DANVILLE — Part of the challenge of writing this column is knowing where to go for answers. Often, it is through newspaper archives, historical books, or local historians.

When I have something that involves farming, I start with David Greer, whom I’ve known for years through his involvement at the Knox County Agricultural Museum and at Malabar Farm State Park. David is a gentleman and a scholar, and he knows more about farming than I know about classical music, and that’s saying something.

  • CD Blubaugh was a prominent Danville farmer and associate of conservationist Louis Bromfield.

  • Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield founded Malabar Farm, today preserved as a state park in Lucas. 

  • Conservationist and writer Louis Bromfield wrote about CD Blubaugh in his book Pleasant Valley.

  • CD Blubaugh stands in one of the fields on his farm for a feature news article about his farming practices.

  • Raspberry bushes being sprayed, around 1939, on CD Blubaugh’s farm near Danville.

I encountered this week’s photo in a historical interest group on Facebook: Ohio History by the Road. This photo was identified as being from around 1939, and showing farmers spraying raspberry bushes on a contour farm near Danville. No further information was available, so I wondered if David would be able to offer any informed commentary.

He said he couldn’t say what they were spraying, but he could tell me who was doing the spraying.

“That’s Cosmos Blubaugh’s farm north of Danville,” David replied soon after my inquiry.

Cosmos Damian Blubaugh (1885-1961), known to everyone as “CD,” was a prominent farmer of the mid-20th century in Knox County. Greer pointed out that the famous conservationist and founder of Malabar Farm, Louis Bromfield, talked about CD in his book Pleasant Valley, noting that Blubaugh used alfalfa to feed his raspberries, not his cattle. Indeed, Bromfield worked quite a bit with Blubaugh.

“I like to say that Louis begat CD,” David Greer said, “CD begat Blaine Greer (my father); and Blaine begat David, which makes LB my ‘great-grandfather’ as far as conservation doctrine.”

While David couldn’t say what CD Blubaugh may have been spraying nor what pest they were dealing with, he has an idea of who might actually know, a fellow farmer who once operated that very outfit. He will check with that farmer, now retired in Florida, and report back to us presently.

It is interesting to see the sort of conservation practices being promoted by Bromfield already being put in place this soon after the agricultural disaster of the Dust Bowl in the early 1930s.

Contour farming remains a widely-used practice in this region, though raspberries aren’t often seen like this. I have, though, seen them gone wild in places where they may well have once been planted like this as a buffer between contoured fields. Sometimes, I even beat the birds to the raspberries when they ripen, though not often.

Additional research found a national newspaper articles about CD Blubaugh and his farming practices — quite a lot of fame for a Knox County farm! According to one article, Blubaugh named his place Turkey Ridge Farm, and he had purchased the land in 1924, after spending some years living in Akron.

The call of the land brought him back to Knox County, and he and his family worked hard to restore the farm to prosperity. His reputation testifies to his success.