[AT] Moving West...

[Rob Gray]

(Note I tried to send this message a few days ago but it came back as 
undeliverable so I'll try again now)

The complaints of urban/suburbanites who move out this way ares similar 
to what you talk about. PA passed laws that prevent communities from 
penalizing farmers for regular farm odors, much to the disappointment of 
many newly arrived yuppies... lol
See the story below:   

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-b4-5lomacoct07,0,2888134.story

>
> kgw wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
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>>
>>
>
>



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