publisher Nancy Gettinger and her parents, Rex and Sally Pierce, before her have been very friendly, supportive, and professional in reporting the news and commentary as it involved Irv Reiss. Nancy was also helpful and supportive in the development of this book. Her newspaper website is www.sullivan-times.com.

INTRODUCTION OF FAMILY

Irv was born on September 18, 1917 upstairs in the rural farmhouse which his grandfather Frank Reiss had built in 1889. That home was adjacent to the log cabin which his great grandfather Adam Reiss built in 1834. His parents were Catherine and George Pop Reiss. Her heritage was Swiss and his was German such that German was the everyday language of the household. Irv was the youngest of three boys and often burdened with double hand-me-downs for shoes and clothes. All three boys spoke German before they learned English.

The family farm of 360 acres lies in Prairie du Long Township of St. Clair County, Illinois. It is twelve miles south of Belleville and a mile east of Floraville. Floraville is a village of 500 where the family worshiped at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ (in German for many years) and where all three boys attended a one-room brick school. All three boys graduated from high school in Belleville.

As farmers, the Reiss family was fairly self-sufficient with a large garden, large orchard, chickens and eggs, and occasionally butchering a hog. Their home had both a regular indoor kitchen and an attached summer kitchen. Cooking was done on a stove which burned wood or corncobs so the stove moved between summer and winter kitchens with the seasons. Farming was done with horses. Pop retired from farming in 1948 at age 75, having never owned a tractor.

Irv and his older brother Frank both graduated from the University of Illinois in Urbana with degrees in Agricultural Economics. The brothers roomed together and worked their ways through college with part time jobs. Frank stayed on, earned his PhD from the U of I, and spent the next 50+ years there as a professor in the Ag Econ Department. Their older brother Bill got a job right out of high school and spent his career with Socony Oil in East St. Louis. Typical daily life on the Reiss family farm is documented in another book published by Author House called Quilter, Granger, Grandma, Matriarch which is the boys’ mother’s daily diary for 1949 through 1953.

Irv had taken advanced ROTC at the U of I and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army upon graduation in 1941. He went through basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and was eventually assigned to Camp Roberts in California. That’s where he met Mary Stephenson on her 21st birthday (March 15, 1942) who had put her college nursing classes on hold to work in the war effort. They were married eight months later on November 8, 1942. Irv was transferred to Washington, DC and to Yale University for more training. The latter is where he learned Mandarin Chinese. Maybe the Army thought a German-speaking lieutenant would be good at any language or maybe they didn’t want him in Europe. So in early 1944 Irv went by aircraft carrier south through the Atlantic Ocean, around Africa, to the Indian subcontinent and eventually to Burma. Mary stayed with her parents in Atascadero, California. She was expecting their first child.

While Irv was serving in Burma, their first son, Stephen, was born June 12, 1944 in California. That’s me so from now on in this book Irv becomes Dad and the pronouns I and we appear. But Dad and I didn’t meet until March 1945 when he returned from fifteen months in India and Burma. He worked on the Ledo-Burma Road contracting for local construction manpower to build this road through the jungle as a supply route for war materiel going to China. It was a lonely assignment working in unbearable heat, humidity, insects, and disease such that his body weight leveled at 120 pounds.

Dad returned home to Mom, regained weight thanks to her home cooking, and they moved to Vista, California where he got a job with the California Avocado Cooperative or Calavo as a field representative. Two more children followed, Kenneth on February 12, 1946 and Mary Kay on November 1, 1947. Now the family is complete but Dad’s career path is cloudy in sunny southern California. Let’s put this family sub-introduction on hold and concentrate on the farming sub-introduction.

INTRODUCTION OF FARMING

By now you know that Dad grew up on an Illinois farm with little mechanization, that he earned a degree agricultural economics from a world class university, that he was exposed to tropical fruit and rice farming in Asia, and that he was employed in the sub-tropical avocado and citrus fruit business in southern California.

The time is now early 1948 and a man named Pierre Goodrich in Indianapolis who is majority owner of a small Indiana coal company wants to upgrade and optimize the farming uses and income of his coal lands. Some of that surface has underground mines, some of it will be strip mined, and some of it has already been strip mined. Goodrich is already a powerful man as the only child of former Indiana governor James P. Goodrich, an intelligent man with a law degree and Phi Beta Kappa key from Harvard University, and a rich man by inheriting the family fortune.

The story goes that Goodrich traveled to the Ag Econ Department at the University of Illinois and asked, Who is your best graduate in the last ten years? That’s how he got Dad’s name and address in Vista, California. Letters and phone calls followed. Dad visited Indianapolis and the coal lands in early 1948 but turned down the job offer to become general manager of Meadowlark Farms which farmed about 25,000 acres of Indiana and Illinois coal lands. His family was comfortable in California where his wife had grown up and where his career path was promising.

But six months later a rare frost hit southern California causing significant damage to avocado and citrus groves and planting doubts in Dad’s mind about where he should live and work. He sent an anonymous gift package of avocados to Goodrich in Indianapolis. This not-so-subtle message worked. More phone calls and letters followed as did a sweetened job offer. Long story short, our family relocated to Sullivan, Indiana where the coal company’s fledgling Meadowlark Farms was based. We arrived in late 1948 just in time for one of the worst winters in the Midwest.

Dad worked many long days with his small office staff and frequently visited his regional farm managers at mine sites in Indiana and Illinois. He guided Meadowlark Farms to its first profit in his third year. He upgraded livestock by introducing purebred breeding stock and helped market the Meadowlark Farms name by showing their prize animals at state fairs. He documented their grain, hay, and livestock successes, especially on reclaimed coal mine lands, with articles in various trade journals which appear later in this book.

Dad’s career blossomed with Meadowlark. He was promoted to Executive Vice-president and then to President of Meadowlark Farms. He was added to the board of directors of the parent coal company, Ayrshire Collieries. He assumed environmental duties when the coal company later expanded into ultra high-volume mining in Wyoming. He also had oversight responsibility for 1.2 million acres of open cattle range land in northwest Australia which the parent company leased for about twenty years. He traveled to Australia twice a year, took Mom along on half those trips, and added lots of sightseeing stops en route which became fodder for later writings.

Outside of work, Dad was active in Rotary International (and named a Paul Harris Fellow), the Sullivan Elks, and the Masonic Shrine in Terre Haute. He served six years on the Sullivan School Board, twelve years on the Sullivan Lake and Park Board, and was either a deacon or elder in the Sullivan Presbyterian Church forever.

The remaining paragraphs below mention overview history of Ayrshire Collieries and its successor company AMAX just to round out the coal company picture beyond Meadowlark Farms. This history mentions names and places which we heard around our family dinner table and it carries on to the early 1980s when Dad formally retired in 1982 at age 65. These words were published at the 1995 annual meeting of the AMAX Coal Company Twenty Year Club which has since dissolved.

Our history takes us from the days of animal-drawn plows, used to remove overburden, to today’s dragline capable of removing as much as 175 cubic yards of overburden in one sweep and trucks capable of hauling 240 tons of material. Underground mining techniques have become just as efficient and mechanized. Today’s coal miner bears little resemblance to his predecessors of the early 1900s.

AMAX Coal Industries can trace its roots back to the year 1851, when David Ingle settled in southern Indiana near Evansville and soon thereafter began to mine coal in that area. Ingle came to Indiana from a small town in Scotland named Ayrshire and it was this name he gave his first shaft operation begun in 1900. By 1917, Ingle had developed Ayrshire Mine No. 8, the latest in a long line of shaft operations. In 1927, Electric Shovel Coal Corporation (formerly Mid-Continent Coal Corporation) purchased David Ingle’s Ayrshire Mine No. 8 and, in 1928, the mine was converted to a surface operation.

In 1939 Ayrshire Patoka Collieries relocated its offices from Danville, Illinois to Indianapolis, Indiana, leasing an extremely small area on the fourth floor of the Big Four Building at 105 South Meridian Street. The building’s name was derived from its four occupants: The Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and St. Louis Railroad Companies which were four of the country’s largest at that time.

The president of the newly formed company was Col. Robert P. Koenig. In 1935, Col. Koenig had conducted a survey as an independent engineer for the directors of Electric Shovel Coal Corp. and made several recommendations for the company. As president, Koenig began to put many of those recommendations into practice, such as equipment rehabilitation, reorganization of capital structure, and a program of land acquisition and development which would form the foundation for the successful growth of the company for many years to come.

By 1943, the new company had several mines operating, including the Flamingo Mine near Fairview in Fulton County, Illinois which was run as a subsidiary, Fairview Collieries Corporation. This mine was viewed at that time as the most modern, up-to-date surface mine in Illinois, if not the entire Midwest.

Also in 1943, the board of directors of Ayrshire Patoka Collieries voted to remove the Indian portion of the company’s name in the interest of simplicity. Thus, Ayrshire Collieries was born – perhaps one of the more familiar names in the company’s history to employees today.

Even though Ayrshire was a successful company by 1940 standards, the production seems small today. For the year ending June 30, 1944 production at Ayrshire Collieries was 2.4 million tons and at Fairview Collieries 1.1 million tons. AMAX Coal Industries and its subsidiaries produced over 44.8 million tons in 1991 by comparison.

From 1939 until 1969, for 30 years Ayrshire Collieries was an important factor in Midwest coal production, occupying the eleventh position in total production in the United States by 1969.

In 1969 a milestone occurred, American Metal Climax, Inc. (now AMAX Inc.) indicated it was very interested in acquiring the company. By October of that year, the deal was completed. This was the beginning of possibly more dramatic changes than Ayrshire Collieries had experienced to date. AMAX made no secret they wanted to commence a rapid-growth program. Under the new ownership, Ayrshire Collieries was renamed Ayrshire Coal Company. In 1972, the company was renamed again and became AMAX Coal Company.

From 1971 to 1974, four mines were brought into operation by AMAX Coal Company. The opening of Belle Ayr Mine in mid-1973 in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin presented some of the biggest challenges the company had ever faced, considering the mine’s size and the fact that this was AMAX Coal’s first experience outside its traditional Midwest base.

The three other mines brought into operation between 1971 and 1974 were Leahy Mine which began operations in 1971; the Wabash Mine which produced its first coal in 1973 launching AMAX Coal Company’s first underground mining venture, and Ayrshire Mine which got underway in 1974.

By 1975, AMAX Coal Company ranked third in the production of coal in the United States. From eleventh position in 1969 to third by 1975 speaks for itself. In 1978, the Eagle Butte Mine was opened becoming the company’s second largest surface mine in the Powder River Basin, increasing the production capacity of the West to well over 26 million tons a year.

The early 1980s well through the mid-1980s was a very challenging period for the coal industry in general and AMAX Coal in particular. The rising cost of doing business, fluctuating market conditions, costly new federal mining laws, and increased competition presented persistent obstacles to the continued economic viability of the company. The challenges were met head-on by management and employees alike. The company’s operating philosophy became one of improved product quality, better customer service, and competitive pricing through increased productivity and lower operating costs. This philosophy served us well, helping to maintain AMAX’s leadership position in the industry and making coal a major earnings contributor to its parent company.

INTRODUCTION OF FREEDOM

The year is now 1960 and the same Pierre Goodrich made another bold move but this time outside of his normal activities as the majority owner of Ayrshire Collieries. He established Liberty Fund as a private, educational foundation to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. To this day the Foundation continues to develop, supervise, and finance its own educational conferences and publications to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring issues pertaining to liberty. This is done through the implementation of different programs. For example Liberty Fund annually conducts over 165 conferences throughout the United States, Canada, Latin America, and Europe. Liberty Fund also publishes as many as 20 books each year on the general subject of liberty.

So Liberty Fund was established in 1960 and Dad was named to its board of directors as one of several founder members at the direction of Pierre Goodrich. Those duties included bi-monthly board meetings in Indianapolis and monitoring conferences of his choice which Liberty Fund sponsored around the US and in other nations. This was an incredible opportunity for Dad because he loved liberty, he loved to travel, and he loved to talk and write about both. He made frequent use of his Liberty Fund opportunities, especially after he retired from Meadowlark Farms in 1982.

Pierre Goodrich sold his majority interest in Ayrshire Collieries in 1969 to American Metal Climax or AMAX and expanded his endowment to Liberty Fund. That endowment increased again in 1973 when Pierre Goodrich died and left most of his estate to the fund. These expansions allowed Liberty Fund to sponsor more sophisticated conferences which included world leaders, Nobel laureates, authors, and other folks with significant liberty awareness.

For years Dad and Mom would attend three or four domestic conferences annually and that many more outside the United States. He met folks like Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Rockefeller, Milton Friedman, Jimmy Carter, and dozens of other famous folks which he would often name drop into casual conversations. He really enjoyed the incredible philosophical and travel opportunities which his position within Liberty Fund afforded. At the same time he was passionate about the goals and objectives of Liberty Fund and would also frequently work them into casual conversations and written articles.

DEDICATION

This book must be dedicated to my dad, Irwin H. Reiss, because he wrote all of these words and really walked the talk when it came to his three passions of family, farming, and freedom. He found it very easy to initiate conversations on these subjects with virtually anyone who wanted to listen and even some that didn’t. His passions were very obvious, very consistent, and very sincere.

But there is another person to whom this book must be dedicated and that is my mom, Mary L. Reiss. Not only did she share nearly all of these experiences with her husband and frequently serve as his sounding board on most subjects, but she also typed most of the rough and finished drafts of everything Dad wrote. There are 161,000 words in this book and over 920,000 individual typewriter keystrokes. She used manual and then electric typewriters but never computer word processing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Pay special attention to all the photographs in the book and then thank my brother Ken Reiss who put that part of this book together. Ken is our self-appointed family photo archivist. He has digitized literally thousands of family photos from old black and white photos, old negatives, color slides, plus new digital pictures he has taken himself. His favorite project is to expand our comprehensive family tree by adding photos of each relative as he can find them. I’m impressed with Ken’s energy, expertise, and enthusiasm. Thanks, bro.

Steve

PROFESSIONAL WRITINGS

2/24/1949 Manages Large Farm Project on Open Cut Mine Land

The Millstadt (Illinois) Enterprise

Irwin Reiss, Farm Management Specialist, recently returned from the west coast, has been appointed as general manager of Meadowlark Farms, Inc., according to an announcement received from Robert P. Koenig, president of Meadowlark and of Ayrshire Collieries Corporation, of which Meadowlark is a subsidiary.

Meadowlark Farms operates properties in Vermillion, Clay, Sullivan, and Pike Counties in Indiana, and Perry and Fulton Counties in Illinois, on coal-bearing land already mined or held in reserve for future mining operations.

Formed only three years ago, Meadowlark already has in operation a widely varied agricultural program designed to maintain reserve land in a high level of agricultural production and to place mined land to its best possible use as soon as possible after completion of mining operations. In the latter connection, Meadowlark has extensive experimental work underway at several of its properties.

Near Clinton, in Vermillion County, Indiana, a purebred herd of Hampshire hogs has been established on mined land, and near the Patoka Mine in Pike County, Indiana, a nursery project is in full swing.

At Meadowlark’s Denmark Farms in Perry County, Illinois, attention is being centered on production of fine sheep and cattle. There are 1,000 breeding ewes on the Denmark Farms and 80 purebred Angus cattle have been imported from Canada to serve as foundation stock for a purebred beef herd. In addition there are 360 head of good feeder stock on which feeding experiments are being conducted to determine the economic factors involved in feeding roughage rather than corn on lands where the topography indicates best adaptability to pasture.

In Fulton County, Illinois, Meadowlark’s present operation primarily is a feeder cattle project, with more than 200 head now on pasture. Also in Fulton County cross-breeding experiments are being conducted with Dexter cattle, a small breed with long horns originally brought here from England.

On all of the properties extensive agronomy test plots are now in use, seeded with many mixtures of grasses and legumes in a scientifically controlled attempt to determine best species and mixtures to use in planting the banks of land already mined.

As one of the important possible by-products of open cut mining is lakes, a series of experiments is being conducted throughout already-mined areas in which the product is fish, in an attempt to determine various aspects of commercial fish production.

Mr. Reiss, the new Meadowlark manager, is a native of Illinois, having been born and reared on a farm near Floraville in St. Clair County. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois, where he received a degree in agricultural economics and did graduate work in farm management.

A veteran with four and one-half years service in the U. S. Army during the last war, Mr. Reiss spent much of that time in the China-Burma-India Theater, serving as a Chinese linguist along the Ledo-Burma Road.

For the past three years Mr. Reiss held an important post with the Calavo Growers of California, a cooperative fruit marketing agency serving international markets. He resided at Vista, California, known as the avocado center of the United States.

Mr. Reiss, his wife and three children, have purchased a home in Sullivan, Ind., where Meadowlark headquarters is located. He is a son of Mr. and Mrs. George Reiss of near Floraville. We presume these farms are on strip mine property and therefore this article is of interest to this community.

2/25/1949 Meadowlark Farms Name New Manager

Appointment of Irwin Reiss, farm management specialist, as general manager of Meadowlark Farms, Inc., was announced today by Robert P. Koenig, president of Meadowlark and of Ayrshire Collieries Corporation, of which Meadowlark is a subsidiary.

Meadowlark Farms operates properties in Vermillion, Clay, Sullivan, and Pike Counties in Indiana and Perry and Fulton Counties in Illinois on coal-bearing land already mined or held in reserve for future mining operations.

Mr. Reiss, the new Meadowlark manager, is a native of Illinois, having been born and reared on a farm near Freeburg in St. Clair County. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois where he received a degree in agricultural economics and did graduate work in farm management.

A veteran with four and one-half years service in the U. S. Army during the last war, Mr. Reiss spent much of that time in the China-Burma-India Theater, serving as a Chinese linguist along the Ledo-Burma Road.

For the past three years Mr. Reiss held an important post with the Calavo Growers of California, a cooperative fruit marketing agency serving international markets. He resided at Vista, Cal., known as the avocado center of the United States. Mr. Reiss, his wife and three children have purchased a home in Sullivan, Ind., where Meadowlark headquarters is located.

2/28/1949 Letter from Robert P. Koenig,

President of Ayrshire Collieries Corporation

Dear Irv:

Upon your taking over the active management of Meadowlark, I want you to know that we send you our best wishes for the success of your organization. I feel certain that you can do it, and I want you to know that if there is any way in which any of us can help you, we will be only too glad to do so.

With very best wishes.

Sincerely yours,

Bob Koenig

4/17/1949 Agricultural Surgery

The Indianapolis Times

Agricultural surgery today is closing the gaping wounds left in Hoosier soil by the draglines of strip mining. The holes and the sterile ridges of earth once left in the wake of man’s mad scramble for coal are becoming productive of crops once more.

Just three years ago directors of Ayrshire Collieries, a sprawling coal empire in Indiana and Illinois, determined to bring life back to the scourged areas. Meadowlark Farms, Inc., was created with headquarters in Sullivan, Ind. A month ago, go-getting, 31-year-old Irwin H. Reiss was named general manager with control over some 25,000 acres and upward of 75 employees in the two states.

For years the powerful machinery of mining companies has torn the topsoil from black diamond veins, piled it in towering serrated heaps. Then the giant shovels bit deep into the precious coal deposits. A seam exhausted, the shovels moved on, leaving some holes nearly 100 feet deep. The mutilated earth was mute evidence of giant industrial efforts. Waste land was the by-product.

Today alfalfa is growing on the spoil slopes, fish are teeming in lakes formed by run-off water in dammed valleys, trees are stretching skyward and purebred Hampshire hogs graze the ridges.

Principal efforts to date are being made in Clay, Pike, Vermillion, and Sullivan Counties. The Clinton Farm near Clinton, Ind., gives a cross-section of nearly every operation within the project. Here have been planted thousands of trees from the company’s million-tree nursery in Pike County. Some 162,000 trees were put out this spring alone.

Meanwhile, airplanes have criss-crossed the barren slopes sowing seeds. Sows have farrowed hundreds of litters and baby pigs are adding pounds on young vegetation and grain grown on company plowable land.

While the gigantic land utilization program is bringing beauty and productivity back to Hoosier soil, the farm subsidiary of Ayrshire Collieries is operated strictly on a business basis.

It will be several years before Meadowlark will be active in the sale of stock, fish, and Christmas trees. More years must pass before slower growing trees will be ready for the saw as commercial lumber. But the program is not alone that of reclaiming stripped land. Much acreage covering valuable coal deposits is being farmed to the day the shovel moves in. Scientific farming is the creed. Slowly the healing work of man is bringing beauty back to the face of Indiana once so scarred.

12/31/1949 Champion Sow To be Star In Voice of America Show

The Indianapolis Star

Sullivan, Ind – The State Department wants the world to know about America’s champion mother of 129 pigs. Ringgold Lady Dora, 600-pound Hampshire sow, is going to be a star on the Voice of America broadcast.

Irwin H. Reiss, general manager of Meadowlark Farms, Inc., Sullivan, said the State Department asked for the story of the sow after she set an all-time record of having nine litters of pigs accepted for production registry. Ringgold Lady Dora received her ninth registration by raising a litter of 10 pigs, farrowed Oct. 6 on the Clinton Farm in Vermillion County, to a litter weight of 369 pounds by weaning time. Nine of the 10 pigs qualified for registration.

The champion mother sow is one of a group of 260 on the Clinton Farm, owned by the Ayrshire Collieries, Indianapolis. The Ayrshire farms’ operation is centered here at Meadowlark.

The bluebook of swine breeders registers any sow that raises eight pigs to a weight of at least 320 pounds in 56 days. Half of the pigs must meet registration standards.

The sow has won production registry for nine of her 11 litters and has raised an average of 9.5 pigs a litter. The national average is slightly more than six pigs a litter raised to weaning. Ringgold Lady Dora’s sixth qualifying litter of seven boars and three gilts sold for $4,365.

The sow was valued at $1,025 when she was purchased by Meadowlark in the fall of 1948 from the William R. Goodheart Farms of Easton, Ohio. Claude Sisson, manager of the Clinton Farm, has fed the sow prior to farrowing on a ration of corn, oats, pelletized dairy products, alfalfa pasture and alfalfa meal.

2/25/1952 Press Release from Meadowlark Farms, Inc.

Appointment of Irwin Reiss, farm management specialist, to become general manager of Meadowlark Farms, was announced today by Robert P. Koenig, president of Meadowlark and of Ayrshire Collieries Corporation of which Meadowlark is a subsidiary.

Meadowlark Farms operates properties in Vermillion, Clay, Sullivan, and Pike Counties in Indiana and Perry and Fulton Counties in Illinois on coal-bearing land already mined or held in reserve for future mining operations.

Formed only three years ago, Meadowlark already has in operation a widely varied agricultural program designed to maintain reserve land in a high level of agricultural production and to place mined land to its best possible use as soon as possible after completion of mining operations. In the latter connection, Meadowlark has extensive experimental work underway at several of its properties.

Near Clinton in Vermillion County, Indiana a purebred herd of Hampshire hogs has been established on mined land, and near the Patoka Mine in Pike County, Indiana a nursery project is in full swing.

At Meadowlark’s Denmark Farms in Perry County, Illinois attention is being centered on production of fine sheep and cattle. There are 1,000 breeding ewes on the Denmark Farms and 80 purebred Angus cattle have been imported from Canada to serve as foundation stock for a purebred beef herd. In addition there are 360 head of good feeder stock on which feeding experiments are being conducted to determine the economic factors involved in feeding roughage rather than corn on lands where the topography indicates best adaptability to pasture.

In Fulton County, Illinois Meadowlark’s present operation primarily is a feeder cattle project with more than 200 head now on pasture. Also in Fulton County cross-breeding experiments are being conducted with Dexter cattle, a small breed with long horns originally brought here from England.

On all of the properties extensive agronomy test plots are now in use, seeded with many mixtures of grasses and legumes in a scientifically controlled attempt to determine best species and mixtures to use in planting the banks of land already mined.

As one of the important possible byproducts of open cut mining is lakes, a series of experiments is being conducted throughout already-mined areas in the production of fish in an attempt to determine various aspects of commercial fish production.

Mr. Reiss, the new Meadowlark general manager, is a native of Illinois, having been born and reared on a farm near Freeburg in St. Clair County. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois where he received a degree in agricultural economics and did graduate work in farm management.

A veteran with four and one-half years service in the U.S. Army during the last war, Mr. Reiss spent much of that time in the China India Burma Theater serving as a Chinese linguist along the Ledo-Burma Road.

For the past three years, Mr. Reiss held an important post with the Calavo Growers of California Cooperative fruit marketing agency serving international markets. He resided in Vista, California known as the avocado center of the United States.

Mr. Reiss, his wife and three children, have purchased a home in Sullivan, Indiana where Meadowlark headquarters is located.

4/28/1952 Reiss named vice-president

James W. Morgan, president of Ayrshire Collieries Corp., has announced that Meadowlark Farms general manager Irwin Reiss has been elected vice-president of that company.

8/1952 Strip Mine Farming

Meadowlark Farms, Inc.

22-page pamphlet with photos written by Irv Reiss

Foreword – This is the story of Meadowlark Farms. Meadowlark is a unique endeavor in the history of agriculture and industry – unique in agriculture because the purpose of Meadowlark and the soil with which it works are altogether new in the ancient art of farming; unique in industry because Meadowlark does not exist by and of itself: Meadowlark is part of the Ayrshire family of companies whose principal activity is the mining of bituminous coal and the sale and distribution of solid fuels of all types.

Strip mine companies are necessarily large land owners. Ayrshire Collieries Corporation and its coal mining affiliates, Fairview Collieries Corporation and Delta Collieries Corporation, control 57,270 acres of Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. Some of this land has been mined. Much of it is in process of mining. A great deal more will not be mined for years to come.

Meadowlark’s job is to put to economic use these thousands of acres of Ayrshire land. The soil – of the mined land and the unmined submarginal land – is initially some of the least promising on which farming has ever been attempted. Meadowlark’s story is an account of this attempt. This story and this work are dedicated to all who work with the soil, to those in particular who strive to restore wasteland to farmsteads and eroded plains to wheat fields.

MEADOWLARK FARMS, Inc.

Irwin H. Reiss, General Manager

STRIP MINE FARMING

For many years we have been working to determine whether some profitable agricultural use might be made of spoil banks. We had the idea that reclamation necessarily included the economic utilization of stripped land, that reclaiming made sense only when the restored land possessed economic value. In 1946, Meadowlark Farms, Inc. was organized to implement this idea. Our work at Meadowlark is directed to the creation of farms, wherever possible, which will support farm families and be a source of wealth to the community. A farm project of wide scope is underway, encompassing maximum use of soil of spoil banks and reserve coal lands that are tillable and capable of bearing crops, tests to determine crops best suited to refertilizing lands now unproductive, and the raising of many kinds of livestock to discover those best suited to particular conditions. It is a long range plan, far from realization, but we have reached a point in our work where we believe we can speak with optimism of some of our projects. We would like to tell you about those projects, and about other land work we are doing.

Surface mining has become so well known that most people know what spoil banks are. Though stripped land necessarily comprises a very small percentage of the total land area even where stripping is most concentrated, many of you have seen strip mined areas. In coal stripping, the overlying layers of earth are removed and placed to one side by power shovels. When the last of the coal seam has been lifted out, the spoil banks remain, barren masses of earth, rock, slate, and shale, heaped in furrows as though turned by some Bunyanesque plow scouring 50 to 60 feet deep. With the topsoil lost, ability of the new surface to support plant growth is either very low or limited. In the turned up spoil there are rock and fine particles, but none of the organic matter or humus beneficial to plant growth. Humus is formed by the growing and falling of plants to form good, productive soil. Wherever the chemical and physical nature of the soil looks promising, we are trying to speed up the accumulation of organic matter in the surface and to put the land to the highest type use during the period in which topsoil is being established. The best spoil banks from a reclamation standpoint have an ample supply of lime, phosphate, and potash, favorable soil texture and structure, and are either neutral or slightly acid. But even under these most favorable conditions, the ground is in hills and valleys which defy cultivation; nitrogen nearly always is lacking. In most instances the soil is acid, low in primary inorganic nutrients, and of heavy clay texture. Large rock fragments cover much of the surface.

We began by classifying our spoil lands according to inherent nutrient value, soil structure, land contour, and acidity. Soil analyses were made; test plots were planted with strips of grasses and legumes, fruit trees, broadleaf trees and conifers, grapes, and berries. Our purpose was to determine as nearly as possible the limits of feasible development of each spoil type. From this information we devised a working program for each of our properties based on the soil potentialities and marketability of the product we expected the land to yield. In general, we have tried to determine our projects with an eye to the market for farm products in the area of our operations. At the same time we realize that our large land areas give unusual opportunities for conservation development. In 1943 we employed the late Colonel Richard Lieber, founder of Indiana’s State Park System, to make for us a comprehensive study of the conservation uses to which stripped land could be put. He continued this study until his death in 1944. His study and consultation during this period guided us in starting our program of land use.

Much publicity has been accorded Ayrshire’s 300 acres of stripped land in Vermillion County, Indiana which Meadowlark has transformed into its Clinton Farm. The fertility level of the mined area compared to that of farmland in the county is quite low; however, analysis showed the availability of many minerals in the spoil area which are not found in adjacent undisturbed topsoil, and the soil is either neutral or substantially neutral – pH 6.5 to 7.0 – and will support legumes. The many sizeable lakes created by stripping pointed to the possible development of this region as pasture land.

We decided to attempt the establishment of pasture on this spoil and to harvest the forage by putting hogs to feed on the pasture land. In deciding on hogs we went somewhat contrary to the general belief that only ruminant livestock can utilize roughage and pasture effectively but we were convinced that such use could be accomplished and we were very much motivated by the fact that a high grade, purebred herd would be a valuable asset to the Clinton community.

After test patches grew satisfactorily, an initial 200 acres were sown to alfalfa and clover by plane. Later on, spoil ridges were knocked off to give the land an undulating topography, and subsequent sowing has been by tractor. Basic seed mixture is 5 lbs of alfalfa and 5 lbs of sweet clover, yellow and white, with a mixture of brome grass, orchard grass, and timothy often added. Miles of wire fencing form pasture areas and feeding lots.

When the pasture was ready for grazing, Meadowlark moved to its Clinton Farm a purebred Hampshire herd purchased from the Goodheart Farms in Ohio. The herd has served as a demonstration unit of the potentialities of the type of spoil of the Vermillion County region. The many minerals in the virgin spoil have contributed to the development of strong, sound-boned breeding hogs. The spoil banks are neither limed nor fertilized. One hundred purebred Hampshire sows, besides 1,500 shoats, now graze the spoil banks. The hogs gather enough of the green leaves to save 40 per cent of the protein in the supplement. Corn, ground oats, and wheat, and the protein supplement (800 lbs. meat scrap, 200 lbs. linseed meal, 200 lbs. cottonseed meal, 400 lbs. soybean meal, 200 lbs. minerals and salt, and 200 lbs. Alfalfa meal) are fed to the hogs from self-feeders located out in the spoils. Individual farrowing houses are also set out in the pasture.

The farrowing system is interesting. The farm has 3 central Quonset barns – the biggest, a 40’ by 100’ steel building is the central farrowing house. When the sow is near farrowing, she is brought in to the central farrowing house, scrubbed with soap and water, and then placed in an individual pen that has been steam-cleaned and disinfected. Thirty litters can be handled in the farrowing house at one time. Our 100 Hampshire sows averaged 7.5 pigs per litter on a two-litter per year schedule in both 1950 and 1951; the national average is 6.3 pigs per litter.

As some significant citation of the quality of our spoil nurtured herd, you will be interested to know that at the 1951 Illinois State Fair, Meadowlark took third place on yearling sows; second and fourth on junior yearling sows; second and third on senior spring gilts, fifth on young herd; fifth on get of sire, and third on production of dam. At the 1951 Indiana State Farm, Meadowlark placed second on senior yearling sows; first on junior yearling sows, and also had the Reserve Senior Champion sow. At the National Barrow Show in Austin, Minnesota, with competition entered from all over the United States, Meadowlark placed fifth for its truck load entry of 15 barrows, 2 boars, and 2 gilts. Security 500, a boar produced at Clinton Farm, was the grand-champion at the Oregon State Fair, and grand-champion at the 1951 Pacific International.

We are particularly proud of Brilliant Miss Royalty, queen of Clinton Farm sows. America’s champion production sow is her impressive title, the first sow of any breed to qualify for a tenth star in production registry books. Brilliant Miss Royalty has qualified 10 litters in a row for production registry, raising a total of 102 pigs to weaning age. To qualify for production registry as conducted by the breed associations, a sow must raise a litter of at least 8 pigs to a minimum weight of 320 pounds within 56 days. They must be approved breed type, free from fault and defect, and at least half of them eligible for registry. Brilliant Miss Royalty’s 10 qualifying litters averaged 392 lbs. at 56 days. Ringgold Lady Dora, another purebred Clinton sow, has been featured in national and international press releases on livestock, and has been mentioned in Voice of America broadcasts as the claiming international champion up to the time her record was broken by Brilliant Miss Royalty. Our two sows are the only ones of any breed so far to qualify either nine or ten times. Fashion King G, Clinton Farms’ prize boar, has won three PR stars, making him one of the seven boars in the United States to achieve that record.

Purebred hogs have been sold from Clinton Farm to breeders from Oregon to South Carolina and from Georgia to Canada. Sales of purebreds and commercial hogs are held in Meadowlark’s auction barn near Centenary, Indiana four times each year. Gross income from all hog sales in 1951 was $82,307 and in 1950 was $53,089. In addition to the measurable return received on the disposal of stock, we believe the Clinton Farm is making a significant contribution to the improvement of the Hampshire breed and is an outstanding example of one type of spoil bank use.

In the coming year we plan to change our Clinton Farm program a little. Up to now we have concentrated on the upgrading of our purebred stock and the sale of purebred animals. We find, however, that in the Indiana-Illinois region near Clinton there is a large demand by farmers for purebred grade stock but that the need does not warrant the premium prices for registered hogs. We are going to vary our operations this year to tap that demand. Specifically, we are going to mass produce hogs of purebred grade so that these animals can be sold at prices competitive with lower quality stock. Our herd is large enough and we have sufficient pasture area that we can carry on a flexible program of hog raising which can be directed either principally to purebred development or principally to farm-stock. Availability of such quality stock at low price will be of substantial value to the whole Clinton region and spoil banks will thereby have made their contribution to the community.

A type of stripped land use similar to that at Clinton is underway at our Chinook Farm near Brazil, Indiana where we are developing a farm for commercial pork production. From this farm some 1,000 choice hogs are now marketed annually at top prices. However, at Chinook spoil use is being carried one step further than at Clinton. Some of our Chinook spoils are largely glacial till containing an abundance of calcareous material which we believe can be improved to yield grain crops. Feed costs make up a third of our cash outlay so it is both economy and right along the line of our program that we attempt to make Chinook a more integrated farm by using our strip land both for pasture and for production of our own grain. A test plot of 50 acres was graded last fall. Rye and timothy were sowed to hold the soil and create organic matter and then will serve as a nurse crop for sweet clover. A large area of virgin pasture land, our own grain crops, and the use of our Clinton purebred to improve our Chinook stock will make the Chinook Farm a highly self-sustained producer of quality grade commercial pork. But more importantly, profitable operation of the Chinook Farm on the basis we are pursuing will have raised spoil land reclamation to a higher plane of economic use than has been heretofore held practical for the type of strip mined land of Clay County.

If Meadowlark’s tests with synthetic sow milk are successful, another familiar farm scene will change. Years ago no farmyard was complete without its mother hen and her scurrying brood of chicks. The brooder has changed that. With some of the manufacturers of synthetic sow milk, Meadowlark has been trying to find out if it is possible to separate three-day old pigs from the sow and feed the baby pigs on synthetic milk. If the experiments works, then no more will you see the old sow followed about the pen by her squealing youngsters. The new pigs, after only three days, would begin a life of hygienic comfort with controlled temperatures, controlled feeding, and no crowding or mashing. The sow meanwhile all material obligations past, would go back to farrowing a new litter.

At our Fairview Farm in Fulton County, Illinois we sowed to legumes 1,000 acres of waste spoil land whose sharp peaks had been knocked off by bulldozer. Again initial seeding was by plane, but later sowing has been by a power seeder mounted on a tractor. Growth of alfalfa, birdsfoot, and lespedeza have been successful. This area is now 1,000 acres of good pasture. Seeding cost $18 per acre; boundary line and division fences cost another $6.50 per acre; $45,000 went into barns, buildings, water systems, and other facilities. Because clover and grass stands have been heavy, our Fairview pasture has had no trouble with weeds.

Fairview Farm pasture land is used principally to graze feeder cattle. In the 1951 pasture season, 219 head of yearling steers and heifers made an average daily gain of 1.6 pounds for a total of 44,928 pounds of beef. Figured conservatively at $0.35 per pound, this gain is valued at $15,724 gross. No losses occurred. We attribute the good beef growth from spoil land pasture compared to the lower yield generally achieved in the Midwest to the fact that the leaching of the original natural phosphate and potash undoubtedly has been less in the low lying earth strata. When deep lying earth was heaved up by the shovels, its nutritional content became available for the first time. On his farm near our Fairview property, Mr. Byron Somers made an informative test of the nutritional value of spoil pasture. In addition to his occupation as mine superintendent of a leading Illinois coal mining company, Mr. Somers is a long-time farmer whose utilization of spoil land has pioneered much of the accomplishment in this type work and has contributed a great deal to the direction of our own efforts. He matched the gain of feeder cattle on mined land pasture with gain of the same type and age stock on adjacent undisturbed bluegrass pasture. Cattle on his mined land gained 310 pounds per animal in 199 days – the bluegrass pasture produced 232 pounds per head in the same time.

At Fairview we are getting into our most ambitious program. Soil tests showed an inherent abundance of phosphate and potash. The spoil banks were not acid. Soil texture was good. Organic matter and nitrogen were, of course, completely absent. We decided to try to develop an area for row crop farming by introducing humus through successive growing and plowing under of stands of grasses and legumes. We graded 87 acres, plowed, and prepared it for planting. Forty acres are now in certified Buffalo alfalfa for hay and seed production; the balance is in wheat and will be seeded to alfalfa. Obviously you cannot apply this technique to all spoil banks – a substantial proportion of stripped land is either too acid to support this type growth initially or its soil structure is not suitable for higher type farming. Even where soil and climate are potentially conducive to row crop culture, it is certainly not economic nor even desirable in our estimation to grade the entire area. The superior water holding ability of spoil banks is an asset of considerable value to any Midwest farm. What we contemplate as the highest type utilization of strip land is that the spoil area be developed as an integrated, self-sustaining farmstead or for very large areas, into a number of such farm units, with each unit containing abundant un-graded pasture for cattle or hogs, a semi-graded grain production field, and an area fully graded for row crops and houses, barns, and pens. The results of the work we now have underway at Fairview Farm will indicate how far this idea can be utilized practically. On the one hand, this aim will not satisfy those whose purpose is nothing less than the complete leveling of all spoil land. On the