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This Old Bench

this old bench
This old bench

Sometimes there is something that just makes everyone smile when they see it. That was the case a week or so ago when Larry Bristow (right) pulled out this old bench that he had hidden in the back years ago when he was asked to toss it. He posted a photo of it on the private Behnke Alum facebook site for our employees, present and past. What a lot of memories that one photo brought.

Throughout the years it has endured many different locations, paint, and carved initials. Alfred Millard (left) and I both remember it being located by the pond that use to be on the property. Marian Parsley (middle) remembers my grandfather, Albert Behnke sitting on it while working with the famous Belgian Giant tomatoes. I took this photo of the three of them this past Sunday right before the auction started.

What they did not know was where that bench would end up. But I did! Former employee Eric Morrison had written to me the night before that he would love to buy it and told me how much he would pay. Since he could not attend the auction I went ahead and bid on it for him. Needless to say, he won the bench after some intense bidding and now as Larry Bristow says, “All is right in the world”.

Thank you to everyone that came out and supported us last Sunday on the hottest day of the year! WOW! the auction started at 10AM sharp and the last item sold was at 5:45 pm. What an amazing time and while, yes, it was hard to see things go (some for as low as a $1.00 for a whole table of assorted stuff), I know in my heart it was for the best. Plus it all added up. The main thing is that pretty much everything found a new home and we did not have to throw things away that others would enjoy.

We ended up donating much of the old Behnke memorabilia to the Beltsville Agriculture Library, this made everyone happy. The Beltsville Lions Club raised over $400.00 selling their famous hot dogs and we made over $300.00 for the Prince Georges County Police Young Explorers Post 600 with what we auctioned off to support them.

So another chapter comes to an end. Going forward we will plan to offer for sale this Fall the beautiful trees planted around the grounds when the weather is better for removing them. We had planned to sell them at the auction but decided to wait. If you are interested please send me an email at sfleming@behnkes.com and we will set something up.

Once again, thank you to everyone. This Thursday email is going to take a week or so break and will start back up again in August.

 

steph signature
Behnke Nurseries, VP

Stephanie Fleming was raised at Behnke’s Nurseries in Beltsville. Her Mom, Sonja, was one of Albert & Rose Behnke’s four children. She was weeding from the moment she could walk and hiding as soon as she was old enough to run, so many weeds, so little time. Although she quickly learned how to pull out a perennial and get taken off of weed pulling duty.

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