The Huntley Farmside

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Volume 40 No. 36
Your hometov\^n newspaper
Thursday Sept. 7,2000
© 2000 Press-Republican Newspapers
Huntley building takes a hike
Reed Road structure to become farm museum
by Janna St. James
Huntley-Marengo editor
It's hard to say what Norman Wolff of Woodstock was looking for when he sat down to read the classified ads. Perhaps nothing. Or nothing in particular. Yet nothing is pretty much the opposite of what he foimd on the dense pages of ads. Hey. Open the newspaper Buy a couple buildings.
Lots of people purchase real estate through the classifieds every day, but the buildings Wolff bought weren't income property. These buildings were bound to be mobile.
Plans for road widening work on Huntley's Reed Road meant Edwin Meier's building near the intersection of Reed and Route 47 would have to go - either down or out. Being perfectly good build¬ ings, Meier decided it was a waste to simply tear them dovm. Hence, the classified.
Wolff, owner/operator of Woodstock's Country Cabin Deer Park, Orchard, Nursery and Classic Country Store, saw the ad as being the perfect catalyst for some ideas he'd been brewing.
Wolff contacted Meier and made arrangements to have the building moved to his Alden Road property.
"I had no idea how long it would take to move the building," Wolff said. "But Dennis Boer, an engi¬ neer with (my company) did. And they got busy right away."
The crew started dismantling the structures on Aug. 14 and were done in just days. Now, after mov¬ ing the pieces and rebuilding the 80 X 100-foot building on the Deer Park site, then what?
Well, Wolff has a vision.
A gregarious guy and a mem¬ ber of the Borrowed Time Club after being involved in a very seri¬ ous accident years ago, Wolff has the personal power to focus on task and bring it to fruition. And so it is with the Meier buildings - clipped from the classifieds to Country Cabin within a week. And now...beyond.
"The building is going to become the Days Gone By Farm Museum, set up as an Illinois edu-
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Workers for Norm Wolff dismantle the Meier buildings on Reed Road for a move to Woodstock. Wolff purchased the structures with the idea of moving them and opening a museum dedicated to the farm and farming.
cational non-profit corporation," Wolff said. "The museimi will be funded by a general membership dues, deductible donations from individuals, foimdation and gov¬ ernment grants and rural America corporate sponsors like John Deere, DeKalb Seed Co., Illinois Beef and Pork Producers, Illinois Dairy Producers, the Chicago Board of Trade, the Mercantile Exchange, etc."
Wolff and his wife Judith see exhibits. Lots of exhibits...
• Antique farm machinery.
• Early American farm tools.
• Rural American history dis¬ plays featuring pictures, col¬ lectibles and antiques.
•Illustrations of farm produc¬ tion - everything you ever wanted
to know about corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rye or sunflowers. The ins and outs of alfalfa and grass hay. Got milk? The museum will - the show will go from cow to counter. Cream, cheese and butter too.
• No birds, but all about bees - from plant to plant and on to honey production.
• Insects and the role they play in life on the farm.
• Poultry production in a nut¬ shell, but more in depth than if you're chicken you better duck because those geese are flying low on their way to Tbrkey.
• The ABCs of BPL - beef, lamb and pork.
• A look inside the orchard.
• A salute to fruit and vegetable
farming.
• The farm product cycle, including: rural America to grain elevators, the Illinois canal system and barge traffic, farmer's mar¬ kets and roadside stands and farm exports to feed the world.
Wolff hopes to have the new museum up and running as soon as possible, perhaps even as early as later this fall. It will be surroimd- ed by 1,000 conifer pines, the house specialty, moved from the nursery section of the 120-acre Country Cabin Deer Park site.
Days Gone By will fit in nicely with the rest of the Wolff endeav¬ ors, which currently include - the deer park, with more than 100 dif¬ ferent animals living in the wild and deer, sheep, llamas and goat
you can hand feed; an Indian camp; pond; draft horse wagon and pony rides; a U-pick apple orchard; a year-round nursery; and the Apple Bam Country Store. The deer park and store are open for the 2000 season until Dec. 23.
Future plans, including the Days Gone By Farm Museum, include the addition of a bakery and deli; a convention/banquet facility with restaurant and lodg¬ ing; and a miniature train to be called the "Apple Pine Line."
The Meier, buildings aren't Wolff's first adventure in moving structures. He also purchased the barn from the Kretchmer farm in Harvard a while back.
"I have the newest 200-year-old barn in McHenry County," he said.