Berlin Fruit Box

Nice basket, BH! The only factory within the Berlin Heights village limits is the Berlin Fruit Box Company, the second oldest basket company in the country and the oldest in Ohio – older than Longaberger. Berlin Fruit Box makes the Samuel Patterson basket, and has made them the same way, since 1858, with thinly peeled slices of wood that are just malleable enough to weave into baskets.
When my family bought a little farmlet in BH back in the 70’s, BFBC was already an old institution, and the factory’s whistle blew four times a day – to signal the start of the shift, the lunch break, the return to work, and going home time. Old Nick the Russian DP (Displaced Person from WWII) walked through our farm every day for something like 40 years – from way before we lived on the property – on his way to and from work – he literally wore his own groove into the earth.
We never gave the Box Factory much thought, until recently when I learned that their old school fruit baskets are much in demand. The corrugated tin sheds that overlooked our back lot, bass pond, and grape arbor were just part of the landscape, a rustic reminder of world that no longer is, but is deservedly cherished today.