Long before Kalamazoo was famous for anything else, it was the celery capital of America — and this charming linen-era postcard documents that forgotten agricultural heritage with rows of celery plants nestled between wooden bleaching boards stretching toward a cluster of white farmhouses with red roofs. Kalamazoo's rich muck soil, drained from former swamplands by Dutch immigrant farmers in the late 19th century, produced celery so celebrated that the city's baseball team was nicknamed "the Celery Eaters." The bleaching process shown here — boarding up the stalks to exclude sunlight and produce the pale, tender shoots prized by Victorian and Edwardian cooks — was a labor-intensive art largely abandoned after World War II as consumer tastes shifted to green celery. Signed on the back simply by Alma, who notes she is "having a good rest and feel like work again," this unused card (or lightly used without postage) was addressed to Hilda, a personal keepsake from a quieter Michigan summer.