Farmer who works Tinley Park's last family-owned farm laments fate of the land

August 26, 2007
By Courtney Greve Staff writer

"Progress" has come to Tinley Park, but not the sort farmers like Mike Rauch celebrate.

This may be his final season working the ground at Tinley Park's last family farm.

Descendants of the original homesteaders have put the 111-acre spread on the market following the death of the Hotchkin family matriarch.

Rauch rents the plot — and 14 more between Tinley and Plainfield — and calls this land his "home farm."

On a scorching summer day, Mike Rauch drove a John Deere 4440 tractor the 2.1 miles from his house near 183rd Street and 67th Court to the farm at 196th Street and Harlem Avenue.

As the hulking green contraption clanked and crawled along the congested roads, clearly annoying drivers who grudgingly slowed down, you could almost imagine the quiet landscape of rural America that once blanketed the area.

The last fields of corn, soybeans and alfalfa in this once-agrarian community will soon be replaced by big box stores and McMansions.

"Developers don't give a crap about the ground," Rauch said, hunching over to swipe the rich soil. "They tear this up in a heartbeat."

Rauch, 48, has deep crevices in his sun-worn skin. Bits of hay haphazardly cling to his arm hair. A sweat-stained baseball cap covers his salt-and-pepper hair. He slaps tattered John Deere gloves against his palm.

"I've got four or five years of stuff going on here already," he said. "No-till starts working great after about six years. The ground is just beautiful."

Learning from grandpa

Rauch's love-affair with farming started early.

"I've been a farmer since I was three on the living room carpet with my (tractor) toys," he recalled with a broad smile. "Shag carpet was better 'cause I could see the lines I left."

His imagination was fueled by watching his grandfathers in the fields.

Walter Rauch, his father's father, ran a farm near 151st Street and Catalina Drive in Orland Park.

His maternal grandparents, Herb and Alma Albers, farmed the land where Rauch now lives with his wife and four daughters.

"It was a 40-acre farm they got as a wedding gift," he said. "That's how the deed reads anyhow."

Herb Albers, Rauch's "guardian angel," helped nurture his grandson's love of farming.

"When I grew up, my grandpa was picking corn with a one-row corn picker and I'd fall asleep in the wagon," he said wistfully. "Just memories that last forever."

The Albers's had three children, all of whom built their own homes on the property alongside other family friends and relatives.

"It was our own little Walton's mountain," he said.

But by 1976 — the year Rauch graduated from high school and both of his grandfathers died — the Rauch farm was sold and being developed into a subdivision and there was little workable land left on the Albers farm.

"I started on my own with pretty much nothin'. Nothin'," he said. "Most farmers get in it with a family member, father to son, cousins to uncle, or something. I started on my own. Whatever I could afford to buy, make it work and go from there.

"I just nickeled and dimed. I got people's leftover stuff that was sold for scrap and made it work."

'It's a lonely occupation'

Rauch, who earned a degree in agricultural mechanization from the University of Illinois, designed cherry tree trunk shakers in his first job for the USDA at Michigan State University. He still uses that machine to harvest the sweet fruit from five trees planted in his front yard.

"Fresh off the tree, into a pie, out of the oven," he said. "From hand to mouth, the way it should be."

Rauch worked as the land lab manager at Joliet Junior College from 1985 to 1990, until he started renting a 400-acre farm in Plainfield.

"That's enough to support my farming habit on," he said.

He's been a full-time farmer ever since.

"There's a few of us left yet," he said. "Hands and toes would take them all."

Rauch's dream of owning a farm came true in 2000. He and a friend from Frankfort bought a spread in Missouri. Distance complicated the effort and the partnership was short-lived.

"Things have changed a bit in the last couple of years," he said. "It seems to wear on me until I'm not as enthusiastic. It's a lonely occupation when you're doing it all by yourself."

Rauch's oldest daughter and "hay crew chief," Jessie, would love to make farming her chosen profession.

"She'd just as soon do this as anything," he said.

While his love for farming has never faltered, Rauch is not sure he wants his daughters to follow in his footsteps.

"All of them are smart as a whip," he said. "They can do anything they want. And the way farming is going, it's hard, and it's hard to make a living."

Development grows nearby

This year, Rauch is farming about 1,100 acres. The unpredictable weather made things particularly aggravating, he said.

Early in the summer, almost drought-like conditions meant Rauch's budding soybeans and corn stalks were scraggly, his alfalfa field was low and thin. The first hay cutting yielded only 32 bales, half as much as normal.

Spider mites and aphids benefited from the hot, dry weather, posing another danger to the crops.

The situation has come full-circle as the summer slips away.

"A farmer never complains about rain, but it's almost too much right now," he said. "Soybeans like it drier and the lack of sunshine will hurt the corn yield. There's always something to worry about or watch for."

These days, encroaching development is his top concern. At least a half dozen plots he's worked are now topped with hotels, stores and homes.

"With all my (rented) property in the development tract, it's a real tough call to see how long I'll be able to go on farming in this area," he said. "I want to stay at it a while yet."

As for the Hotchkin farm, Rauch hopes to get one more season out of the fertile fields closest to his home.

"When I know the bulldozers are coming, we'll bring out the tillage tools," he said. "We'll work the ground up a little bit to get all the nutrients going one last time."

Courtney Greve may be reached at
cgreve@dailysouthtown.com
or (708) 633-5983.