Generations new and old of Michiana have heard the of the Shelton name.

Shelton’s Farm Market has been a Niles staple of fresh, locally grown and produced food for the last 60 years. It has outlasted dozens of other local produce stands that were competitors in the early days, weathered the coming and going of various major grocery stores and remained a humble, but hard-working presence in the community.

But like the apples and grapes picked from their farm, the name Shelton is a product of the land of Michiana, grown from hot days of back aching labor, pulled up from the dirt and set on display for all to see.

The Sheltons, as Michiana knows them, started in Alabama as cash crop farmers, or “hillside cotton growers,” as Jim, the oldest of the remaining Sheltons, described it. His parents — Ethan, a son of the south, and Rose, a Hungarian immigrant — met in Chicago, got married and then moved down to Ethan’s home in Alabama for 17 years.

The couple moved their family back to Chicago in 1945 for better medical treatment when one of Jim’s brothers was very ill. The Sheltons stayed in Chicago for four years until one of Ethan’s sisters-in-law piqued his interest by bragging about a fruit belt region in southwest Michigan.

As a country boy and farmer himself, Ethan wanted to move his family out of the city, so they found a 40-acre plot of land in a little known, but profitable area of the country called Berrien County, Michigan.

“Berrien County was a garden of Eden in 1947,” Jim Shelton said. “The thing that attracted us was the amount of different crops you could grow here due to the climate being next to Lake Michigan.”

“This is a very fertile fruit belt,” said Mike, Jim’s son. “Tree fruit doesn’t grow everywhere. We have a little micro climate here with Lake Michigan and the lay of the land,”

The climate was right for the Sheltons, but the climb from a 40-acre plot and small, roadside farm stand shaded by a couple of trees to a 300-acre operation with a full store on the main drag between Niles and South Bend was long. The Shelton stand was not the only one along their stretch of road, and some of the neighbors and competitors didn’t think the new family with the little stand would make it more than a year. But Jim, his younger brother and partner Joe, and his son Mike all attributed their success to the same thing: hard work.

“All we did was work for the first few years,” Jim said.

Jim recalled one neighbor telling him how the neighbors were making bets against their success and bickering over who would get to buy their land when they went under.

“‘I told them they’re nuts,’ (the neighbor) said. ‘Because every time I go by here, people are working,’” Jim recalls.

That neighbor offered to help out the Sheltons if they were short on the payments that year, but they weren’t.

The farm grew, and as it did so did the variety of fruits and vegetables the Sheltons offered, as well as their shrewdness, as Jim recalled. There were price battles over sweet corn, the discovery that other markets were swindling them out of money from their peaches, the purchase of the first commercial lot south of U.S.-12 to outsell their competitors, and finding which fruits to specialize in so customers would continue coming to them. The Sheltons grew smarter, but their knack for working hard did not change.

“It wasn’t that we were that much smarter, it was that we worked harder, and we took care of our customers,” Jim said.

Being a family business meant learning about hard work and customer care from family. Jim and Joe learned from Ethan. Mike learned from his father, then passed the work ethic down to Nick, now the mayor of Niles, and his other children.

“I remember I was about 15 or 16 years old, and Jimbo set me down and he taught me what integrity was,” Mike said. “I think the definition back then was just to always do the right thing. Over the years we’ve always tried to do the right thing.”

Doing the right thing and operating a farm and market with integrity was not always the easy road. For the Sheltons, integrity meant keeping prices low and quantity and quality high. Integrity meant, and still means, providing as much locally grown produce as possible. The insistence on hard work and integrity is what still sets Shelton apart.

“It’s safe to say we sell the most local produce in the area,” Joe said.

“That makes us different,” Nick said. “We do a better job of selling all of the local produce in the area. If it’s grown locally, we’re carrying it.”

Shelton’s Farm Market officially opened in 1959, and in the decades since Shelton’s has continued to grow in its offerings without sacrificing the fundamentals that got them started. With a full-service meat counter, extensive cheese and other dairy offerings, a garden center, the modern market looks different than the early days. But Shelton’s still specializes in local perishable food, continues to look after the interests of the customers and perseveres in the business of hard work and integrity. The family owned and family grown farm market is a testament to the reality that the purity of the fruit is determined by the integrity of the soil and care for the roots.

The farm grew, and as it did so did the variety of fruits and vegetables the Sheltons offered, as well as their shrewdness, as Jim recalled. There were price battles over sweet corn, the discovery that other markets were swindling them out of money from their peaches, the purchase of the first commercial lot south of U.S.-12 to outsell their competitors, and finding which fruits to specialize in so customers would continue coming to them. The Sheltons grew smarter, but their knack for working hard did not change.

“It wasn’t that we were that much smarter, it was that we worked harder, and we took care of our customers,” Jim said.

Being a family business meant learning about hard work and customer care from family. Jim and Joe learned from Ethan. Mike learned from his father, then passed the work ethic down to Nick, now the mayor of Niles, and his other children. Joe taught his daughters, and today works side-by-side with his son-in-law, Chad Geister.

“I remember I was about 15 or 16 years old, and Jimbo set me down and he taught me what integrity was,” Mike said. “I think the definition back then was just to always do the right thing. Over the years we’ve always tried to do the right thing.”

Doing the right thing and operating a farm and market with integrity was not always the easy road. For the Sheltons, integrity meant keeping prices low and quantity and quality high. Integrity meant, and still means, providing as much locally grown produce as possible. The insistence on hard work and integrity is what still sets Shelton’s apart.

“It’s safe to say we sell the most local produce in the area,” Joe said.

“That makes us different,” Nick said. “We do a better job of selling all of the local produce in the area. If it’s grown locally, we’re carrying it.”

Shelton’s Farm Market officially opened in 1959, and in the decades since, Shelton’s has continued to grow in its offerings without sacrificing the fundamentals that got them started. With a full-service meat counter, a garden center, extensive cheese selections, natural foods, produce, groceries and a wholesale department, the modern market looks different than the early days. But Shelton’s still specializes in local perishable food, continues to look after the interests of the customers and perseveres in the business of hard work and integrity.

The family-owned and family grown farm market is a testament to the reality that the purity of the fruit is determined by the integrity of the soil and care for the roots.