Ramsey County History – Winter 2013: “Helping the Sun Shine Brighter for Farmers: Robert Freeman on Mount Ramsey”

Helping the Sun Shine Brighter for Farmers: Robert Freeman on Mount Ramsey
Author: Harlan Stoehr

The year 2013 marks the centennial of extension work in Ramsey County, beginning with Harry G. Krum’s appointment as county agricultural agent. At the time of Krum’s hiring, Ramsey County was home to over a thousand farms, and it became the eleventh county in Minnesota to employ such an agent. Robert Freeman, who was first employed as the county’s agricultural agent in 1920, stayed in the job for the next thirty years. Thus, he experienced the agricultural slump of the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War II, and the transition of Ramsey County’s rural spaces into suburbanization. Freeman left behind when he moved on to a new job first-hand accounts of his work and of the times in his pithy annual reports. Author Harlan Stoehr has mined these reports and provided a comprehensive look at the variety of issues and problems Freeman dealt with over the course of his long tenure.
PDF of Stoehr article