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A Changing Prairie
In her book, They Builded Better Than They Knew, Barrington historian Barbara Benson traces the origins and eventual disappearance of farms in the area. Yankee pioneers began tilling the prairies in the mid-1840s. German, English, and Irish immigrants followed, cultivating small farms. In the late 19th century, farming changed from sowing grain to milking cows and churning cheese and butter. “Gentlemen farmers,” prominent Chicago families who had made their fortunes during the railroad expansion and the Industrial Revolution, moved to the area and built large estates on these dairy farms, which they continued to manage and run. Dairy products were sent to Chicago by train. Full bottles of milk were sent in the morning and came back empty that evening.
By 1907 the original pioneers were still farming, mostly on tracts of less than 200 acres at a cost of $1.25 per acre. The second- and third-generation residents started moving off the land after educational opportunities brought them career choices. The first high school class graduated from the Barrington Public School system in 1904.
A 1937 Chicago Tribune article cited by the author describes how city dwellers from Chicago had bought 111 acres in the area in the previous four years. Fowler McCormick (a grandson of Cyrus, the inventor of the reaper) purchased 440 acres along Penny Road. Costs had increased from between $125 to $300 per acre. The trend continued. Old farmhouses were renovated to satisfy “agricultural-minded urbanites.”
In the 1950s many of the estate properties were broken up. The Northwest Tollway and O’Hare International Airport increased expansion to the area. By 1957 large tracts of land were rezoned and incorporated into municipalities. The soil originally broken by oxen and plow is now mostly covered by housing and commercial development. The land has now become fodder for development, though the Barrington area, alone among its neighbors, has made many successful attempts to preserve large tracts of its open space.
Local Resources
Find community-supported agriculture farms: www.localharvest.org
List of direct-sell farmers: www.eatwellguide.org
More information about the Barrington Farmers Market: www.BarringtonFarmersMarket.org
Organic foods service that offers locally raised and worldly food choices serving the North Shore and Barrington area: www.OakvilleOrganics.com. Home delivery is $6 per week.
Online shopping for all natural specialty meats, including ostrich, bison, elk, and venison: www.blackwing.com
To learn more about garden plots at Beese Park, call Steve Nightingale, the Barrington Park District’s superintendent of parks and facilities, at 847-381-0687.
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Greener Pastures for Oberweis Dairy
Most community-supported agriculture farms hope to someday be self-sustaining. The Oberweis family took it a step further by becoming distributors and retailers of a commercially successful line of dairy products. In 1915, Peter J. Oberweis started selling his extra farm milk directly to neighbors. The family-owned business now purchases milk from nearby farms and distributes it throughout the Midwest. Traveling from Hampshire, Ill., to Janesville, Wis., you’re likely to pass some of the 35 to 40 dairy farms selling their milk exclusively to Oberweis Dairy.
Visit an Oberweis retail store and you’ll see the signatures of farmers who pledge to meet the standards set by the family. The Oberweis Farmers’ Pledge requires them to never use artificial growth hormones, to only provide milk that is free of antibiotics, and to treat the cows humanely. The dairy cows are pasture raised, never confined, and are fed grains free of animal by-products. That means they eat 100 percent vegetarian feed.
Joe Oberweis, the great-grandson of the company’s founder, Peter, and the son of politician Jim Oberweis, is the company’s current chairman and chief executive officer. He talked to QB about the Oberweis business model and holding true to traditional values.
QB: Why do you choose to do business only with family-owned dairy farms?
For these hard-working folks, farming is a way of life. They take inordinate pride in ensuring that the milk they produce for Oberweis is the highest quality out there. For example, they have all signed the Oberweis Farmers Pledge.
QB: What is the size of the average farm you do business with?
50 to 100 milking head.
QB: By purchasing Oberweis Dairy products, are Barrington residents supporting local agriculture?
They certainly are. All of our milk comes from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
QB: While you obviously like the product farmers provide for you, do your dairy farmers like the product you produce?
That’s a funny question, and the answer is yes. They are often unable to conveniently purchase our products, so our field manager who visits them takes orders and delivers. I was visiting farms with him one day, and the car was full of our products for the farmers. We heard a rise of excitement from them when we opened our store in McHenry, which is the closest location for many of them.
QB: Do you limit your distribution to the Midwest because shipping farther might compromise product freshness?
Yes, we do, and it’s also a cost issue. Besides harming the freshness of the product, if we distributed outside the Midwest from our existing plant, it would be too expensive to bring bottles back to North Aurora to reuse.
QB: Why do you use glass bottles?
To protect the taste by keeping the milk colder. And glass bottles reduce landfill waste by being reused.
QB: What is the biggest challenge you’re facing right now?
Coping with very high raw milk prices. They’ve been at extraordinarily high levels for almost a year.
QB: What do you think is causing the increase in price?
Two things. The biggest is a massive increase in demand from China. With the dollar weakened, they are a significant importer of dairy products. Second, corn is being used to make ethanol, so the cost of feed drives up the price of raw milk.
QB: Do you live on a farm?
(Chuckling). No. We don’t own a farm anymore. The last farm in the family was sold decades ago.
QB: What’s the best part of your job?
We make ice cream! Going into any store and seeing lots of families with kids smiling. It’s great to put a smile on someone’s face.