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Jontes Farms on Pioneer Trail in Samsula was a long-time vegetable farming enterprise. They are probably best known for their Jontes sweet corn, but they also raised a variety of vegetables including bell peppers, black-eye peas, cucumbers, sweet onions, okra, greens, and hydroponic tomatoes. |
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In 1926, Robert (Bob) Jontes’ family moved to Samsula from Boston, Pennyslvania, on word that the farming was good in this part of Florida. Pauline Klun grew up in DeLand, Florida, and moved with her parents to Samsula when she was in her late teens. Bob and Pauline Jontes were married June 13, 1947, after Bob returned from service in the Pacific theater during WWII. They purchased a ten-acre parcel next to the Martin and Christine Jontes farm where Bob grew up, and farmed there over the next fifty-plus years. |
| Bob recalls his father growing escarole and endive in the early days to ship “to the markets up north, Philadephia, New York.” When produce wasn’t moving by train, it went by truck. As Bob remembers, “Tony Pleterski had a big GMC truck, he would haul right on up, load her down, and go on up the country, and then Frank Luznar did that, too. . . the trucks went right up to the Potomac yards.”
Produce was also sold wholesale through the Sanford State Farmer’s Market. Pauline said it “looked like the packing house, sort of, it was a big building,” and, as Bob relates, you would “rent a part of it, and put your stuff on there and wait till somebody [would] give you a price.” He said it was the last option for selling produce, because “you got what they give you, you come home, and that was it–you may have lost money.” Bob was involved with the East Coast Grower’s Association, a grower’s co-op that operated out of the Samsula packing house in the late 1940s-early 1950s. After the co-op ceased operations Bob and Pauline, like other area farmers, managed their business on their own. Bob worked at Cape Canaveral/Kennedy for thirty years, but he would get up early and work late on farm duty. Pauline, who also pracised nursing for a while and took photographs for the News-Journal, managed the farm during the day assisted by son Steve. The Jontes’ ran a produce stand on their property, and also delivered vegetables locally and to Plant City. |
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Jontes Farms advertisement, 1992 |
 Pauline, featured in an article on the 1995 Volusia County Farm Tour.(Cannot be re-used without the express permission from the Daytona Beach News-Journal.) |
Bob walking through the amaryllis rows on his parents’ farm, approximately 1928. |
Bob demonstrating his Case tractor, May 2012. |