PALMYRA — Lawrence Marks surveyed the array of produce — tomatoes, butternut squash, pumpkins, gourds, peppers, and more, including corn stalks and even fresh eggs kept in a cooler — for sale at his farmstand on Deerfield Highway in Palmyra on a recent Sunday afternoon, and nodded in satisfaction.

“This year is the best I’ve had in eight,” he said of the amount of vegetables his two-acre plot has delivered this season.

The trailerloads of pumpkins he sells in a typical year are purchased from a neighbor for resale at the stand, but other than that, all the produce is grown on Marks’ farm nearby on Grosvenor Highway, two 50-acre plots which he rents to his son, David.

His grandson Matthew, the fifth generation of the Marks clan to be a farmer, owns the farm on Deerfield Highway where he has run his farm stand for about eight years now.

Marks sets up his stand, called “Opa’s Fresh Veggies” after his grandchildrens’ name for him, at that location because Deerfield Highway gets far more traffic than what comes down Grosvenor.

Marks’ energy level belies his 92 years. In addition to tending his vegetable plot, he volunteers with the Salvation Army, which is also the recipient of any extra produce he has, every two weeks when it does its food distribution.

“I have to be there at 6:15, so I get up early,” he said, chuckling. And, every three months, he serves as a Meals on Wheels driver through his church, Immanuel Lutheran in Palmyra, a volunteer task he said he very much enjoys doing.

He’s been a Lutheran all his life. “My granddad was a Lutheran minister, so I guess it kind of rubbed off on me,” he said.

The Marks family has long ties to the area. His grandparents came to the U.S. from Germany in 1890, settled in New York, and decided to move to Palmyra because his grandmother had a sister who lived nearby.

The couple bought the farmland on Grosvenor in 1893, arriving by train at what was then known as Lenawee Junction, not far away. Later, Marks’ father took over the farm, and Marks was the youngest of five children born in the farmhouse. He’s lived his whole life on the same piece of land.

Growing up as he did during the Great Depression, “things were rough,” he said. But living on a farm at least meant they had plenty to eat, between the vegetables the family grew, the eggs and meat from their contingent of chickens, and the livestock they had.

Plus, his mother did plenty of canning, made the family’s shirts (being farmers, they needed denim overalls, so those had to be bought) and darned their socks. Getting new socks simply because one of them got a hole in it was unheard of in those days.

His only schooling came at the country school a mile away, which the children walked to. “My dad was a true German and you didn’t get the car out to go a mile to school,” Marks said, adding the familiar joke about how school “was a mile away and it was uphill in both directions.”

He attended that school until eighth grade. When it came time for high school, however, he never got to go because his father lost a leg to infection and he was needed to help out on the farm. For the same reason, he was exempted from military service.

Marks was 25 when he and his wife, Charlotte, married and moved into a new home they built on the family farm.

They had two children, David and Brenda — followed over time by five grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren — and enjoyed 48 years of marriage before she died 18 years ago. He then found love a second time with Judy Hensley, who died this past April.

In addition to all the hard work it always takes to run a farm, Marks held down another job full-time for most of his life. He worked for 44 years as the produce buyer for the A&P grocery store, 34 of those years in Adrian and 10 more years at the chain’s Saline location after the Adrian store closed, so that he could work for A&P until retirement.

He also spent many years, until retiring just recently, as a funeral assistant for what is now the Wagley Funeral Home Tagsold Chapel in Blissfield, where his duties included helping transport the deceased and working at visitations and funerals. 

So, with the way he keeps so busy, does he have time for any hobbies?

One thing he used to do in his “spare time,” such as it was, was chair caning. “Twenty years ago, a chair was expensive if you had to have it caned,” he said. “But now, that’s a thing of the past.”

But with everything he continues to do to serve others, enjoy time with his family, and, in season, tend his vegetables and keep his farm stand well-stocked, he has no plans to stop being active any time soon despite his age. “God has blessed me well with good health,” he said.

Judy Marcus of Palmyra, a longtime friend, knows all about Marks’ inability to slow down.

“He can’t sit still,” she said, to the point that he recently applied for job as a bagger at a local grocery store and, when he wasn’t hired, fretted because he thought he needed more to do.

“He’s got to be busy or he’s not happy,” she said.

Marcus first met Marks while he was at the Adrian A&P and she worked at the nearby Grant’s department store. They’ve been friends ever since, and Marcus volunteers alongside him at the Salvation Army.

She’s seen firsthand how the later generations of Markses inherited his helping ways. Marks’ grandchildren also volunteer at the Salvation Army, and only recently they arrived at Marcus’ house to help clear her yard of sticks that had blown down after a wind storm.

“The grandkids are as sweet as he is,” she said. “I’ve never met a family like them.”

Marcus described her friend as “such a character. He’s a lot of fun, and he just wants to do everything for everybody.”

“He’s willing to help anywhere and everywhere he can,” she added. “He’s just a very caring person, and he cares about his family, and everybody who knows him would say the same thing. If you need anything, he’ll get it for you. If you need anything done, he’ll do it for you.”