Local Businesses

Along with the elevators as a basis for the marketing of farm products and thus a mainstay of Gowrie’s economy were such enterprises as Armour’s which bought and processed chickens and purchased eggs, Blomgren’s produce (again the Blomgres from whom my parents bought the little brown house) which also bought poultry and eggs, the Gowrie Creamery which bought cream from the farmers in the vicinity and Lizer’s sales pavilion which conducted auction disposal of farm livestock.

During Gowrie’s early history and continuing into the 1930s, the farmers in the area typically maintained chicken and cows for eggs, milk and meat (hogs also) and the excess production of these items served to augment the grain and livestock sales as the farm family income. My parents, along with a substantial fraction of the Gowrie residents also kept chickens and a cow or two for their own household use primarily. Those who did not secured milk from the Forsmark dairy — I think there was a second dairy but my memory is hazy about this.

The Armour plant was located alongside the M and St. L tracks, probably to facilitate shipment of the processed chickens and the eggs to outside markets — it was just opposite the city water tower and about a block north of the principal business street in Gowrie. I can recall going to Armour’s to purchase a dozen of cull eggs for 10 cents/dozen during the darker days of the Depression while the family was still living in Gowrie.

The Gowrie Creamery was located sort of at the east end of the business district and in its heyday made both butter and ice cream. In earlier times I think the farmers actually brought their cream to the creamy themselves, later on two or three individuals had creamery routes in the countryside collecting the cans of cream. I can recall lugging the five-gallon can of cream out to the roadside to be collected. Mostly the cream was sour by the time it reached the creamery — those were the days before widespread refrigeration and government regulation on production facilities.

I have a vivid memory of going into the cool moist interior of the Gowrie Creamery and being enveloped in the sweet smell of cream, ice cream and butter being churned. The ice cream was marketed by the creamery in two- or three-gallon containers which were packed in an ice/salt mixture which in turn was held in a green wooden barrel-like container. This was pretty heavy by that time and had two large metal handles for carrying and transport.

I can well remember these containers at such events as the Fourth of July celebration or the annual Sunday School picnic of the Lutheran church. Mostly the creamery made vanilla ice cream but on occasion they did make strawberry and I think chocolate. Although we did produce enough cream, later on when we were on the farm, to sell cream to the creamery, there was a period when we made butter ourselves from the cream we produced. I cam remember sitting on the screen porch at the back of the farmhouse turning the little butter churn. When we sold cream, a portion was taken back in payment as butter.