Plymouth’s Historic Trittelwitz Farm

A look at the farmhouse that kept a family thriving for decades.

By: Maureen Kroening | From the issue: February 2012

Photo: Roger Trittelwitz

The Trittelwitz farm

The sprawling land near county roads 101 and 24 was cultivated to grow apples in several small orchards, sweet corn, potatoes, squash, cabbage, strawberries and more. With a glimmer of pride in his eyes, Roger Trittelwitz shares his fondest memories of his father, Charlie. “I’ve never been able to figure out how he made as much money as he spent,” he says. “He always had a convertible and a truck, and he only farmed, to my knowledge.”

Managing the 140-acre farm certainly was no small undertaking. “I can just barely remember this because it ended just as I was getting old enough to help before it was modernized,” says Trittelwitz, who was born in 1934 as the youngest of five children. “On one occasion, my dad filled the back seat and trunk of the Chevrolet with crates of strawberries. In those days, a crate was 24 quarts. We took them down to the farmers market in Minneapolis before 6 a.m., because my dad wanted to get a good parking spot. There was hardly anyone there, so he took us up to a little restaurant in a house on a hill for breakfast. When we came back, there was a guy standing there who must have been from a grocery chain, because he bought everything we had. All I know is that we got back home so early that my mother and sisters were still milking cows.”

Along with tending the produce, Trittelwitz says he and his siblings (who all graduated from Wayzata High School) also were responsible for pitching in with the livestock and harvesting wheat. “We were all raised on that farm, so we all had to do the work.”

On the property, the family had what they referred to as the “big barn” and the “little barn.” The big barn, just a 200-foot walk from the main house, was where the 32 dairy cattle were cared for, even into the mid-1950s, when Trittelwitz and his brother took the reins on the farm. In the basement of the little barn were upwards of 100 egg-laying chickens and, in the cold winter months, the space functioned as a warm bedding area for calves. A separate building next to the little barn also housed pigs.