DAVID MICHAEL CROSBY

NEW YORK - The Beginning
    Dave (as he prefers to be called) was born in Rochester, New York in February 1938. Through much of his childhood he resided in the same neighborhood. Most of his early schooling was accomplished in a nearby Parochial School, Our Lady of Good Council, with his high school years spent at Rochester’s West High School.
     During his high school years he worked part time for Hunt’s Hardware. After graduation he obtained a job with the New York Central Railroad as an Apprentice. He worked there only long enough to raise money for further schooling.
     In the spring of 1958 Dave left to start what was to be an intensive 44-week course of classroom and outdoor work in Forest Management and Surveying, at New York State Ranger School located in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains. After graduating, he worked for the school in the Sugar Bush, tapping Maple Trees for sap to make Maple Syrup. During this period, an alumnus of the school wrote to inquire if any of that year’s graduates would like to come to work for him as a surveyor in Alaska. Dave jumped at the opportunity and was off to the Last Frontier in April of 1959.

THE ALASKA YEARS
     After a long airplane flight to Alaska, Dave was met at the Anchorage International Airport by his new employer, Dick Demming.  Dave spent the spring through fall months, working on the Survey Crew of Dick Demming and Associates of Palmer, Alaska. During that summer he met Phoebe, but they didn’t start dating until a few months later. When the weather shut down active surveying, Dave secured a job with the US Bureau of Land Management in Anchorage as a Draftsman.
     About six months later, in the spring of 1960, Dave found a better drafting job with the Records Section of the Division of Lands, at the State Department of Natural Resources Branch Office in Anchorage. Later that same year, he finally managed to buy a small, recently built cabin sized home of his own in what was then a somewhat rural area south of the Anchorage International Airport.
     During this early time in Anchorage, Dave had been dating Phoebe while commuting to Palmer on weekends to do so. On Christmas Eve 1960, he asked her to marry him, and she accepted. Phoebe was due to graduate from High School in the spring, and they tentatively planned to marry in the coming months after that. However, the craziness of the Times intervened, and nearly derailed their plans entirely.
     With the Vietnam Conflict in full swing, the Draft was a very real possibility for him. Dave elected to try and control his own destiny by enlisting in the Army Reserves. With that move he knew he would have to do a six-month tour of active duty at Fort Ord, CA as a prerequisite. He left for this tour in February of 1961, with the idea that he and Phoebe would have their wedding when he returned that fall. During his tour the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred and there were fears his active duty time would be extending. Tentative plans were made to change the location of the wedding, but at the last minute the Army relented and his active duty period ended less than 5 days before his scheduled wedding date.
     Dave and Phoebe were married on September 9, 1961. After a short honeymoon trip to close to home scenic areas of Alaska, they moved into his bachelor cabin home and settled in.
     Right after the honeymoon trip, Dave went back to work for the Division of Lands, this time in the Survey Section. Over the next 15 plus years, he would rise within the local Division Office to become the Office Engineer. In his work he traveled to areas as far north as Prudhoe Bay, east to Port Hayden, over and down to Kodiak Island, and as far south as Ketchikan, Alaska.
     With the advent of the birth of their first child, Daniel in August 1962, the young family moved into a small trailer in a court inside the city limits that November. Six months later they moved to an apartment building in the suburbs of Anchorage. In late November of 1963, Dave had the pleasure of taking his young family to meet his family members in and around Rochester, New York during a six-week vacation break.
     The year 1964 was a year of firsts for the family in general. Phoebe took a side trip from Rochester with Dan, to see her paternal grandparents in New England. On arriving back in Alaska, Dave greeted her at the Airport with their first brand new car, a Rambler station wagon. Right after their return to Anchorage, the family changed apartments to a smaller one, with the idea of saving money for a down payment on a home that year. On March 27, 1964 they road out the Great Earthquake in that daylight basement apartment. Aside from cracks in the block walls and fallen away sidewalks, the building remained fairly intact. During their stay in this same apartment, their second child, a son Steven was born in September of the same year.
     Later in the summer of 1964, Dave located a home site in a brand new subdivision in a suburb area of south of the Anchorage City limits. The couple worked off some of their down payment with "sweat equity" working on small jobs for the contractor, while their own home was being built. Their first family home was finally ready to occupy in late October of that year. Thus ended a very eventful year for one and all.
     Dave and Phoebe spend the next year or so creatively landscaping the rather challenging yard, which featured a steeply sloping backyard. With the arrival of their third child, a daughter Teresa in September 1966 the family’s modest 2-bedroom home was becoming somewhat cramped. Dave set about converting the unfinished basement into additional living space. The creation of a larger master bedroom, with bathroom/oversized shower, a workshop, and a playroom for the children effectively doubled the usable square footage for the home. The boys now shared the old master bedroom and Teresa had the smaller one. This served the family well for several more years.
     In 1972, Dave heard from a co-worker that his lovely all-log home located in the Matanuska Valley would be for sale as he was moving to Southeast Alaska. Dave had fallen in love with that home when he had seen it some months earlier. He was determined to own it if he could. He loved the country setting and thought this would be ideal for raising children. With some creative financing, he was able to secure this home so the family could move out there. The only down side of this move was that both parents worked in Anchorage and therefore were away from 6:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. each day. The children attended schools in the same Palmer School System that their mother had attended years earlier, including some of the same teachers!
     The 1975 through early 1976 time period was very difficult for Dave. While working on the construction of hay storage for their horses that summer, Dave hurt his back. This accident unfortunately required two surgeries to repair the damage in the fall and early winter. To make matters worse, with the advent of the Native Land Claims litigation, nearly all really constructive work had ceased with his job. No subdivisions could be planned, surveyed, or sold by the State, which meant that his job had been reduced to one of just "paper shuffling". This made it very difficult for him to make the long drive to work everyday with enthusiasm.
     In February 1976 Dave flew to Washington State, to help Phoebe drive her van back home. While there he spent a lot of time talking to their orcharding friends, about orcharding in general and their Washington lifestyle. This gave him a lot to think about, given the job situation he was in. Just a few weeks later he came to the conclusion that it was time for a drastic change in job and residence, and orcharding looked downright appealing. With that in mind he set about getting their Alaska home on the market. By June there was a buyer, a moving date had been set, and a truck with a 16’ furniture box purchased. Since they had no idea just WHERE they would finally be living at this point in time, the furniture truck could serve as a storage unit on wheels until a new home location could be found.
     With orcharding as his goal, Dave sent Phoebe down to Washington to meet with a realtor friend of her mothers in early May. Since Phoebe had spent some months earlier working in orchards and therefore possessed a fair working knowledge of orchards, she was the logical choice to do the initial contact work on this project. They had selected the Wenatchee Valley as their targeted new home location. Their Primary Realtor had found another realtor in Wenatchee to work with them on their orchard property search. Phoebe met with both men, and even looked at one orchard. She established a presence in Wenatchee with a Bank to which funds from their Alaska home sale could be transferred. With this groundwork accomplished, she returned to Alaska to start packing everything for transport.
     Finally, on June 29^th, everything fell into place for the move; vehicles were packed, papers signed, and money transferred. With that the family set off on their odyssey late that very afternoon. They drove some 100 miles up the highway and camped in the vehicles for the night.

THE WASHINGTON YEARS
     After a five-day journey over the Alcan Highway through Canada, the family arrived back in the United States, crossing over into Washington State appropriately on July 4, 1976. The family spent the first few days with Phoebe’s mother in Fall City, parking the furniture truck with other friends there. Dave and Phoebe traveled to Wenatchee to again look at the property she had seen in May and check on the funds transfer at the Bank. They could not come to terms with that seller, so they thought perhaps that this would be a good time to drive East to again visit family and friends in New York and New England. The evening before they left, their Primary Realtor called to ask them to stop in Wenatchee once again, to view a second orchard prospect, which they elected to do. While their children frolicked in the motel pool (a great new experience for Alaska kids), Phoebe and Dave met with this second orchard owner to view the orchard and talk over terms. They then retired to the motel to consider the purchase of this orchard. Later that afternoon they called in the Wenatchee realtor, signed an Earnest Agreement and handed him a check, thus setting in motion their Orcharding Years. They left the following morning for a 2-month vacation back East, and returned Labor Day weekend to settle into their new home.
     The first few months was a giant learning experience for Dave & Phoebe, along with some very trying moments. First, while unloading the furniture truck, Dave wrenched his weakened back, which made actual hands on work difficult for several weeks. He did take advantage of the time talking at length with the former owner during his last harvest time on this orchard. Once the orchard had been cleaned up after the harvest activities, they all signed papers formally turning over the orchard to Phoebe & Dave. As new orchardists, they immediately encountered a problem with securing financing for the 1977 Crop Year. The down payment required had used all of the available funds in their savings; therefore a loan had to be secured to farm the next year. After a few false starts, they were able to secure funds and went to work in earnest.
     Dave, with the help of a Pruner who had done the work on this orchard for some years, quickly learned the basics of pruning. In the spring of 1977 came the new learning curve associated with spraying, thinning, and so forth.  He was fortunate to have a large number of people willing to share advice and experience with him, answering his many questions: the former owner, neighbors, and various Field men. Never having done any type of orchard work, this was indeed his best course of action. To this day he states that you never stop learning, which is quite true considering the ever-changing aspects of orcharding.
     Over the better part of the next 2 ½ decades, Dave worked full time in the Orchard. For some 18 years he performed all of the daily work with help from Phoebe of course. (For an in depth look at those orcharding years, go to Portrait of a Farmer page.)  He hired help during the "push" times: after a couple of years for some of the pruning, all of the hand-thinning, and of curse during harvest time – pickers and generally a tractor driver. Until 1987, the orchard had Cherry acreage as well, so harvest was a twice a year experience.
     After moving into their home, Dave sold the box and had the truck converted to a 20" flatbed unit. For the first three years it was used to truck both cherries, and the apples as required. During the first 12 years of orcharding, for all but about 3 of those years the apples were sold for CASH up front, and the buyers usually trucked their own fruit. In 1980 Dave & Phoebe sold the truck and purchased a pickup/5^th wheel trailer combination to haul fruit. Phoebe always drove the truck or pickup combination for all the years they had cherries, and for most of the years they shipped their own apples. Active trucking of their own fruit ceased when in they signed on with McDougall and Sons as their packing shed. At that time, the Shed took over the transport of their fruit to the warehouse, stating that the Shed Owners would rather that Dave remain in the field to closely supervise the harvest. Since there were no transportation charges this was decidedly the best approach. Dave did all the stacking of fruit in the loading areas, but only some of the loading. After he purchased a top of the line field forklift, all the drives preferred to do all the loading themselves!
     As time went on and Dave began to experience some medical problems associated with old Alaska injuries, he elected to take on an onsite steady employee. In 1995, the original home became available to house such a man and his family, and Dave hired a very able full time employee of Hispanic decent. Dave soon found it very satisfying to have such competent help, that could effective communicate and supervise a largely Spanish speaking work force. Dave also turned over to him much of the actual equipment operation on the Ranch, particularly the spray operations, which generally required the wearing of hot, protective clothing. With a Steady Man, Dave could now move away from the hard labor and more into the management aspects of orchard operation. This worked very well for everyone.
     As time marched on into the mid, and late 1990’s, it has became increasingly harder and harder to enjoy farming. During the early years farming was fun and challenging, but as the amount of regulations, additional paper work, and general governmental interference with the daily routines of farming seemed to increase, orcharding became less and less satisfying. With the advent of decreasing returns for the fruit and tighter regulation of crop loan funding by the banks, came an increased level of stress. The Hailstorm of June 1998 was perhaps the worse year he experienced, trying to cope with the damage and salvage of some kind of crop, then after harvest trying to secure funding for the next crop year.
     After several years of increasingly poor apple returns and finally the refusal by all banking institutions to loan money for the Crop Year 2000, Dave & Phoebe were forced to abandoned active orcharding altogether. They were now facing the demise of a way of life they had known for a quarter of a century, well over half their adult life together. (For a newspaper article concerning this time period, go the Losing the Land.)  On hearing the final refusal by the Farm Service Agency (US Government) in January of 2000 to lend him working funds, Dave simply quite the pruning he had been doing. Since he and Phoebe did not want to see the Orchard literally die from lack of care, they rented it to some friends for the 2000 crop year. For the next few years that the couple remained in residence on the orchard, from crop years 2001 thru 2003, they rented the orchard to a neighbor for him to operate.
     Starting with that first non-farming year both Dave and Phoebe worked at part time jobs through most of 2000. Dave finally secured a permanent part time job with the First Presbyterian Church Complex, as an Assistant Maintenance Man. During the summer months, his past experience in orcharding and home landscaping stood him in good stead as we worked to take care of the surround grounds, several acres of lawn and tree plantings.  He continued with this employer until the couple left the State of Washington.
     He also found additional personal satisfaction working for the local food bank operations, picking up Bakery Goods four mornings a week for later distribution. His work schedule fitted around this very important activity.
     Fortunately, about a year prior to the onset of their financial problems, Dave became a Born Again Christian. He readily testifies to the Lord’s Provision and Care throughout this very difficult period of their lives. Without His Help, he would be lost…
     After many months of trying to negotiate some kind of practical settlement with all the lenders involved, it became apparent that the couple was headed for some kind of foreclosure action.  A Settlement Agreement was reached in 2001 with the Crop Loan Leander, whereby canceling that debt  in exchange for the returns garnered from the sale of all orchard equipment.
     For the next 1 1/2 years Dave and Phoebe had ongoing talks with the Mortgage Lender's Attorney, about the possibility of turning over the title to the orchard land to satisfy the debt we had with them, and still keep there house and a bit of land.  The Lender would not budge as they wanted all the property, so the Lender finally took them to court on a foreclosure action.  The Court ruled in the Lender's favor and scheduled a Sheriff's Sale for September 25th, 2003.
     Of interest, Dave and Phoebe's orchard lose was documented as part of a feature length film production that has since been show all over Washington State as well as on PBS.  For information on the Film - BROKEN LIMBS - you can click on that link and find information about it.  
     By law Dave and Phoebe had one year before they had to leave their home for good.  However the Lender could still take additional legal action against the couple.  Being anxious to sell the orchard, at the end of December the Lender offered to back away from any more legal action, if the couple would sign an agreement to leave earlier.  The couple took the offer and signed an agreement which stipulated they leave by March 31, 2004.
     Right after this agreement was signed, Dave turned in his resignation reluctantly to the First Presbyterian Church, and made plans to travel to Jacksonville, FL to see if he could find employment and house for he and Phoebe there.  Just prior to Christmas 2003 the couple had visited their oldest son Dan who lived there and thought the area might have possibilities.  With Phoebe's inability to find permanent employment in the Wenatchee Valley, remaining in Washington was out of the question financially.
     In mid February, Dave packed up his clothes and a selected number of tool, and flew off to Jacksonville, leaving Phoebe behind to pack up their belongings, hold a number of yard sales to reduce possessions, and buy a cargo trailer to haul what was to be taken with them to wherever.
     Over several weeks, Dave was not having very much luck in finding a suitable job, or housing for the couple in Florida.  In the meantime an old friend from their Alaska days, who had been living in Georgia for many years, contacted Phoebe with a proposal for their future that included not only housing, but a job for Dave.  The whole thing sounded just perfect to Dave, at least for the foreseeable future, so he sealed the proposal by packing up once again, driving up to Conyers, GA.  He left his car there in second week of March and flew back to Wenatchee to help Phoebe with the final packing before working with the driving chores back to Georgia.  The couple said their sad farewells to friends, neighbors, and family during the remaining weeks.  With the cargo trailer finally packed and secured, the couple closed out their Washington years as Apple Farmers and started the long drive south around 5:00 p.m. on March 31, 2004.  During the trip South, Phoebe and Dave visited with family and friends along the way.

THE GEORGIA YEARS