Neighbors skeptical of McHenry County Conservation District's livestock farm pitch

CARY – Matt Northam's wife has a hypersensitivity to smell.

So when the couple found out that the McHenry County Conservation District is exploring the possibility of leasing land to the west of Silver Lake Road in unincorporated Cary to a local livestock farmer, they were concerned.

“We chose to move there because that’s conservation land across from us,” Northam said of the Pichen Farmstead, a 140-acre parcel under the MCCD’s jurisdiction that has 66 acres producing corn or soybeans each year.

Now, the Northams said they might have to move.

The MCCD is in talks with All Grass Farms of Dundee about starting a similar operation to the one it runs at Brunner Family Forest Preserve in Kane County at the dilapidated Pichen Farmstead. All Grass Farms is a farm-to-table operation that raises grass-fed beef and dairy, pasture-raised pigs, chickens, turkeys and sheep, as well as eggs and vegetables.

Among the district’s goals for the site is returning the row crop field to a grassland to reduce soil erosion and improve soil health and quality. And, with the help of beef and pigs, potentially bring in declining bird and insect species to study those species’ habitat preferences. The district also wants to maintain a honeybee population and increase the presence of other pollinators, many of which have declined nationwide in recent decades, according to numerous studies.

But most who live near the Pichen Farmstead are not pleased with the rollout of the proposal, which has been in the works for more than a year, unbeknownst to a lot of them.

Some said at an informational meeting Thursday night that they had not heard of the idea until last month, while a couple of others said they didn’t know about the meeting until a couple of days before.

About 100 residents of subdivisions near the farm site – such as Silver Lake, Sterling Ridge, Oakwood Hills and Lake Killarney – said they have reason to be concerned that the MCCD board would approve a lease with All Grass Farms at an upcoming meeting without giving much consideration to the feedback given Thursday night.

MCCD Executive Director Elizabeth Kessler said that would not happen, and maintained that the district is gathering information and looking at the positives and negatives of having such an operation so close to the single-family homes in subdivisions that were developed since the farm last thrived in the 1950s.

"The last time we heard something like that, we ended up with a mining pit," Cary resident Dan Mendro said, referencing the Meyer Material mining pit that ceased mining operations in December.

McHenry County Farm Bureau President Dan Ziller is upset the MCCD might be going into business with a farmer from outside McHenry County.

“We work very hard for the money we make, to pay taxes to an organization like the conservation district, and they’re gonna take this and go in direct competition? I am not happy about it,” Ziller said.

The farm-to-table aspect of the proposal already is happening on farms throughout the county, he said.

“You can come to my farm, you can walk through my steer lot, and say ‘I’d like to put that steer in my freezer,’ ” Ziller said. “You can go to a person who raises pigs, same situation.”

Ziller said nobody from the farm bureau’s membership wants to manage the Pichen property for livestock.

All Grass Farms operator Cliff McConville said the absolute earliest that he could get cattle on the Pichen land is in the fall. That is, if the district were to approve a lease in the next couple of months, it would allow McConville to seed the field with pasture grasses that potentially could support a cattle herd by the end of the year.

McHenry County Board member Chris Christensen said McConville told him that he would need to have 70 steer and 80 hogs on the site to make it a worthwhile endeavor.

“There is not a hard-and-fast number,” McConville said. “Generally, what our land has supported in the past, is one head of beef cattle per acre. So if we have 70 acres of grazing land, generally we support about 70 head. That’s the number I gave to Chris [Christensen].”

Christensen said he’s not sure a switch from a tradition of grain farming at the site to an “unattended livestock farm surrounded by residential neighborhoods is serving the spirit and intent of the conservation district’s mission.”

All Grass Farms uses a rotational grazing strategy popularized by farmer, lecturer and author Joel Salatin. The method is known to produce healthier soils, grasses and little-to-no stench when compared with the conventional feedlot system that has taken over much of the livestock farming industry, according to district officials and numerous studies.

The herd management technique allows manure to be broken down more rapidly than if it is piled up in a confined feedlot.

The MCCD will have another meeting at 7 p.m. Feb. 27 at the Prairieview Education Center, 2112 Behan Road, Crystal Lake.

“There’s nothing set about this, that it has to happen by a certain time,” Kessler said. “It could be that the operator has another opportunity because we’re taking our time. We’re here just to hear and understand concerns.”