Photograph of T. K. and Kim Cellar

Pictured here (left to right) are T.K. and Kim Cellar. They are shown posing on a Farmall Cub, a small tractor, on the grounds of the Brown Fruit Farm. T.K. and Kim are the sons of Bernard (Brownie) Cellar and the grandsons of Murrin Cellar.

Murrin Cellar was farm manager from 1936 through the farm’s closing in 1958. His father came to work on the farm in 1913 when he was fourteen years old and attending Worthington High School, and he started working in 1915, becoming full time after his high school graduation. At age 19, he supervised the picking of apples and cherries by crews of transient labor. In 1936, after the deaths of Frame and Marie Brown, the farm’s owners, Murrin worked with their daughter Molly to keep the farm running until 1958.

Brownie Cellar served in the Korean War and went on to become an educator. He was a math teacher, coach and administrator at the Worthington High School beginning in 1949 and continued his career as an educator in central Ohio for 50 years. He wrote a history of the farm, “The Brown Fruit Farm: 100 Acres in Orchards,” containing details and reminisces of his experience growing up among the orchards.

The Brown Fruit Farm operated north of Worthington for nearly fifty years, from around 1912 to 1958. The farm sold grew and sold apples and apple products such as juice, candy and apple butter, as well as cherries, plums and honey. As of 1925, the farm encompassed 100 acres planted with 4000 fruit trees and was the largest fruit farm in central Ohio. Owned by Frame Brown and later his daughter Molly, it was renowned not only for the quality of its produce, but also for its innovative roadside marketing, including signs telling motorists how many miles they were from the farm.