From Wagner Farm, you can see the Sears Tower. (Glenview Park District)

The Wagner family arrived in Glenview, Ill., an area north of Chicago, on Christmas Eve in 1855. At the time, Glenview had around 5,000 truck farms, dairies, and orchards, whose goods were bound for nearby Chicago.

John and Catherine Wagner bought 100 acres in 1902, where they kept the usual assortment of crops, chickens, cows, ducks, horses, and pigs. The German couple also raised five children on the farm; two of the daughters, who never married, stayed in the family's brick 1920s four-square house their whole lives.

By the time the last Wagner child died, in 1997, Glenview was a very different place than it had been when the farm was built, says Todd Price, who is the director of Wagner Farm's newest incarnation as an educational and recreational facility.

"The transition from being a farming community started in the 1950s, after World War II, when roads improved, and people could drive to work. By the 1970s, most of the farms were gone. That was the end of the era."

Glenview today is a wealthy area known as Chicago's North Shore, where real estate is increasing in value every year, and everywhere you look, old houses are being razed so bigger ones can replace them. Houses in Glenview often sell for more than a million dollars—including houses across the street from Wagner Farm.

Price says developers clamoured to buy Wagner Farm, too. "A ton of people would come up and say, 'Name your price. We'll buy it. ' And I think the Wagners just didn't care."

They didn't care about protecting the farm, either, Price says. "I don't think they had any idea of this being some great preserve. At the end. they said, 'Put it up for sale,' and the Park district happened to get it. "

(Glenview Park District)

In 1998, Glenview voters voted in a referendum for the Glenview Park District, established in 1927, to buy Wagner Farm. "The park district says we want to keep it a farm; we are interpreting agriculture in our community's history," says Price. "This isn't just a contrived little community. It's got history. I think Wagner Farm lit a spark with people. There's a constant, something worth saving."

Incidentally, says Price, there are a lot of "remnant" farms that have been purchased by their local communities, but in most cases, it's nonprofits that buy them. Living History Farms in Iowa, Conner Prairie in Indiana, and suburban Washington, D.C.'s Frying Pan Farm Park, which Fairfax County, Va., purchased and maintains as a free park, complete with hayrides.

Wagner Farm was purchased nine years ago by Glenview's Park District for $7.2 million, and is 18.6 acres now. It's divided into three sections. One is devoted to crop and pasture for animals. Another is now a heritage area, with a newly-built structure that looks like an old barn with exhibits, a shop, offices, storage, and a demonstration milking parlor. The third part of Wagner Farm is the historic area: the house, garage, pumphouse, the Wagners' second barn, built in 1936 in a German-Yankee style (the first barn was hit by lightning and burned down in the 1930s).

A large American flag hangs on the side of the barn because, during World War II, most Navy and Marine carrier pilots trained in Glenview. "When the pilots would fly in, they developed a flight path that went over Wagner Farm," Price says. "This was a farming community, so the pilots sometimes flew over the wrong barn." The Wagners put up the American flag so the pilots would fly over the right spot. "We've kept it there even though now we're the only barn in the area," Price says.

Wagner Farm activities (Glenview Park District)

The farm holds educational programs designed to show people what it was like to be a farmer in Glenview in the 1920s. There farm also hosts local 4H events, dances, a corn-harvest festival, a traditional "threshing day" celebration, and a "historic meals program" featuring home-cooked food served by staff wearing 1920s costumes.

But other farm traditions have fit a little less comfortably with the farm's new mission: what happens to farm animals once they are past their prime, for example—particularly, what would happen to a bull named Bart, who lived on Wagner Farm until 2002, when the park district became concerned about the presence of a bull on the farm. "The park district said bulls are dangerous," says Debby Rubenstein, president of Wagner Farm Rescue Fund. So the park district made plans to do what is done to retired farm animals: Bart the bull and four cows would be sent to a slaughterhouse. Instead, Rubenstein bought the animals from the park district and arranged for them to live at an animal sanctuary. Rubenstein's group has, in total, rescued 11 cattle and more than 60 chickens from the property.

Wagner Farm adapts to the times, as it must, given its suburban Chicago location. "This is the only place in the area that has the original topography," Todd Price says. "I like to walk the farm and notice the subtle roll in the terrain. It's neat to have that here in an urban area. You can stand on top of our barn and see the Sears Tower. If you turn around, you see the cows grazing. "

Arin Greenwood is a writer living in Guam.

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