I was up at the family farm in Illinois in mid November and things were looking good after harvest, which had finished by the time I visited. The cattle had been let out into the corn field for the purpose of cleaning up any missed cobs that had been left behind by the combine.
Tag: Farms
Family Farm, Last Day of Summer 2024
Things are looking good around the family farm east of Peoria. Harvest will begin in a week or two, and the crops are looking good. Cattle have returned to the pasture, as well.
The Day The Music Died
The plane carrying Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens didn’t make it very far, and it crashed in a field several miles north of Clear Lake. The local news has a good summary of the cause of the crash, so I won’t rehash it here. Unlike the freezing cold, snowy winter night of…
Around the Family Farm, Spring 2024
I checked up on the family farm east of Peoria in Central Illinois the last weekend of April, and things were looking good even if the fields were very wet, delaying spring planting. It was very windy, and it was alternating sunny and cloudy all day long. No longhorns could be spotted at the neighbor’s…
The End of Rock Alva
Thanks to a tip, I learned that Rock Alva’s last central portion (the majority of the estate had already been sold off) was recently sold and subdivided off into a small housing development. The only building to survive is the stable, where the Griesediecks used to skeet shoot. I do not know what its future…
Grant’s Farm, Mid-June 2023
The Busch Family Ownership Group (minus Billy and Adolphus IV) welcomes you to Grant’s Farm! We paid an evening visit to the Busch family estate recently. I learned the structure below was the ice skating building. This was part of the original holdings of the Dent Family, and the Hardscrabble log cabin is one of…
Family Farm, Deer Creek Township, Illinois, March 2023
I woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground, which I was not expecting at this point in the season; apparently the same thing happened in St. Louis. It was very, very cold out, to say the least. But the sky was clear and blue in the morning.
Howard Bend, February 2023
I’ve been driving out and around the Howard Bend area since the early 1990s, and it’s interesting t see how it’s been changing. In fact, one of my earliest posts, almost fifteen years ago, looked at the area when it was still rural. Finally, after years of false starts, Maryland Heights’s dreams of developing the…
Family Farm, Deer Creek Township, Illinois, June 2022
I took a short trip up to my family’s farm east of Peoria and the crops were just starting to mature out in the fields. I didn’t expect to find these flowers growing so big on the north side of the old ice house. And the tree that is just about dead seems to have…
Around Woodford County, Illinois, June 2022
I went around and looked at some of the towns northeast of the family farm. I started with Eureka, the county seat of Woodford County. I could have sworn I had featured the courthouse before, but apparently not. Got to love the bank where they filled in the windows–who needs natural light when there’s amazing…