“It is with deep sadness that the staff at the 2nd Street Market and Five Rivers MetroParks share that the ‘grandfather’ of the Market, Russell Garber, passed away earlier this week after recent declining health.”
“Garber ... has been sharing his stories while selling produce/baked goods almost every Saturday without fail since the Market opened 25 years ago,” the post went on to say.
“We will miss his delicious produce and beautiful flowers, along with his dry sense of humor and sparkling smile. We are all the better having had Russell Garber in our lives.”
Credit: Lisa Powell
Credit: Lisa Powell
Looking back
Garber came from a long line of farmers in Greenville, and sold at farmers markets in the region since the late 1970s.
In 2004, the Dayton Daily News wrote a feature story about Garber.
Here is a condensed version of that story, written by former reporter Ann Heller:
Russell Garber strides down the dusty road at his farm, cellphone at his ear. Sometimes he breaks into a run to the farmhouse to find a phone number. He stops occasionally to load boxes of corn and squash into a truck bound for one of the Dayton-area farm markets.
This day he is fresh from a full six hours of sleep, unlike the previous day when he got up at 2 a.m. and crisscrossed the state, delivering produce fresh from his farm. That was a 22-hour work day — he never got back to bed until midnight.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
It is a demanding regimen for a 70-year-old-man, and he makes it look easy.
The genial Garber, in his straw hat and long white beard, is a familiar fixture at Dayton-area farm markets that operate on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
But the regular customers who stop in for brown eggs and tomatoes, corn and cucumbers, see only the public face of a complex man.
He farms the same acres that his great-grandfather settled in western Darke County, but for 29 years he has also had a 2,000-acre farm in Brazil, where he has raised hearts of palm, pineapple and cattle. He flies to South America every winter and in the process has become fluent in Portuguese, the language of Brazil.
`If nobody speaks English, you learn to talk like they do. I can carry on a conversation and do business,’ he said modestly.
Born and raised a German Baptist — usually called Dunkard around here — he still attends the white church across the road. But he is a man who politely digs in his heels when provoked.
Credit: Dayton Daily News
Credit: Dayton Daily News
The issue may be small, such as the bakery license required to sell the cookies, breads and rolls that are produced by his wife, Etta Mae, and a daughter-in-law in two rooms of a second house at the farm. He had taken their baked goods to farm markets for years before health inspectors started enforcing the license requirement.
He wasn’t opposed to getting the license, but it was his busiest time of year.
On a market day when they told him he couldn’t sell the family’s baked specialties, he countered with the question, `Can I give them away?’ They couldn’t stop him from doing that.
Garber looked at the line of customers and told them to take whatever baked goods they wanted for free — but donations would be accepted.
He got the license eventually, on his own timetable, but still has the last word, saying, `That didn’t make the product any better.’
Garber and his wife, Etta, had 12 children, nine daughters and three sons.
Services
Visitation for Garber will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 14 at Old German Baptist Brethren Church, Palestine District at 4764 Clark Station Road, Greenville. Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. March 15.
The Garber family suggest that people to support a charity that is important to them in Russell Garber’s name or they suggest donating to the Ohio Farm Bureau, which supports young farmers, a cause close to Garber’s heart.
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