Twice a day, every day of the year, 4 o`clock is milking time.
Clarence Landorf`s 40 Holsteins, mooing and moaning, pad into their places in the barn. Old Slowpoke, named for her dawdling demeanor, must be prodded along. The cats line up, too, in anticipation of leftovers.
A dairy cow can be milked for 10 years or so and Landorf has been at it for more than three decades. His Naperville farm, located on U.S. Hwy. 34 between residential subdivisions and Aurora`s Fox Valley Mall, is the only remaining dairy farm in Du Page County.
Including calves, bulls and ”dry cows”–those not giving milk
–Landorf`s herd numbers 70 to 80. He also plants 300 acres of corn, soybeans, oats and alfalfa.
”My family has been farming in Naperville since my grandpa settled here in the late 1800s,” says Landorf, 50.
The original Landorf land was lost in the Depression, but not the heritage of tilling the soil. Landorf`s late father was a sharecropper on this farm from 1948 on, and Landorf continued in that role. The dairy business was added 35 years ago.
Sharecropping is a common method of agricultural land-sharing. Usually the landowner provides the land and the farmer the labor. The two share expenses, profits and losses. The majority of county farmers are
sharecroppers, says Mike Ashby, general manager for the Du Page County Farm Bureau.
Landorf`s wife, Pat, and son, Jeff, oversee the milking while he is in the fields. Jeff has been on the farm all of his 26 years.
His first chores were ”all the dirty jobs you get when you`re little, like cleaning the barn.” He graduated from the College of St. Francis in Joliet in 1982, with a degree in journalism, but after working part-time for a newspaper for four years he decided he liked farming better. Another son, Kevin, 23, is studying at the University of Illinois, Urbana to become a veterinarian.
”The animals are my favorite part,” Jeff says. ”You work with them twice a day and get to know them all. Each cow has a name. Old Slowpoke is 12 years old. She`s like a pet.”
About 15 calves are born each year, and they must be hand-fed for six weeks. Because nursing is too rough on the mothers (the calves bite them), calves are weaned immediately.
Through the years Landorf has seen Naperville`s population grow tenfold and U.S. Hwy. 34 become a heavily traveled road. The future is tentative. His landlord has indicated no plans to sell the land, but their gentleman`s agreement for sharing is only year-to-year.
”It is just a matter of time before the farms are out of here, unless something happens so they quit building houses,” he says.
”That will be a shame. There is awful good land around here. We don`t know what a crop failure is. We don`t have to worry about irrigation or other costly stuff. It`s probably the garden spot of the country, as far as I`m concerned.”
Jeff would like to farm the rest of his life, but realizes that the prospects of doing so in this area are limited.
Determining precise figures for the amount of land farmed in Naperville is difficult. City and county officials say that frequent annexations have altered the boundary lines and that land taxed at an agricultural rate is not necessarily being farmed. In addition, portions of the city lie in two counties and six townships.
Yet there are numbers that strongly indicate the farmland is diminishing. According to the most recent statistics available from the U.S. Census of Agriculture, conducted every four years by the Department of Commerce, in 1982 there were 29,480 acres planted in Du Page County. In 1964, 69,195 acres were planted.
The Illinois Agricultural Statistics Service reports that in 1986, 18,000 acres of corn were planted in the county, against 29,800 acres harvested in 1966. (Though the agency used a different measure in these two years, the difference between acres planted and harvested is very slight for corn, a hardy crop. Last year 99.5 percent of the corn planted in Illinois was harvested.)
Farmer Bill Clow has an informal gauge, but one no less telling. He was born in Naperville in 1920 and today farms 190 acres on Book Road, his share of 960 acres that his ancestors homesteaded in 1844.
”On Book Road, which is 7 or 8 miles long, only 2 of the original families are left out of 14,” he says. ”They haven`t been forced out. Most vanished of their free will. They chose a different way.”
Clow is disconcerted by the developments that have taken place in the city where he attended high school in the 1930s, when the population was 2,200. In his opinion, fertile farmland has been wasted.
”If a man had 10 acres of desert but had a half-acre of good land and he built his house on the good land, you`d think he was crazy,” he says. ”But that`s what they`re doing. Building here and irrigating the deserts to grow crops. When they were building by Downers Grove they weren`t losing anything because that`s not good land.
”There isn`t a lot of land like here that gets enough rainfall so you can get 150 bushels of corn per acre without doubling the cost (by irrigating and fertilizing).”
Out one window of his home is the view of a residential development a quarter-mile away. While many farmers have encountered problems of increased litter and decreased drainage in their fields as a result of construction and densely populated neighborhoods, Clow has found a need for stronger fences to keep his herd of 65 cattle penned in.
”The cows have gotten out anyway, and gone in their yards,” he says.
”But the people have helped me get them, and some got a big bang out of it.”
He has also found a source of labor at hay-making time among the young boys living nearby.
Clow has no intention of getting out of the business; a daughter is interested in running the farm. ”The ones with the strongest ties are the last to go,” he says.
In 1848, Joshua Erb emigrated to Naperville and homesteaded 1,200 acres. Various parcels were sold off from time to time, but Erb`s great-grandson, Marshall, farms 120 of the original acres. The Erb farm is one of the last within the city limits.
At age 77, Erb raises corn, soybeans, oats and alfalfa, and tends a herd of 75 beef cattle. ”Naperville used to be a farming community of cattle, hogs and grain,” he says. ”Since it has developed so fast, many people sold their land at fairly high prices and bought cheaper land farther west.” Those farmers have profited from the city`s growth, Erb says.
”You see very little livestock today. The land values are too high to raise it.” Another reason for this is the farmer`s changing lifestyle. ”If you have livestock, you have to be there every day. Now people like to travel.”
Erb isn`t making any changes. ”I`ll be doing this till I die,” he says. ”The reason isn`t monetary. We do it because we love the atmosphere and the challenge. There is always a challenge to make money, and you`re always depending upon the weather.”
The farm bureau`s Ashby traces the shrinking farmland to the 1950s, when the suburbs began their post-World War II boom. ”In those days there was a dairy farm every mile,” he says. ”Now there is only one.”
The farm bureau represents more than 90 percent of the county`s farmers, Ashby says. The number of voting members–active and retired farmers–has declined in 14 years to 1,100 from about 1,600. The total membership, which includes the nonvoting public (any interested citizen can join), has increased, however, to 7,600 from 3,500.
”The general mood this spring is more positive than in the last few years,” he says. ”Grain is starting to rally. We`re seeing a little strength in the markets. Many farmers are starting to diversify by planting some sod and vegetables. They are adapting to the times and situations they find themselves in.”
Richard Brummell, 50, is a third-generation farmer. He leases 400 acres on which he plants corn, soybeans and wheat. Each year finding land to rent becomes more difficult.
Heavy traffic on what used to be quiet country roads makes moving heavy equipment difficult, and some of Brummell`s fields are as far as 5 miles apart. ”I`ve spent as long as 20 minutes just waiting to get across the road from one field to the next,” he says.
To supplement his income, Brummell freelances as a farm-machinery repairman and takes on tilling and land-preparation jobs from developers and landscapers. The years haven`t been easy, but Brummell isn`t giving up. He refers to farmers as ”stewards of the land.”
”It`s in my blood,” he says. ”Farming has been good to me as a way of life. Naperville has been good to me. It has good, friendly people. What`s coming, I don`t know, but the past has been good.”
