Jul 7, 2023 8 min read

By Van Mitchell

Agriculture plays an integral part in the economy of Washington County, as it does for several generational family farms carrying out that mission.

Highlighting the importance of agriculture is the Washington County Agricultural Fair, a non-profit that is also Pennsylvania’s oldest fair, dating back to October 1798. It will celebrate its 225th anniversary August 12-19.

Bev Minor, owner of the Springhouse market and restaurant, said her family has a long history with the fair and agriculture.

“My father was the president of the Washington County Fair Board for probably 37 years,” she said. “We went to the fair. It was our vacation. When you’re on a farm, you don’t take vacations. We looked forward to the fair. It was a vacation. We got new jeans. It was really fun.”

Minor said her family had Jersey cows at the fair.

“We had Jersey cows,” she said. “We were always in the Jersey barn. To this day, these next generations are still in the Jersey barn.”

Minor and her husband Sam started Springhouse in 1975. She moved away and returned to the area to give her children a similar upbringing to her.

“We had moved away, and we wanted to raise our family of five children the same way that we were raised,” she said.

The Minor family, complete with five children 12 and under, started milking cows, processing and bottling the hormone-free milk and running the country store that is the original part of today’s SpringHouse Country Store, Creamery and Eatery.

Today, three generations of the Minor family continue to milk the herd of Holsteins and Jerseys on the farm.

“We farm, and we milk cows and process the milk. We have a market on the farm that is called the Springhouse Country Market. There’s a restaurant involved with it. We do country foods. We do a lot of cooking and a lot of baking. We also smoke meat. Just a little bit of everything. We built the whole thing on getting people to come to buy our milk initially because we were out in the middle of nowhere, really, when we first came. People said we were crazy to do that. I’m so thankful we did it. Because the people still come.”

Minor said they opened their farm and made it very available to every family that comes there.

“We appeal to families that want to get their kids out and away from the devices and just run and play,” she said. “We have calves out there for the kids to get in the pen with the calves. We just try and give them a taste of what it’s like. We do a lot of events. We do a chicken barbecue for Mother’s Day and probably get eight, 900 people. We do a Father’s Day steak and chicken fry, and smoked brisket. There’s something for every month. We do a sweetheart dinner for Valentine’s Day. We have an anniversary celebration in January, which was when we started. Every month has something.”

Bill Iams with Iams Farm said his family has been farming since at least the 1850s.

“We had almost 155 acres, and we’ve added to it,” he said. “We now have 475 acres, black Angus cattle, and we raise corn and hay. “We actually farm about 390 of those 475 acres. The rest is wooded land. We’ve got about a hundred head of cattle, so it takes a lot of land for pasture, takes a lot of land for hay to feed them, so we generate enough pay on our own farm to feed our cattle, plus we generate enough to sell.”

Iams said it continues to be an economic challenge to farm.

“The thing that has really helped the family farms here in the last 10 to 15 years has been the oil and gas. It has actually helped a lot of the farmers be able to afford the farm,” he said. “But there’d be a number of more farms probably not in existence today.”

Iams said the biggest farming challenge is higher property taxes.

“Our biggest challenge right now is actually the property taxes,” Iams said. “Prior to the reassessment of the county here about six years ago, our taxes on our farm was about $7,500 a year, and now they’re about $27,000 a year we have to pay in taxes. And that is just unsustainable. Our gross income on this farm is about $75,000 to $80,000 a year. So, on that gross income, we have to pay our machinery expenses. We have to pay our fuel, our fertilizer expense and all other income that comes out of that. But the property taxes are just something that’s really unsustainable.”

Iams said despite those challenges, farming must continue.

“It’s our heritage, and there are fewer and fewer farms around here,” Iams said. “It’s almost our mission to educate people about the farms and the farm licenses to do and how … But many people don’t realize the food actually comes from the farm and think it comes from the Giant Eagle.”

The family will continue that heritage this year at the fair, when 12-year-old grandson Jaxon shows a lamb and steer.

Chuck Wonsettler is a fifth-generation farmer with Wonsettler Farm.

“I am the fifth generation here, and it was settled by my ancestors who settled in the eastern part of Pennsylvania,” he said. “My father was Joseph Samuel Wonsettler, farmed from the time he was 13 years old because his dad passed away when my dad was 13, and my dad took over the farm with his sisters and mom at that time. My sons Cliff, Charlie and C.J. and I are owners of the property now.”

Wonsettler said part of their farming operation is selling beef cattle.

“We have beef cattle, and we sell beef. We have sheep, and we sell lamb,” he said.

Wonsettler said farming has always been a part of his life.

“I felt like I’ve enjoyed farming all my life,” he said. “I mean, actually, when I was milking cows and running the dairy, I enjoyed that. Always teaching. My dad said I was crazy for wanting to continue to milk cows while I was teaching and all that. And he said, ‘you’re busy enough. You don’t need to be doing that.’ But I enjoyed it, and I wanted my kids to experience the same kinds of things that I did growing up. I just felt I had a wonderful childhood growing up on the farm, and it was important for me to carry on the legacy, not just because of the family heritage, but because I enjoyed it. And hopefully, that’ll pass down to some of my kids and grandkids. They’re hopeful that it could always be farmed in some way.”

Mike and Jody Hoover have generations of farming on both sides of their families. They have raised Registered Suffolk, Oxford and Merino sheep since 1984.

“We actually own both of our family farms, so we live on Mike’s family farm, but we still own my family farm in Prosperity,” Jody Hoover said. “I’m an agricultural science teacher at Fort Cherry High School. I teach nine months out of the year and basically teach what we do here on our farm.”

Mike Hoover worked for Pennsylvania Farm Bureau for 34 years and retired in November 2022. “Basically, for us, it’s been our love of the sheep, and we raise breeding livestock, and we show,” he said. “Our kids are very active in 4-H and FFA. They’re very active in showing locally and across the country.

Jody Hoover said the rural farm life suits her family.

“I can’t imagine raising our family anywhere else than in a rural area,” she said. “We live near our families. When they say it takes a village to raise your kids, it truly does. So, it’s nice to have the family all close by, and we all help on the farm.”

Jody Hoover said both of their families have shown livestock at the county fair.

“My family didn’t show a lot in the beginning, but as I got older, 15, 16 years old, I started showing at the county fair, but we always visited,” she said. “I’ve never missed a fair, but I talk to people that have never been to the fair. That just amazes me, like my coworkers and stuff, because that was our summer vacation, that’s where we went on vacation. My dad would take a week’s vacation for the Washington County Fair.”

Mike Hoover added his family has been showing at the fair since the late 1960s.

“I took a dairy heifer in 1970, which was probably the first thing that I showed at the fair, but then my wife and I both showed steers, market steers, and I showed beef breeding livestock. Then, in 1984, we got into the sheep, and then we’ve shown the sheep ever since then.”

There are a wide variety of family farms in southwestern Pennsylvania, especially since agriculture is the largest industry in Washington County. There are plenty of generational family farms supporting that robust industry, and these are just a selection.