This is his story.
Raymond grew up in a well-to-do family in Fall River, Massachusetts. As a young man, he first attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Unlike his father, a mechanical engineer, Raymond majored in "pomology," the science of raising fruit.
Whatever possessed this young man to study fruit raising is anyone's guess. Farming was certainely in his blood. He came from a long line of farmers, starting with the James Nute who was killed by Indians in his garden in Dover, New Hampshire in 1691. Raymond's father, an MIT-educated mechanical engineer, was the exception to that long agricultural tradition.
At Mass Ag, Raymond was an officer of the Rifle Club, ran a five-minute mile, and attended school with young men bearing names like Murray Danforth Lincoln, Merton Chesleigh Lane, and Lewis Phillips Howard.
He could have had a comfortable professional life in the city. Instead, after graduating with a BSc. in 1914, he married and moved a few miles out of Fall River to Lakeville, Massachusetts, to manage a cranberry bog for the next five years.
Not only did he not follow in his father's footsteps to become an engineer, the family wasn't pleased when Raymond married Alice Packard Studley, the daughter of a grocer. "She wasn't good enough for them", their daughter Jeannette recalls.
Whatever the reason, the young farmer brought scientific farming to Kentucky with a flourish. A 1924 article in the Farmers Home Journal described what Raymond had accomplished in four years:
"R.E. Nute is one of the most remarkable fruit pioneers in Kentucky, and the constant wonder of his neighbors, who predicted loss from the start because of his ideas on scientific growing.
That hill-top of apparently worthless land is now the wonder of the countryside. To begin with, Mr. Nute had to build a road to the top that auto trucks could navigate. The road was built. A saw mill was constructed so that lumber on the property could be converted into houses and a packing shed.
The ground was torn up and prepared with the aid of a Fordson and various plows, harrows, cultivators, and the like. Trees by the thousand were planted where only a few old ones were on hand for a nucleus. None in those parts believed in such modern devices as thinning out and spraying and cultivating.
Nute did. He knew how. He came from Massachusetts with his family and buckled down to work. The trees were pruned, dusted, sprayed, cultivated. A big bean spray pump and duster, taking care of two or more rows at a time, destroyed all insects and pests. Borers were gotten rid of with "paracide" planted around the trunks every year. Lime sulphur dust took care of the upper works of the orchard.
Although Mr. Nute has already attained a one-pound peach, on rare occasions slightly over a pound, a two pound peach is one of his ambitions.
His packing house is another wonder to fruit growers, who now come for miles to see, and often to buy peaches. Not long ago visitors made the pilgrimage to the top of the hill in such numbers one day that $100 worth of peaches were sold in the front yard. Some of the peaches are snapped up at 10 cents apiece as curiosities. Last year a number of Mr. Nute's products took first prizes in the Kentucky State fair."
This photograph was taken at the Massachusetts farm during the year before they moved to Kentucky. They still have that refined New England look.
A year later, Raymond has that Kentucky farmer look; Alice still has the elegance of New England.
Raymond's fame as an orchardist brought other agriculturists from around the country and he was sought to speak at meetings and on the radio.
This Thanksgiving as we enjoy our fabulous turkey dinners, eating until we can't push ourselves away from the table, let us be thankful for the farmers who have made it possible with just a few hours cooking on our part.
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| House in Lakeville, Massachusetts |
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| Lakeville bog barn |
Not only did he not follow in his father's footsteps to become an engineer, the family wasn't pleased when Raymond married Alice Packard Studley, the daughter of a grocer. "She wasn't good enough for them", their daughter Jeannette recalls.
Over the next five years, Raymond and Alice had two children and settled into a New England life on the cranberry farm. Then in 1920, they moved their young family to rural Kentucky, south of Louisville. What made Raymond and Alice make this move out of New England?
Why the dramatic change after three hundred years of ancestors living in New England?
Raymond’s closest friend, best man, and fraternity brother at Massachusetts Agricultural College was Murray Danforth Lincoln. In 1920, Lincoln moved to Ohio to lead the Ohio Farm Bureau and later helped establish the cooperative automobile-insurance company that eventually became Nationwide. Did he influence Raymond to seek his own agricultural opportunity farther west?
Henry Bedinger, an Anchorage attorney with plans for some rugged Bullitt County land, had formed the Kentucky Orchard Company in 1919. He apparently recruited Raymond to turn the remnants of an old orchard into a modern and profitable operation.
According to Jeannette, her father wanted a place where he could put his own ideas into practice.
Whatever the reason, the young farmer brought scientific farming to Kentucky with a flourish. A 1924 article in the Farmers Home Journal described what Raymond had accomplished in four years:
"R.E. Nute is one of the most remarkable fruit pioneers in Kentucky, and the constant wonder of his neighbors, who predicted loss from the start because of his ideas on scientific growing.
That hill-top of apparently worthless land is now the wonder of the countryside. To begin with, Mr. Nute had to build a road to the top that auto trucks could navigate. The road was built. A saw mill was constructed so that lumber on the property could be converted into houses and a packing shed.
The ground was torn up and prepared with the aid of a Fordson and various plows, harrows, cultivators, and the like. Trees by the thousand were planted where only a few old ones were on hand for a nucleus. None in those parts believed in such modern devices as thinning out and spraying and cultivating.
Nute did. He knew how. He came from Massachusetts with his family and buckled down to work. The trees were pruned, dusted, sprayed, cultivated. A big bean spray pump and duster, taking care of two or more rows at a time, destroyed all insects and pests. Borers were gotten rid of with "paracide" planted around the trunks every year. Lime sulphur dust took care of the upper works of the orchard.
Although Mr. Nute has already attained a one-pound peach, on rare occasions slightly over a pound, a two pound peach is one of his ambitions.
His packing house is another wonder to fruit growers, who now come for miles to see, and often to buy peaches. Not long ago visitors made the pilgrimage to the top of the hill in such numbers one day that $100 worth of peaches were sold in the front yard. Some of the peaches are snapped up at 10 cents apiece as curiosities. Last year a number of Mr. Nute's products took first prizes in the Kentucky State fair."
This photograph was taken at the Massachusetts farm during the year before they moved to Kentucky. They still have that refined New England look.
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| Alice, Raymond Jr., Raymond Nute, Sr. in Lakeville, 1919 |
A year later, Raymond has that Kentucky farmer look; Alice still has the elegance of New England.
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| Raymond Nute Sr., Raymond Nute Jr., Alice, Jeannette Medora Farm, 1922 |
Raymond's fame as an orchardist brought other agriculturists from around the country and he was sought to speak at meetings and on the radio.
Raymond was looking another way to boost his orchard's profitability and from this came the concept of raising turkeys on his hundred-acre orchard. From a start of two hens and a tom in 1926, his flock grew to 300 turkeys by 1930, 3,000 by 1933, and 5,000 by the following year. By 1937, Raymond's flock exceeded 7,000 birds and a mill had been added to the farm to grind their grain.
The birds provided natural and labor-free fertilization, ate the insects, weeds, and dead fruit on the ground, and apple trees that usually produced fruit every three years were yielding fruit every year. Raymond regularly moved the flocks from one part of the orchard to another so that the birds would have fresh ground and be less likely to spread illness among themselves.
So grew Raymond's fame as a turkey grower and innovator, and he became known as the Turkey King of Kentucky. He collaborated with the University of Kentucky, participated in agricultural and fruit growers' organizations, supported 4-H activities, and became president of the Jefferson County Farm Bureau in 1937.
So grew Raymond's fame as a turkey grower and innovator, and he became known as the Turkey King of Kentucky. He collaborated with the University of Kentucky, participated in agricultural and fruit growers' organizations, supported 4-H activities, and became president of the Jefferson County Farm Bureau in 1937.
Alice and Raymond's family grew to five children - Raymond Jr, Jeannette, Donald, Barbara, and little Marjorie who was born in 1928 but died in infancy with pneumonia.
Then, in the midst of this tremendous success, this chapter of his life came to an end.
Then, in the midst of this tremendous success, this chapter of his life came to an end.
The Kentucky Orchard Company changed ownership in 1925 when the property was sold to George Lindenberger. After Lindenberger died in 1927, his family left the orchard in Raymond’s hands for another decade. By 1937, however, Depression-era profits were shrinking, and transporting the farm’s produce over the narrow, twisting dirt road leading from the ridge remained expensive and difficult.
The Lindenberger family eventually decided to stop farming the property and placed it in the hands of a title company for sale. Although the actual process took several years, the result for the Nute family was the same: their time on the orchard was over.
Raymond moved his family first to the small town of Washington, Kentucky, staying only a few months, then to Vanceburg. By 1938, he was the agricultural agent for Lewis County, never again to show the world what a hard-working young man from Massachusetts - with an agricultural education, a mind full of ideas, and a willingness to experiment - could accomplish with a hundred acres of hard scrabble land, some peach and apple trees, and three turkeys.
This Thanksgiving as we enjoy our fabulous turkey dinners, eating until we can't push ourselves away from the table, let us be thankful for the farmers who have made it possible with just a few hours cooking on our part.
And in our family, we give special thanks for Raymond Nute - the Massachusetts fruit grower who became the Turkey King of Kentucky.
