INFORMATION #3 08-18-1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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TREES j~'om A.I. Family faces tough choices as d velopment encroaches The Kruegers know firsthand how decisions by other people and institutions create the urban- ization -- some say sprawl -- that ripples out to affect adjoining landowners. And they know how those decisions disrupt lives, strain family bonds and reverber- ate for years from one neighbor to the next. "I never planned on moving," Al Krueger said. "I always said they'd have to carry me out in a pine box with 'a few balsam boughs. Times change. Never say never." Al's grandfather, Fredrick Kru- ger, bought the farm three miles west of the St. Croix River from the family of homesteader John Many in 1883. Sometime later, someone changed the spelling to "Krueger." , Marry.and his neighbor to the west, George Kern; had bought their farms from the U.S~ govern- ment in 1854, 17 years after the Oiibwe and Dakota nationsceded the land east of the Mississippi Rib, er in treaties. What is now Hwy. 36 may have started as a trail or wagon road serving Marry, Kern and other farmers, who cleared most of the oak and brush from their land to raise crops and provide pasture for their livestock. Marty and later Fredrick Kru- ger decided not to cut down the 37 acres'of oak woods onthe hill at the southern edge of the farm. Kern also kept the small woods on his adioining land. For 140 years, the But that doesn't mean the de- cision to sell is ever easy. Shave'and a haircut It took Al's grandparents three months to haul their belongings and nine children from Indiana to their new farm by horse-draxxm wagon back in 1883. Family members looked for any opportunity to make money to support themselves. Al's father gave shaves and haircuts to the lumberiacks who came over to the farm on Sunday afternoons from the lumbering camp next door-- just east of where the Wal-Mart is now. He left the farm when he mar- ried and bought another place a mile and a half away in Lake Elmo, where Al and his two brothers and two sisters were raised. One of Al's bachelor uncles, John Krueger, took over the origi- nal farm when Al's grandfather died in 1903. Al helped out on his dad's farm arid started working at the Andersen Corp. window factory in nearby Bayport in 1947. He and Elaine, who was working at the county extension agent's of- fice and at a restaurant, were married in the fall of 1947. Al's Uncle John, who had had a stroke and had to move into a nursing home, offered the farm to 'the newlyweds. They bought it on a contract for deed that included a provision allowing Iohn to have "two acres in'the northeast corner of the farm or the southwest bed- Kerns, the Martys and ................................. room of the house," Al then the' Kruegers hunted, hiked and 'tl/[Ze hod the watched the deer and best of both other wildlife in those IOoF/ds. We woods. "We had th'e best of IOere three both worlds," Elaine }TtilesRolll Krueger said. "We were Krueger said. "He thought he niight get well and wanted to have a place to come back to," but John died 'in 1951 without returning. A! and Elaine three miles from town, town~ but we moved to the farm in the spring of 1948 and but we had 37 acres of hod S7 acres of spent the next 46 years woods the kids could carflp in. It was great. It IOood$... It there, raising their was a wonderful place IOO.$ a' to live." But the Kruegers wottdelfttl don't live ~here any-. place to live." more. Now the woods are _'Elaine Krueger family and creating a tree farm that became a community institu- tion. Their Christmas trees decorated the homes of three filled with 69 houses' generations of area with values tanging ......... '.' ....................... families and have from $200,000 to $325,000 on lots of about one- third acre, with room for eight more homes. On the other 64 acres where the farmhouse once stood and the Christmas trees once grew, a Menards is under construction. Some figure it was inevitable. The area around the Krueger farm has been growing rapidly in this decade. The population of the principal cities and townships on the Hwy. 36 corridor has in- creased by 3,800 people to an estimated 33,862 -- nearly 13 percent -- from 1990 to 1996, the Metropolitan Council estimates. While preventing urban sprawl has become a national concern and preserving open space in new developments is a common practice in many places, includ- ing the Twin Cities metro area, not all desirable sites can be pro- tected. Because of its location, the Krueger farm was not the sort of place that should be preserved, said Tom Daniels, a nationally recognized figure in the preserva- tion effort. Daniels-- director of the Agri- cultural Preserve Board of Lan- caster County, Pa., a county that is trying to prevent urban sprawl from using up farmland -- saw the Krueger place during a trip to Minnesota earlier this year. "When you have commercial development all around you, with a major highway going by, the signals are pretty strong that the land should be developed," he said in a recent inlcrview. graced the governor's residence. Their trees won blue ribbons at the State Fair. But that did not happen right away. When they moved to the farm, they had a tractor and a manure spreader, but little furni- ture, no electricity and no run- ning water. They warmed the first floor with an oil-burning heater in the middle of the living room, and the house reeked of fuel oil. They had to haul oil into the house in five- gallon cans a cou- ple of times a day. They got electricity on Dec. 15, 1948. It was such an important landmark that Al still remembers the date': That also was the )'ear Neil was born. David was born in 1951. That's the year they got indoor plumbing. It Was like that. The important- dates in the life of the family coincided with the important dates in the history of the farm. Al and Elaine planted their first 500 trees for soil conserva- tion purposes in 1949 and anoth- er 500 in 1950. In 1954 they cut their first tree for their own Christmas celebra- tion. The next year they cut one for themselves and one for a neigh- bot. Then, with traffic increasing on the two-lane road that was to become Hwy. 36, "we realized we had location, location, location," Elaine said, and in 1957 the)' de- cided to establish a Christmas tree farm. Sure enough, just three years laler, the Minnesota Highwai' De-