The First Generation
In the late 1800’s Rudolph Luther and his family moved to America from Switzerland. Although his family continued on to Kansas, Rudolph decided to settle in the small community of Richfield, Ohio, where he managed a few farms around town. In the spring of 1900, he purchased 100 acres for $3600.00. The farm was a dairy farm with about a dozen milking cows. Rudolph and his wife, Mary, had five children over a 25 year span. When their eldest, Edward, was 18, Rudolph purchased another 100 acres of land that is now Luther Farm.
The Second Generation
Edward rented this farm from his father and moved into the farmhouse and began the business of farming. Nine years later, he married Eva White. They had six children, five who survived, but suffered the loss of their house in a fire in 1915. They lived in a grainary with their small children while their house was being rebuilt. Eva made sure her children were well educated, making sure every one of them graduated from high school. Plows were pulled by work horses and the cows were milked by hand. In 1930, Eva began the chicken and egg business. Edward and his son, Rudy, ran the daily chores of the farm. The farm went modern in 1936 and was wired for electricity. The purchase of electric milking machines certainly changed the chore of milking. 1940 brought the purchased of the first tractor, a Farmall H and the team of horses were sold. It wasn’t long after Rudolph’s death that Mary sold the 100 acre farm to her son, Edward for the sum of $10.00. The very next year Mary passed away.
The Third Generation
Rudy married a friend of his sisters, Helen Boughton. He was the one that decided to upgrade his mother’s egg and poultry business by building a double deck chicken house and sparked the idea to sell eggs door to door in Brecksville and Parma. In 1945, Edward, Rudy, and Art (Rudy’s brother) formed a three way partnership with the farm. A second tractor was purchased, dairy cows were replaced with Black Angus cattle, barns were built, a silo was purchased and each partner built their home on the farm Edward was named Farmer of the Year by the Cleveland Farmer’s Club in 1957. It was during this time that Rudy and Helen raised seven children. Two of their sons, Robert and Eddie, joined the ranks of farmers. In 1964, the farm built a caged and automated chicken house that housed 9,000 chickens that produced 6,000 eggs per day.
The Fourth Generation
In 1970, Robert married Diane and soon became a partner in the farm. Rudy was paralyzed due to a farming accident in 1972 – while dismantling a grain bin in Medina, he fell from the ladder. Robert stepped up and took over Rudy’s farming duties. It was eight years later that Robert and his younger brother, Eddie, purchased their uncle’s farm share to form the three way partnership with their parents, Rudy and Helen. Robert and Diane raised five children at the same time Eddie married Gale and raised four boys. Both Robert and Eddie were very active in the Summit County Farm Bureau. In fact, Robert was President for many years. Although Rudy passed away in 1990, it was business as usual for his sons. It was 1993 when they decided to abandon the poultry facet of the business and focus on cash crops and the beef market, and opened a small roadside farm market. It wasn’t long after that, Robert’s son, Tim, joined the operation. Luther Farm celebrated 100 years of farming with an open house and dinner in 2000, looking back on the many avenues of farming over the years: fruit orchards, maple syrup, poultry, dairy and beef cattle, meat processing, lumber production with the saw mill, crop production, hunting and trapping, beekeeping, and snowplowing.
The Fifth Generation
When Eddie passed away after suffering with ALS for four years, in 2006, Robert and Tim continued to run the farm. Once Eddie’s son, Andy, graduated from high school, he joined Robert and Tim in the farm operation. Robert is now semi-retired from farming although he is always around to help when needed. Tim and Andy keep busy with beef cattle, planting and harvesting crops
, making hay, running the farm market and traveling markets plus their fall festival – which features hay rides, corn mazes and Robert’s pumpkin cannon. AND Luther Farm continues to pass on a little agriculture education to the many school students that visit their farm each year!