Farming, Saturday, Ftbruary 5, 1994 Paul Hostetter concentrates on filling out some paper work at his desk in the Mt. Joy Farmers’ Cooperative. Hostetter Retires After 62 Years With Mt. Joy Co-op VERNON ACHENBACH JR. Lancaster Fanning Staff MT. JOY (Lancaster Co.) Paul Hostetler was bom and grew up within a short bike ride of the place he worked for 62 years. An employee of the Ml Joy Far mers Cooperative, actually before it was Mt. Joy Farmers Coopera tive, he recently announced his retirement. The board of directors and membership of the cooperative presented Hostetler with a rocking chairafter the announcement of his retirement. But Hostetler said he isn’t quite ready to use it. From behind his metal desk, with stacks of milk test tubes. Hos teller said he would like to con tinue working for several hours each week. Because of arthritis, Paul Hos tetter has had an artificial hip for 10 years. He said it does him well, but that his knees are fairly well worn out and slow him down. He said the doctor told him that, as long as he wants to keep riding a bicycle to work, that knee replace ment surgery is probably best put off. So Paul, who is to celebrate his 8()lh birthday on July 12, uses a cane on occassion to help get around To his friends and members of the cooperative, Paul represents the cooperative. He is the person ality of it, the historian, the jokes tcr, the merrymaker, and the busi ness person upon who they’ve come to depend. At annual banquets of the cooperative, he was usually more entertaining than the scheduled entertainment: he told farcical sto nes and used gag evidence, such as “Holstein eggs,”-and presented gifts, and always gave kisses to the dairy princesses. For those who have known of him. even if only briefly, there is an expression of sadness in recog nition of Hostetler’s retirement. As always, change comes and those things and people who have been dependable and constant are not. * But Hostetler is different, it seems. The cooperative wasn’t just his job, it was an integral segment of his life. He started working early in life, he said, about when he was 9 years old. He worked for his grandfather, Sam Greider, who rented two dairy farms. Paul’s father ran a creamery in Mt. Joy and Paul worked there. His father took milk, loaded it on a small truck and shipped it to the Lancaster Sanitary Dairy (which later became Penn Supreme). Paul washed SO pound cans by hand. His first “real” job however was as a soda jerk and clerk at a drug store in town, next to Newcomer’s Hardware Store. According to Hostetler, the actual originators of what became the Mt. Joy Farmers Cooperative were four men: Henry Eby, Harry Newcomer, Allen Risser and Cal vin Cooley. Paul said that about 1928, the four men started the venture of buying local farmers’ milk and bottling it. Which they did, only they hadn’t set up a market for the pro duct, so when the milk started coming in, the men had no place to go with it For weeks, the men merely separated the cream, saved it, and gave the skim milk away to hog farmers. Eventually, the cream went bad. However, a market was found in New York, where Gimble Farms, a dairy, would buy it. It was iced and rail-car shipped. But back to Hostetler’s start, while working in the drug store, selling store-made ice cream with real, store-made cones, Harry Newcomer, owner of the the hard ware store, came into the drug store and told 18-year-old Hostet ler about the job opening at the creamery. They told Hostetler they were looking for someone with a high school education who would not mind working his way up from the bottom. Hostetler got the job in post- Depression Mt. Joy, earning $l5 per week, with no benefits, of course. His first duties were to run a soft coal furnace, without shaker grates. “When we got the oil burner, 1 thought I was in heaven then,” Hostetler said, laughing at himself. He said before that, hot summer days were a lot hotter in the bowels of a furnace, moving around red hot coals. He washed 85-pound cans, loaded truck, unloaded truck, chipped ice from 300-pound blocks, etc. Unloading the transport trucks was a two-man operation, Hostet ter said. When a truck would bring milk to (he planL one man would knock off the lids of the milk cans and smell the milk to make sure it was good and that there were no obvious foreign materials, such as a wayward corn cob. Back then, most dairy farmers had few cows and milked by hand. TtUmestpad African Violet Is Most Popular Flowering House Plant HUNTERDON. N.J. The most popular flowering house plant in the United States is the African violet. It is easy to grow and propagate, attractive, and will bloom throughout the year if the light is right. That is the secret to success according to Cornell floriculturist Charles Fischer. African violets won’t bloom as they should if there is too little or too much light. High light intensity is needed for bud development but too much intensity will damage leaves and decrease flowering. Too little light reduces the overall vigor of the plant, and flowers will be sparse or nonexistent. telephone. Being with people and talking to people make him happy, he said. They kept their milk cool using nature natural springs or ice, Hostetter said. The other man helping to unload cans would dump the milk and put the can in the washer. Back then. Hostetler’s wife died 11 years ago and now he lives in a home adjacent to the. one he'built for himself and his wife. That house, a brick facade that took him a year and a half to construct, and cost him S4,QBQ, htfpM to hisdtiugtfe er. It was appraised at more than civics Some window light through the year, African violets need different locations in differ ent seasons to keep blooming. From November through Febru ary they may need the direct the sun in south or west windows. But from March through October, east or north windows are ideal. Or the plants can be placed adjacent to south and west windows where light is bright but the plants will not be in direct sun. African violets are not finicky in their other needs. They do not require special fertilizers, special planting mix or special watering.- The same good cultural practices important for other house plants $lOO,OOO. The father of three children, including two sons, he said he now spends time with his grandchildren. But after a life of watching a town change and helping it change, he is an unnofficial histo rian whose credentials include marrying his school sweetheart, and working at the same place for 62 years. He said he likes to talk about the pastgqd’rewinisce. Alter all. that is who he i£ go for African violets too: well drained containers and planting mix, regular fertilizing (use a low nitrogen fertilizer) and careful wa tering (from bottom or top). Two cautions should be noted for African violets: avoid wetting the leaves and crown and avoid temperatures below 60‘F. The popularity of these reliable bloomers must also be due to the seemingly infinite variety of the plant and flower form, color and pattern. There are even miniature and semi-miniature forms, some of which are trailers for hanging baskets. These small forms, grown 'in 3” pots, can provide plenty of interest where space is limited.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers