Download Free Lost Farms Of Mchenry County Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Lost Farms Of Mchenry County and write the review.

Farmers from the East found the broad and fertile prairies of McHenry County offered the perfect soil and climate for growing corn, wheat, oats, barley, and rye. This led the way for a flourishing dairy industry that eventually supplied milk to the city of Chicago. The first settlements appeared in 1835 in towns such as Crystal Lake, Woodstock, Harvard, and Cary. Families such as the Walkups, the Crandalls, the Beardsleys, the Stickneys, and the Terwilligers travelled by oxcart and rode on horseback from distant states. As word of the lush countryside spread, other farmers came from England, Ireland, and Germany to plow the fertile fields of the nation's heartland.
Every 5 years the United States Department of Agriculture sends all the farmers a survey called the Agricultural Census. And every five years once all the results are tallied and without fail, an alarm bell goes off. The national average age in farming keeps climbing up and the trend is ever upward. Farmers around the world are getting old. Where have all the young farmers gone? Why youngsters are leaving the family farms and showing no interest in what’s supposed to be the oldest and the ‘noblest’ profession? This is because small-scale agriculture is being deliberately stifled. Pro-corporate policies are making farming non-viable and farmers are left with no other choice but to quit. Farmers are a dying breed and family farming will become history soon.
McHenry County, Illinois, is a picture-perfect farming community in the Heartland of Midwestern America. For nearly two centuries, a portion of the nation's food supply has come from this fertile land near the Fox River, and it has played a key role in the history of Chicago and the United States. Through the medium of historic photographs, this book captures the evolution of the people of McHenry County, from the mid-1800s to the second half of the twentieth century. These pages bring to life the people, events, communities, and industries that helped shape and transform McHenry County. With more than 200 vintage images, culled from three collections-the McHenry County Historical Society, the Crystal Lake Historical Society, the James Keefe Collection, and the personal collection of Don Peasley-McHenry County, Illinois, portrays life against a backdrop of international wars, national social struggles, and technological advances in an expanding world.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.