Even though January in the Finger Lakes this year will be remembered as a cold and snowy month, my recollections about growing up on a family farm have returned to center stage as our family has been drawn closer together by the recent passing of my Uncle Truman F. Yoder in Texas, a long telephone call from my cousin Vincent Yoder in South Carolina announcing my Uncle’s death, and my talks about having grown up on a family farm at the Wilhelmus Estate Winery’s winter event (click here). Family members from all over the United States grieved the passing of Truman F. Yoder.
Yet is was the Bupp Family farm along with my father Stanley Bupp and my mother Dorothy (Yoder) Bupp, my grandparents Walter and Emma Bupp, and grandparents Fred and Rena Yoder that have held the Bupp family together all of these years. Uncle Truman Yoder and his wife Patsy, Uncle Arnold Carlson and his wife Edna, Uncle Reno Bupp and his wife Ruth – all came during the summer to visit the family or to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. And now only the memories of these family reunions and the excitement and the laughter that these visits brought remain. Of all my relatives mentioned above, only Aunt Ruth in Tallahassee Florida still stands at 103 years.
The Bupp Family Farm lives on as a working farm – now a part of the Carmony Farms. My brother John and sister in law Joan live there on a 2 acre piece of the old family farm tending to the heifers and mowing the grass along the lanes like they always have done. Yes, I left the family farm when I was 18 years old, but those old family farm memories will always remain!
James R. Bupp