Patriarch of one of Wichita’s oldest businesses dies

Jeff Blood plans to have a painted portrait done of his father that will eventually rest next to similar ones done of his great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather and grandfather.

The painting will be on display at a Blood Orchards’ building established in 1885, which Gerald Blood painted yellow and another barn red after a trip to Disneyland. Gerald Blood died Tuesday at his third-generation home — the original family homestead is at Old Cowtown Museum — after a bout with lung cancer.

The 89-year-old was able to visit with his five children and seven grandchildren before his passing. He is also survived by his wife of 51 years, Jodie Blood.

She said Tuesday, surrounded by family at her home, that Blood never officially retired from working on the renowned orchard — where people were known to leave full and with stomachaches.

“The farmer doesn’t actually retire, he delegates,” she said.

Mr. Blood’s family has been known for their hard work dating back to his great-grandfather Gillman Blood, who moved from Illinois in 1871 to “160 acres of sandy river bottomland along what is now South Broadway,” The Eagle reported in 1993.

The first trees were planted the next year.

Gillman Blood raised apples, blackberries and raspberries, Gerald Blood told The Eagle in the story.

Blood’s father, Emmett Blood, planted the first peach trees when he took over in 1929.

“Emmett planted 30 acres of (E)lbertas, White Champions and Hales, and he also planted green apple trees that produced Copper Whites and Wealthy varieties,” the article said.

In 1948, Gerald Blood’s grandmother, Emma Blood, died and her funeral led to the orchard being shut down for three days. By the time the operation resumed, the peaches were too ripe to sell to grocery stores. The family contacted KFH Radio and an announcement was broadcast for people to come pick their own peaches.

“It was an amazing success,” Blood said in the article. “People just swamped us. We had no idea how to prepare for 200 cars at a time.”

The family decided to haul people in and out of the orchards with a flatbed trailer, saving the family on labor costs and allowing people to pick their choice fruit. It was the start of something new, allowing people to come pick their own fruits. It continued thenceforth.

“Other farmers in the area had joined in with peach growing,” the article said. ‘The slogan ‘Peach Capital of Kansas’ was the tag Haysville adopted in the 1950s. It was the beginning of a 20-year peach boom, during which the orchards around Haysville produced 70 to 80 percent of all Kansas peaches.”

Emmett Blood died in 1961 and Gerald Blood took over. The orchard reached a peak of 14,000 trees on 500 to 600 acres, Jeff Blood said, before saltwater contamination from nearby oil wells began to kill the trees in the 1970s.

“However, the biggest problem the business faces was the weather,” the article said.

The article said on Nov. 11, 1941 there was no prediction of cold weather — in fact the temperature that day was a “balmy 60 degrees” — but a freeze that night killed all of the peach and apple trees.

“”Farmers are the biggest gamblers that were ever made, you never know you are at the mercy of the weather,” Jodie Blood said Wednesday.

Gerald Blood ended the family’s peach orchard business in 1989, selling his equipment as well as a 1917 Model-T Ford, the article said.

The property was not sold.

In 2015, Jeff Blood, the youngest of five, started to plant peach trees in the orchard again. The saltwater contamination has since corrected itself. He had spent his childhood summer working on the farm and had the lifetime of knowledge from his father.

Gerald Blood sat on the trailer and pruned all of the trees, then told his youngest how to plant them.

“‘That’s too deep, redo it,’‘’ Jeff Blood recalled his father saying. “‘That’s not deep enough.’”

That’s just the way he was, he said. Jeff Blood said he would bring his father a branch and he’d know exactly what was wrong with the tree.

“I wouldn’t have been able to replant without him,” he said.

The family orchard now has about 700 trees: apples, peaches and cherry trees. Other family helps, but the endeavor is mainly driven by Jeff Blood and his wife, Jessica. Their daughters — 9-year-old Mallory and 7-year-old Emmy — also help out.

“They help plant trees, plant pumpkins, they help water and do everything,” he said.

Jeff Blood said customers frequently tell him about their memories of visiting the orchard with parents or grandparents.

“You ate more than you picked normally and you always had a bellyache when you left,” he said.

The hope is to allow people to pick their fruits again within the next five years. A February freeze ruined the peach harvest this year.

Gerald Blood’s viewing is scheduled from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday at Smith Mortuary in Derby. The funeral is scheduled for Friday. Instead of flowers, the family is asking for donations to be made to Harry Hynes Memorial Hospice.

This story was originally published August 12, 2021 at 4:09 AM with the headline "Patriarch of one of Wichita’s oldest businesses dies."