As Apple Launches Its First Viable Commercial Product, Steve Jobs Turns to His Sources of Inspiration: His Mentor and the Apple Orchards That Gave His Computer Company Its Name

His time in rural Oregon shaped his outlook on life and was instrumental in making him the man he became, and to it he returned as Apple Computer first tasted success; Only the fifth authentic autograph of Jobs we have found ever having reached the market

Steve Jobs famously dropped out of Reed College in Oregon in 1974. But his time there was important. Questioning everything and everyone, he took courses in calligraphy (which gave him a love of typefaces and fonts), dance, and Shakespeare, classes that would in time prove invaluable in designing the revolutionary Apple Macintosh. And it was at Reed that he was introduced to one of the most important influences of his life – Robert M. Friedland, who today is a billionaire financier but then was also a student at Reed, four years older than Jobs.  Friedland, who was student body president in the class of 1974, was a mentor to Jobs, a guru.  It was Friedland who introduced him to Eastern spirituality and the two went together to India. Friedland managed a farm with apple orchards in nearby McMinnville, in Yamhill County, Oregon, that was dubbed the All-One Farm. The farm Friedland created became a magnet for the free spirited (like Jobs) as well as psychedelic pilgrims. Friedland had a unique way of communicating that attracted people to him. In the summers, Jobs assisted Friedland at the farm helping tend the apple orchards.

As Steve Wozniak told Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, it was after one of these trips to Friedland’s farm that Jobs came up with naming his new computer company Apple. He was charmed by the farm and its fresh living. As Jobs himself said as about the naming, “I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating.”

Jobs and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to sell Wozniak’s Apple I personal computer. The visionaries gained fame a year later with the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced personal computers. In 1978 money began to come in to Apple, and Jobs, at age 23, for the first time had money (he was worth a million dollars at that time and that would grow to 100 million by the time he was 25).  His parents were not well off, and he spent his college years, as he explained, turning in bottles for change and sleeping on the floor of apartments of other people. 1978 thus saw the dawn of the great Apple company that today is among the world’s most innovative and successful, and of Job’s prosperity.

In 1978, Jobs returned to his source of inspiration, the farm. He continued to spend time with Friedland at his All One farm, but separate from that, the two of them made bigger plans: to form a partnership and buy farmland to plant orchards, vineyards, and manage the land.  Jobs had a vision of building a house, with a free-standing septic system, hiring a land manager, and cultivating the land.  This was a full 6 years before he introduced the Macintosh, 8 years before the predecessor to what is today Pixar, and nearly 20 years before his 1997 triumphant return to Apple. Jobs was a young idealist who wanted to be close to his apple orchards.

He and Friedland found a suitable location for their development plans, 160 acres in the same county as All One Farm. They leased the first year and subsequently bought portions of the property.

Document signed, October 1, 1978, signed by Steve Jobs and Robert M. Friedland, as well as land owner Leonard Maahs.  “This agreement made this 1st day of October, 1978; by and between Steven Jobs and Robert M. Friedland…. and Leonard Maahs of Yamhill County…” grants a lease of “Those certain farm premises owned by Lessor and containing approximately 160 acres of tillable land…” at a rent of $420 monthly.  The terms of the lease allowed the two to cultivate the land  “Lessee covenants that he will farm said premises in a good and farmlike manner…”  Friedland and Maahs have made a change in the typed portion of the lease and signed again.

This is only the fifth definitively authentic autograph of Jobs we can find having reached the market, his autograph being among the rarest of any major figure. The curator of the Apple Computer Archives at Stanford University confirms that even there, there exist only a few autographs of Jobs. And it is only the second we know of that is signed by both Jobs and his guru Friedland.

We know something of what they did there in this joint venture.  By 1980, they owned portions of this land.  A permit with the Yamhill County authorities shows a plan to build a house and build a septic system, which would house the caretaker.  They did build that house and the current owner claims that Jobs himself helped build it.  It has one bedroom, one bathroom and a combined living-eating-kitchen area. Next to the house is an apple tree named after Jobs. And the septic system they created works still.  Jobs and Friedland sold the land in 1986.

This document provides a unique personal insight into Jobs, and how, as a young man, he saw his life – a mix between his spiritual, outdoor desires, and his work at Apple Computer. It is no coincidence that the moment he had any disposable income, he turned to his source of inspiration: the outdoors, the land, and the apple orchard.