Valentine was a miller by trade and soon found employment at the Okaman Flour Mill in the village of Okaman which was a short distance east of Logan. Once settled in his job and having obtained a place to live near the mill, he sent for his fiance, Rosalia Frodl, who was still living in Moravia. Nearly as soon as she arrived Valentine and Rosalia were married. The ceremony took place on June 9, 1872, in St. Jarleth Catholic Church which still stands and is located in Iosco Township, Waseca County. The church was newly built, and Valentine and Rosalia were the first couple to be married there.

Working in dusty, confined spaces as he had been for a good share of his young life began taking a toll on Valentine’s health, and not long after he and Rosalia married he realized he had to leave his trade as a miller and find another way to make a living. Rosalia had had some farming experience in Moravia, and Valentine had learned much about farming through conversations with farmers that came to the mill. They were both young, hard workers willing to take a chance, and on December 8, 1873, they bought 40 acres of land in Janesville Township, about halfway between Logan and Janesville.

The initial 40 acres consisted of virgin forest, and only five acres had been cleared. There was a small, one-room log cabin in the clearing and that’s where they began their new lives.* Their lives were the lives of pioneers: spare, difficult, with very little comfort or convenience, and financially precarious. They gardened, raised a few meager crops, and began to clear the land. They also started a family, and over the next several years they had four boys: Emil, Henry, Adolph, and Julius. Valentine and Rosalia worked hard, saved money, and made enough progress so that in 1875 they had the confidence to purchase an additional 60 acres. The new tract also had approximately 20 acres of permanent wet-land that included open water in the form of a “mud lake.” By 1884 the farm was successful enough that they were finally able to build a simple frame house to replace the log cabin they’d lived in for ten years.

The last years of the century went well for the Hofmanns. The land was mostly cleared, machinery was being added, debts were being reduced, and the family was enjoying the new house. However, tragedy struck one winter day when Valentine was hauling some logs to a sawmill in a bob sled with a team of horses: something spooked the horses and they bolted. In his effort to control the horses he was thrown from his seat and run over by the sled. Though he survived the accident, he was badly injured and perhaps never fully recovered. He eventually developed cancer, and after suffering for months he died on April 29, 1900, at age 54.

* The cabin was so small that when Valentine once accepted a rocking chair from a furniture maker in trade for a load of wood he couldn’t otherwise sell, he tied it to the rafters as it would take up too much space in the room.

 
EMIL AND CLARA (STERLING) HOFMANN

By 1900 all four boys had left the farm, and Rosalia found herself alone. Emil, however, being the only one among the four brothers with any interest in the farm, decided to take over for his mother, and he returned home from California where he had been working.

He apparently entered farming with enthusiasm and continued on the path started by Valentine. This consisted of growing corn and grain, and tending a few cows. He also borrowed money to construct a hog barn and began raising purebred Chester White pigs. Then one day in 1902 or 1903, fate intervened: a swarm of honey bees chanced to make a temporary landing on a small bush close to the house.* Emil was fascinated by this, and using some materials at hand, he hurriedly fashioned a sort of hive and watched excitedly as the bees crawled into it. At that point Emil had unwittingly changed the course of his life and launched what was to become The Hofmann Apiaries, a business that would last nearly 85 years.

An accounting of the first few years of having bees on the farm is not very complete, but with what is known and some speculation a fair picture can be produced. The intervening years between hiving the swarm and the year 1907 were likely years of much learning about bees, how to manage them and harvest their production (figures 3–5).

* The actual date of this event is uncertain. In his autobiography Charles states the year was 1902 or 1903. However, the letterhead for Hofmann Apiaries (figure 2) shows the date established as 1899. Among other things, it is known that Emil had a flair for marketing. Two examples: photos showing a truck marked “No. 2” when he owned but one, and a promotional photo showing the home yard with many hives, some of which were empty hive covers; the empty covers were intended to inflate the apparent size of the operation at that time. It seems possible that Emil may have had his reasons for establishing the originating date of Hofmann Apiaries as before the turn of the century.