The Colorful Saga of Fernlea
Narrated by Lloyd Veit

Many years ago, in 1849, three sons of a family of eight children, sons and daughters of Johann Veit, born in the village of Rot am See, in the state of Wurtemburg in Central Germany, left their homeland with their wives and children to seek their fortunes in America. They, no doubt, came by river boat from Stuttgart or Hulbronn on the Neckar and thence down the Rhine to Bremen and by ocean boat to, probably, New York. They may have proceeded by way of the inland canals to Lackawanna, N.Y. on Lake Erie. Then after a brief pause in the Niagara peninsula, they decided to go west on the lake shore and finally docked at Port Ryerse or Normandale and then proceeded inland to Middleton Township where they settled down. Other German families arrived shortly after and together they founded the community of Rhineland and built the first school and church.

My grandfather, John George, son of Frederick, one of the three brothers was two years old when he came to American. When he had grown up he settled on a little farm west of Delhi, married my grandmother who was an Albrecht and lived a hard life as a pioneer.

A road had now been built from Fredericksburg (Delhi) to Tillsonburg by the Tillson interests and toll gate and hotel were in operation at a pint five miles west of Delhi. In the 1970's or 80's a nursery and gardens were established in the same area by a Mr. Mitchell, who promptly named his domain "Fernlea." The name of the area was engraved in the colored glass window of his beautiful new home built in the late 1800's. The nursery produced vegetables, hot house lettuce, rhubarb, geraniums and other fancy crops. They were sold in Tillsonburg on the market. When my father, George Martin, grew up, after a few years of "working out" he and his brother Fred decided to homestead on the low, rich, swampy land just west of Fernlea. I remember, as a youth, cleaning the willows, the trees and the stumps to create farming land.

During the depression years of the 30's I attended Ontario Agriculture College, Guelph, and graduated in the year 1935 to a sick economy with the going wage at Dominion Stores $15.00 a week. Heinz were paying $20.00 a week and Canada Packers $25.00 a week to smart young college graduates. Canadian National Railways were paying $35.00 every two weeks. So we decided to return to the homestead for better or worse and proceeded to develop a vegetable cash crop business, along with the general farm. My wife joined me in 1937 and in September, 1939, we opened a tiny flower shop in the busy tobacco village of Delhi. In October, 1945, after the war, we opened our second store in Aylmer and moved to larger quarters in Delhi. The store in Tillsonburg was opened at our present location in October, 1947. By this time our glass area had increased and we were growing flowers, hothouse vegetables and outdoor garden crops. A disastrous fire in January, 1948, slowed down progress temporarily. As time rolled on and business grew we closed our store in downtown Delhi, and moved our head office and design rooms out to the home location at Fernlea where a large warehouse and store were opened in 1952 with a giant "open house" celebration in March, 1953.

Other retail florist shops were opened in St. Thomas, 1952; Ingersoll, 1956; and, finally, Simcoe, in 1962.

Vegetable growing disappeared with the construction of new greenhouses for flower production. Our plant is now equipped with a modern boiler room, coolers, work areas, and 45,000 feet of modern automated glass area producing cut flowers and potted plants. The west range was developed over the past four years and covers three acres of plastic houses devoted to the production of spring garden plants at a wholesale level.

We have just now completed our new retail store and design rooms, head office, and warehouses, which we feel are the largest and most automated in Canada.

When my wife and I visited Germany this past summer, we located the Veits from Rot am See in the pretty little town of Langenburg, on the Jagst river, home of the Duchess of Hohenlolle, sister of Prince Philip of England.

The only knowledge the Veits in Germany had concerning the Veits in American was they had gone to Eriezee, and how true it was that they came to Lake Erie and now, 118 years later, we, at Fernlea, are happy that our German, Irish and English forefathers came to Eriezee, and left us a heritage of which we are all proud.