[AT] Moving West...

[kgw]

There is nothing uncommon at all about the following article, of 
course---it just really caught my thoughts today, it's being on the 
front page of our local paper---we are located less than an hour (with 
good traffic!!!) west of the center of downtown Chicago. Also, this 
fellow has quite a lineup of Case tractors, which he is moving to his 
new place.

It just gets so damned tiring to see the yuppies move in and THEN ask 
"What IS that smell??"

Gene
Elgin, Illinois USA



    Shoved off by suburbia

Longtime Dundee Township farmer packing in memories, heading west

By Christine S. Moyer <mailto:cmoyer at scn1.com?Subject=SCN1.Story.Response>
STAFF WRITER

DUNDEE TOWNSHIP — Standing beside his barn, Remmer Schuetz stretched out 
his arms brown with sun and dirt

"This," he said, "is what I do."

The 70-year-old has spent his life on his family's Boncosky Road farm, 
milking cows, planting hay, bailing it and tending to the horses.

He remembers the 48 dairy cows that used to stand in the largest of the 
white barns and points to the milk house, which now sits quiet.

There were the 15,000 bales of hay stacked high to the barn's roof, 
quiet roads and open land stretching as far as the eye could see.

But today things have changed. The farm is smaller, the cows are gone 
and his roughly 30 acres is bordered by The Bluffs of Sleepy Hollow, a 
development with 49 sprawling homes.

"It's the high-rent people," he said. "They move to the country to get 
away from what happens in the city and then they want to change it.
<http://a3.suntimes.com/RealMedia/ads/click_lx.ads/www.suburbanchicagonews.com/couriernews/top/e09farm.htm/499122270/Middle1/default/empty.gif/34353266393465633433323938616430> 


I ain't changing."

In fact, he's moving.

Heading west

Schuetz sold the Dundee farm his father bought about 67 years ago and is 
moving to a 150-acre grain farm in Ashton, 60 miles west, in January.

The decision was tough, but he said suburbia left him little choice.

Since the development's construction, Schuetz said, his new neighbors 
have voiced numerous grievances about his livelihood.

Among them were working in his hay fields on Saturday mornings, 
spreading manure on the fields and driving his tractor on the road to go 
from one field to the next.

On at least one occasion, Schuetz said, an officer with the Kane County 
Sheriff's Office came to the farm in response to a neighbor's complaint 
and asked what he was doing with the manure.

His reply: "The same thing I've done all my life."

The issue of farmers coexisting with residents of the new housing 
developments springing up throughout Kane County is a pressing one.

And the solution seems to be somewhat black or white — adapt to the 
changes or sell your land.

Need to adapt

Steve Arnold, manager of the Kane County Farm Bureau, predicts that 
agriculture will have a place in the changing county, but that the farms 
will have smaller acreage and will yield higher-value crops.

He used organic vegetables or wineries as examples.

"There are going to be opportunities. It's just going to be a different 
type of agriculture," Arnold said. "There will be more variety of 
agriculture production in Kane County in decades to come. That's not a 
bad thing either."

While Arnold said the general public only recently has begun paying 
attention to the plight of local farmers, their difficulties reach back 
about 20 years.

Once a livestock-intensive county, the number of local farmers with 
cattle has dwindled in Kane.

And moving farm equipment from one field to the next has become 
increasingly difficult as traffic becomes heavier and drivers more 
impatient.

"Their lifestyle has changed dramatically," Arnold said. "I don't think 
any of us 25 years ago could have seen the land development patterns 
that we have now."

Emotional toll

Thus, many farmers sell their land and move. But it is not that simple, 
according to the county farm bureau manager. It takes a toll emotionally 
too.

On a farm, Arnold said, the owners often are leaving land that was lived 
on and cultivated by generations of their family.

That is the toughest aspect of moving for Schuetz.

Memories are crowded into every building on his property and in every 
footstep on his land.

Some of these Schuetz will take with him; others he inevitably will have 
to leave behind.

Standing in the gravel driveway, the farmer recalled March 1 in either 
1944 or 1945, when his father caught his hand in a machine at a 
neighbor's farm.

Schuetz was 9 years old and it was that day, he said, that he quit being 
a child.

"It was me and my mom and a barn full of cows," Schuetz said.

Then there is the basketball net — a childhood birthday gift — with a 
faded wooden backboard and a torn net hanging on a wall in one of the barns.

Schuetz estimated that he and his friends played millions of hours of 
basket ball on Sundays when they would dribble and shoot until 3:30 p.m. 
— chore time.

Too overwhelming

The farmer said he has a lifetime of memories at his family's farm but 
the new development is just too overwhelming to stay.

He described Ashton, where he is moving, as Kane County 25 or 30 years 
ago. There, farms prevail and people still wave to one another when they 
pass on the street.

"I want to go where it's more peaceful, where people are more like me," 
Schuetz said. "I hate to go, but what do you do? When push comes to 
shove, what do you do? You just go."

10/09/05