“My father grew corn and we had to hand shuck it,” said Eisenhauer, who grew up south of St. Louis. “I’ve been farming all my life and now I’m sharing that with people at the Farmers Market and children in the school.”
Eisenhauer is no stranger to small business and sharing what she knows with others. She moved to Dayton in 1969 and joined the New Neighbor League. In 1973, she and a friend started Book Caboose Inc., a portable children’s book store housed in a trailer that could be moved from school to school, so that children could buy appropriate reading material. As a Heritage realtor, Eisenhauer ranked as a Top 10 real estate agent from 1977-1980. She also started Neicon Homes, a construction firm that allowed buyers to save money by building portions of their homes while using Eisenhauer as the general contractor.
In 1990, her husband, Thomas, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. The couple built a handicapped-accessible home on a river in Branson, Missouri where Eisenhauer cared for Thomas for 13 years until he passed away. With news of her daughter’s breast cancer diagnosis in 2004, Eisenhauer returned to Sugarcreek Twp. and built a replica of her Branson home complete with a large back deck that overlooks her gardens instead of a river, so that she could care for her daughter if needed. With her daughter doing well, Eisenhauer pursued her interest in organic gardening. She encouraged her grandchildren to take the produce and sell it at the Greene County Farmers’ Market.
It was when her son, Bob, a computer engineer, lost his job in 2008 that the garden took on new meaning.
Farmer Bob, as he is known to scores of schoolchildren, started selling mulch as a sideline. When he eventually convinced Eisenhauer to let him take over a large part of the gardening, things began to happen. Taking an old pontoon boat, he built a self-sustaining green house that provides produce like lettuce and Chard from raised beds well into December. A second larger greenhouse provides additional produce.
It was Eisenhauer’s membership in the American Institute of Wine and Food, a group started nationally by Julia Child and Robert Mondavi, that brought Rosemary’s organic gardening methods to the attention of schoolchildren. Eisenhauer uses her garden as a teaching tool in the Days of Taste-Farm to School Program established to educate students about how food travels from the farm to the dining table.
For more information, call Eisenhauer at (937)426-4092.
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