Jun 4, 2020

Michigan’s Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm has new owner, uncertain future

There may be new life for a well-known southwest Michigan fruit farm. Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm has a new owner and he lives just down the road.

According to a report by WSBT-TV in South Bend, Indiana, the new owners bought 80 acres which include the building that was the farm market. One of the owners says he’s not sure what he’ll do with the farm as of now, but he wants to keep it “like the original.”

Dominick Moore is one of the owners of 80 acres of the old Tree-Mendus fruit farm in Eau Claire, Michigan. Moore is family friends with the Teichmans, who owned the farm for years.

They had to give it up after Bill Teichman contracted eastern equine encephalitis last August.

“The family was good friends of my dad’s, he built that relationship with them. I lived in that area my entire life,” Moore told WSBT-TV.

Moore grew up just down the road from Tree-Mendus Fruit Farm, and knows the impact it’s made on the area.

“It was sentimental to my family. I know many people who are familiar with it even down to out of state people.”

Moore isn’t actually a farmer, he owns Triple D Excavating and More, which is near Tree-Mendus Fruit. He wants farmers to plant their crops there because he’s not too familiar with farming.

He says regardless of what he ends up doing with the farm, he wants people to know he has good intentions. As for it being the exact same it was before, he doesn’t know.

To view the complete WSBT-TV report, click here.