It is the ultimate slice of Americana: The small-town grain elevator that sits alongside railroad tracks and helps define a town’s skyline. The local elevator was always the unofficial meeting place where friends and neighbors have gathered to sell their crops and catch up on gossip. Farmers dressed in overalls with John Deere green caps scuffed at the dirt guessing what the next day’s weather would bring. You can just picture it.

The Mason Elevator Company still evokes those memories of more quaint times. Situated just a few blocks west of downtown Mason, the century-old facility has survived several fires and witnessed mid-Michigan’s vastly changed rural farming community.

With well over a million bushel storage capability in shiny steel bins that stand 100 feet tall, the Mason Elevator Company today offers their own lines of feed, a retail store, custom application fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and lawn care products.

“We carry or can order nearly any kind of feed you can think of,” said co-owner Ken Brown, laughing as he recalled providing Michigan State University with monkey chow for some of its lab animals.

The Mason Elevator Company actually has four facilities in Mason, including a 750-ton liquid fertilizer facility. It also owns the Leslie Farm Center in Leslie, which Brown described as a full-service elevator offering a retail store, modern fertilizer blending and convenient grain receiving.

Wheat, soybean and corn are dried and aerated at the Mason facility and then stored until the grain is delivered to millers for processing.

“Because of the elevator’s storage capacity we can deliver it at the convenience of the millers, which results in a higher price for us,” said co-owner Russell McCalla, who along with Brown purchased the Mason Elevator Company from McCalla’s parents in 2003.

Corn is the glamour crop right now because of the demand for ethanol, McCalla said. Corn is used in the manufacture of ethanol, which can be used as a fuel alternative. This year, corn is expected to edge out soybeans as Michigan’s most plentiful crop, according to a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report. The Mason Elevator Company will receive an estimated 1.3 million bushels of corn this fall.

“The price of corn has doubled from 2006 levels. It’s the biggest move [in price] I’ve ever seen,” McCalla said, who started working at the elevator bagging grain and sweeping floors in 1982. “However, it’s too hard to predict long-term enthusiasm for corn because it is being driven by the price of crude oil. If oil comes down in price, the demand for corn will drop.”

Spring and fall are the busiest periods for the Mason Elevator Company, which has 16 full-time employees. “We get very busy when the wheat comes in during July, too,” Brown said.

The Mason Elevator Company can trace its origins to the mid-1800 when it was used as a warehouse for lath, shingles, plaster, lime and salt. The facility later was used to saw hardwood and construct dry cooperage barrels, which were used as shipping containers for merchandise. By the 1890s the warehouse housed a coal and ice operation for a time. A 1970 fire completely destroyed the feed plant and a new modern facility was constructed.

Since then, the main facility on South Lansing Street in Mason has witnessed the dramatic change in rural farming across mid-Michigan.

“The small family farms have all but disappeared. The 200-acre farms have been pushed out. It became unprofitable to maintain a small farm. Our biggest customers today will farm eight and nine thousand acres, and they go all over to farm as much land as possible,” Brown said.

While most farmers have gone big to survive, the “hobby farm” is becoming a popular alternative, Brown explained. “Those are the farms where people have other full time jobs, but still want a few chickens or goats around. We see a lot of them coming in for their feed and supplies.”

High technology has come to the ag business, too, McCalla said. Global positioning systems are now used to “auto-steer” fertilizer spreaders and for insuring soil samples from fields are taken from the same spots each year.

“The technology in the seed industry and better herbicides and pesticides have really increased yields,” Brown said.

The Mason Elevator Company continues its support of local 4H clubs and the Ingham County Fair each year, McCalla added.

“It’s tradition. Something we try to keep alive,” he said.