Farmers

In the early 1900s, when Jewish immigrants came to the United States, many of them came from farms, and they were picked up by the Jewish Agricultural Society, which dealt completely, I think, with the immigrants and brought them to small towns, so that they could help them establish themselves as farmers.
-Clayton Blick

Israel & Bessie Medin
on their farm in Hotchkissville, CT, 1938
(Collection of Leo and Ethel Goldberg)

The majority of Jewish immigrants had been forced off farm lands in Europe and had become middlemen in the grain and cattle trades or became experienced village peddlers. But a number of the Jewish immigrants to the United States were still farmers or were receptive to the prospects of farming in America.

My grandfather was a peddler at one time. Then when he moved into Waterbury he had a farm in Middlebury.
-Morton Greenblatt

When [my grandfather, Israel Medin,] came to America, he became a milkman delivering milk in Waterbury.... He had a farm in Bethlehem.... He had cows; he had produce. Then they moved to Hotchkissville, where they had another farm, and my grandfather’s basic activity thereafter was... dealing in cattle.... There was a big potbellied stove in [his] office, and the temperature in that office was the equivalent to the temperature outside until you lit that stove. Then the area probably four or five feet near the stove became reasonably warm and the rest was still cold. The cattle dealers [would drink his applejack, and] depending on where they sat...they would get a very...far-away look about them. Those further away in the colder area of the office would keep their sensibilities a bit longer.
-Ray Leopold

A number of Jewish immigrants who came to Waterbury were received in this country by the Jewish Agricultural Society who placed the newcomers on farms. While some, like the Blicks and the Weismans, left farming soon after their arrival in the United States, others, like the Raskins, the Medins, the Greenblatts and the Silvermans, operated farms in Waterbury and the region nearby.

Raskin Farms Playing Card
(Collection of Abe & Selma Raskin)

Raskin Farm Stand with Egg-o-Mat
(Collection of Abe & Selma Raskin)

Little by little, we started raising a few chickens, had a calf... little by little, we began to have a little success. Then I realized that in order to make a living, you had to specialize. So I started raising chickens. As it happens, the first batch I raised, I ran out of money before they were mature... but my uncle came through and helped us.
-Abe Raskin