Aubrey Enoch was born in 1917 on his family’s farm near Lockesburg Arkansas.

He was the oldest of four children born to his mother Maud Enoch.  He also had three older half brothers and an older half sister.  Aubrey’s father, William Enoch, worked his farm with mules growing crops from cotton to strawberries along with chickens and cattle.  Aubrey did not drive a car until he was in college.

After graduating from high school in Lockesburg, Aubrey attended college in Durant, OK and Magnolia AR.   Aubrey worked very hard to complete his education, milking cows at the dairy to earn his tuition while at State A & M College at Magnolia, now Southern Arkansas University.  It was a moment of glory when he was chosen as the best milker and given the honor of milking the college’s  prizewinning Jersey cow, Magnolia Belle, on stage in front of a crowd at the university auditorium.  He cherished the memory of this event, and related the anecdote to a visitor less than a month ago. 

While attending Magnolia he met Alice and they were married in 1939.

He graduated from the Univ. of Arkansas the following year with a B.S. in Agronomy.

During the war years Aubrey was the Superintendent at the Univ. of Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station in Hope. 

During the time at the “experiment station” Aubrey and Alice had two daughters, Lynda and Pat.

After WWII, Aubrey farmed in the Hope area.  He mostly grew cotton but he also managed a large peach orchard and was the first farmer to plant soybeans in Hempstead county.

In 1946 Aubrey Jr. was born.  Aubrey had always been called “Joe” by his family so Aubrey Jr. became “little Joe”.

In the early 1950’s Aubrey taught agriculture to veterans through a Federal vocational program in addition to growing cotton.  After a particularly bad year for cotton in 1954, Aubrey and Alice decided that a steady income from teaching school was a better way to raise a family than the uncertainty of farming.  Alice had taught for several years in Emmett AR. They were both teachers and now they looked to California where teachers were in big demand.  Alice’s sister, Doris, and brother, Bill, both lived in the San Francisco Bay area.

In 1955, Aubrey packed the family with all their worldly belongings into an Oldsmobile and an International pickup truck and two U-Haul trailers and moved to Ukiah, California.

Aubrey taught seventh grade and Alice taught fourth grade.

During the next few years, Aubrey and Alice continued their education.  Alice completed her Bachelors Degree and Aubrey completed his Masters Degree, both from San Francisco State College.

Aubrey became a school principle.  He and Alice retired in 1975 after twenty years of teaching in Ukiah.

In July 1975 they moved back to Arkansas and took up residence at Alice’s old home place in Fouke. The original farmhouse built by Alice’s father was long gone by then but Joe had been working for two years on their new house at the same location.  The front steps to the old house had survived the years and their new house was built with those original steps leading to the front door.

Aubrey was always a worker.  He bought a small herd of cattle. Then he read about growing blackberries.  The University of Arkansas just happened to have the premier blackberry-breeding program in the world at that time and Aubrey got some starts of their newest improved variety the “Cheyenne”.  He started with two rows of Cheyenne blackberries that were two hundred feet long. In 1978 the first berry pickers came to the farm. They picked fifty gallons of blackberries that June morning and that afternoon Aubrey started plowing up the pasture. Enoch’s Berry Farm was born.

Over the next few years he planted blueberries and muscadines and added more blackberries.  As this was the first u-pick berry farm in this part of the country, people came from miles around.  He advertised in the Shreveport newspaper and a good percentage of the pickers in those early years drove up from Shreveport.

Aubrey never planted a row of berries on the farm that didn’t have drip irrigation.  He made his own drip lines until the irrigation industry finally caught up and started manufacturing the equipment he needed.

He had become acquainted with Dr. James Moore, the head of the blackberry-breeding program at the Univ. of Arkansas.  Dr. Moore asked Aubrey to do some trials on some of the blackberries that they were developing.  Aubrey received bundles of blackberry root cuttings with identifying numbers attached.  He planted and cared for them and raised them and picked the berries and reported his opinion back to Dr. Moore. In later years, when he would talk about the blackberry trials he would say “ I wish we still had that 731”.

Although the berry farm was enough to keep him busy, he also had a passion for photography and had his own studio and darkroom at his home in Fouke.  He took portraits and did wedding photography, developing his own color and black and white prints, often with grandchildren as darkroom assistants. 

Aubrey was also elected to two terms as Miller County Justice of the Peace, sometimes performing wedding ceremonies at his home.  He also gave his time and expertise with distinguished service on the Miller County School Board. Aubrey also served on the Area Council on Aging.

In 2000, at age 83, he asked Joe to take over running the berry farm.  He said he “needed some help”. He was still putting in a good days work at age 83.  Alice was feeling the effects of old age and he was devoting more of his time and energy to caring for her, but he still found time to work in the berry patch.

Alice passed away in 2005. They had been married for 66 years.

Aubrey still worked in the berry patch.  In the winter of 2007 when he was 89, he mulched all the blackberries with hay.  He hauled over 200 bales of hay, two at a time on his golf cart, and spread them on the berry rows.

He was working in the berry patch the week before he died. He was cutting the dead wood out of a row of blackberries the day before his final trip to the hospital.

At age 92 he could barely walk but to Aubrey Enoch “barely” was all he needed to get up and get something done.

A fitting close would be to wish that he may rest in peace, but I know full well that he is not resting.  He’s up there doing something, with a freedom and joy that we on Earth are yet to experience.