Before subdivisions and homestead places began to occupy the rolling hills of the Apshawa area in north Minneola, a rich part of Lake County’s citrus industry played a role for nearly 70 years. A dream come true for a business adventurist would include employment opportunities for local citizens who were still suffering from the effects of the Great Depression and nutritional assistance to the United States military.
An idea was born in 1926 to purchase approximately 500 acres of wooded property in an area north of Lake Minneola and West of US-27. The property was purchased for $1,250.00 an acre from the owner, William Jones Howey. Howey was not only the founder and mayor of Howey-In-the-Hills but was also a large grove owner in central Florida and owned large tracts of citrus groves throughout Florida. R.C. Cory, a native of New Jersey and the purchaser of the property would eventually have the business “Apshawa Groves, Inc.,” incorporated in 1934. Cory served the corporation as vice president with a board of trustees consisting of twelve area business owners. The term Apshawa was derived from a Native American language and was also the name of Cory’s home neighborhood near West Milford, New Jersey.
Cory, who was a businessman by trait and knew little about southern agriculture, hired Dr. Werner Husmann to oversee the operations of Apshawa. Dr. Husmann, known by most as Doc, was an economist by training, but was an astute and leading grove manager who was known throughout the state as “one of the best.” Husmann quickly went to work hiring local laborers and managers to care for the needs of the newly planted groves. Many of those workers not only made Apshawa Groves their lifetime career but passed their talents and hard work down to upcoming family generations, who carried on the tradition of citrus work.
Apshawa Groves had a large percentage of its groves planted with grapefruit. Most of the acreage had the trees spaced 30 feet by 30 feet, giving them only 48 trees per acre. This was a common practice at the time for grapefruit trees that were planted in the sandy soils of central Florida. The trees were not irrigated at the time and required lots of room for an extensive root system. Almost all of the citrus trees grown in the area at the time consisted of scion, the top part of the tree, and rootstock, known as the root system.
Doc Hussman was proud of all his citrus, but he was especially proud of the grapefruit grown in the Apshawa Groves. For many years, University of Florida Doctor and Citrus Horticulture Professor Louis Ziegler would bring his classes to visit Dr. Hussman and learn about growing and marketing citrus…