RIVERDALE -- On a gentle right bend on a road in Riverdale sits the Ellis home; a two-story red brick orchard house set back from the street, peeking through evergreens and poplars.
At first glance the home is unremarkable, but the generations that have lived inside the nearly hundred-year-old lathe and plaster walls are anything but ordinary, and the cherry orchard the house sits on is reminiscent of a simpler time in the city of Riverdale.
Brent and Tamara Ellis own the home built in 1927; the property deed, however, was recorded in 1889.
"The house was originally built by a person named Ballantine," Ellis said. "They had eight children and lived in a house that was on the lower part of the property. The house burnt down, so they started building this house up here. Halfway through, they ran out of money so they had to have the LDS church finish this house as a building project."
Before Ellis bought the house, his grandparents owned the home and his father -- along with the rest of the family -- ran the 46-acre fruit farm.
Ellis remembers sitting in the sun on the grass in front of the home, eating a sandwich his mother had packed in his lunch with the 200-plus day-laborers the family would employ during the harvest season. He still has an old wooden sign his grandparents would affix to the mailbox to sell the fruit they harvested.
They don't use the sign anymore, and the fruit they harvest today is sold out of the house.
"At one time my dad owned the largest fruit farm in Weber County," Ellis said. "But there just isn't the market for fruit like there used to be."
In a single year during the heyday of the orchard, Ellis remembers harvesting over 100 tons of cherries.
"We'd take them up by Brigham City to Perry to a guy named Muir Roberts," Ellis said. "We would put them in these great big tanks of water to keep the cherries fresh, then they'd just unload the tanks and process them at the plant."
Of the original 46 acres the Ellises owned, Brent and Tamara still have 2 1/2 they use to grow and harvest Bing cherries, pie cherries and apricots. The north side of the property is lined with archaic farm equipment and towering poplar trees that help block the wind on blustery days. An old spring tooth harrow, spray machine, and wheels from a buckboard wagon dating back to the 1800s sit adjacent to the poplars.
A large deck on the back of the house is virtually the only addition Brent Ellis put on the home, though after purchasing the house from his grandparents, the Ellises converted the upstairs floor to an apartment with several rooms and a small kitchen.
Living in an older home poses unique challenges, and aside from the outdated yet sound plumbing and electrical systems, the Ellises heated their home with a coal furnace for years before upgrading to a more efficient means of heating.
"Did you ever see that show 'A Christmas Story?'" Ellis said. "I just got tired of the smoke and not being able to control the temperature as well."
The cool, sprawling basement at the bottom of a narrow staircase once housed mass quantities of fruit, but since then, the concrete floored area was converted into rooms for the Ellis children when they lived at the house and is now used for storage.
Each room throughout the house has a distinct flavor and combines conveniences of today with the charm of days past.
The kitchen, big enough to fit a large family and no more, is white except for a bright red sink, complimented with a new Kitchen Aid, red to match. Upstairs, a bedroom that was once a kitchenette for the apartment used by Brent Ellis' grandparents is now a playroom for his grandkids when they visit.
At the heart of the home is the living room, a place where the Ellis family has gathered for decades -- where Brent Ellis relaxed after picking cherries, his four kids ran through as they were growing up, and now his grandkids gather when they come over.
"It was a neat way of growing up," Ellis said. "Since I was a baby I remember my mother out in the orchard helping my dad and that's what we did every summer, I grew up around that and I thought it was great."
In addition to the harvest, Brent worked for the state of Utah and has since retired; Tamara has taught school in the area for over 20 years, and while things in the Ellis home have remained somewhat constant, around them progress has changed the landscape.
Some of the original 46 acres of the fruit farm is now home to administrative office buildings, and nearby Riverdale Road has undergone a transformation from rural farming community to an epicenter of dining and retail.
None of this bothers Brent and Tamara Ellis, though. They simply appreciate what they have, are content with the memories they've made, and look forward to making more with their family.
"It's fun to have the grandkids up here doing the same things that I did when I was their age," Ellis said. "The house has a lot of history and a lot of memories to me and we've made a lot of memories since we've been here."
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