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2018
Garfield Farm Museum Calendar of Events Celebrates
Illinois’ 200 Years
As Illinois celebrates its 200th anniversary
no better place to discover the essence of what has
sustained Illinois can be found at the 1840s Garfield
Farm & Tavern Museum with its 2018 programming.
The now available 2018 Calendar of Events for Garfield
Farm Museum focuses on the once vast prairie environment
that created the most fertile soils in the world for
farming that in turn brought people like John Deere and
Cyrus McCormack and their manufacturing that made
Illinois and Chicago the birthplace of modern
agriculture. The truly Great Lakes provided the
transportation route that sent those first ships of
wheat and corn to Europe as early as 1838 and the 1846
Garfield Tavern was part of that transportation network
housing farmers hauling wagons of wheat to the Chicago
port.
Appropriately, the first program of the year is the day
long Prairie, Woodlands, and Wetlands Management Seminar
February 17 that teaches individuals how to maintain or
bring back the native plant communities that made
Illinois such a fertile state. The museum’s prairie
walks through the season will give first hand
experiences to what all 19th century
Illinois’ citizenry once knew.
The land attracted settlers who wanted to farm and as
soon as shelter was built and the first crops sown,
apple trees were planted as an optimistic hope for the
future as often it was 6-7 years before the first apples
might be harvested. The March 4 Antique Apple Tree
Grafting Seminar reflects the settlers’ long terms hope
for their prairie farms.
During Illinois’ young statehood, its citizens had to
master skills that sustained them in their daily
survival, which meant raising animals and crops that
could thrive in the Illinois climate. In turn, they also
had to know how to preserve both food for the winter and
seed for next year’s crops. Events like the May’s Rare
Breeds Show and August’s Heirloom Garden Show highlight
the challenges of depending upon living things to
survive as lectures on animal domestication, corn,
chicken raising, and food preservation would all been
common knowledge to 1840s Illinois residents.
Surviving in antebellum Illinois also meant working with
one’s hands and the hand tools used can be seen at the
August Antique Tool Collectors Show and Sale. Working
with hand tools is best experienced with the annual
October blacksmithing class. Children can experience
working on the farm at July’s Farm Camps. In fact, hand
work is all that is allowed during June’s archaeology
excavation of the 1840 log house site as every shovel of
soil is carefully screened for ceramic shards, glass,
iron, buttons, and artifacts as volunteers can literally
run their fingers through and touch objects once used by
these Illinois pioneers.
Just a tour of the museum’s barns recalls an era when
the countryside was populated with these structures for
the length and breadth of Illinois. The October barn
lecture will cap a yearlong effort to restore the
massive 1906 dairy barn that was the last structure
built by the Garfield family on the farm.
Amongst all the work just to survive these first
Illinois prairie farmers still had time for celebrate
and enjoy. The music of the era will be taught at the
April Dulcimer class but it can be enjoyed by all at the
July Settlers’ Eve Dance in the restored 1842 barn or
during the Candlelight at the Inn in December in the
tavern’s second floor ballroom.
If one only has a day to experience life of a young
Illinois, the October Harvest Days explores all of these
basic life challenges on the prairie with a series of
historic household and farm skill demonstrations in this
historically intact National Register site that
volunteers and donors have worked over 41 years to save
and preserve.
Differing events may require reservations and the fees
range from $3 to $60 per person. Tours of the farm for
drop in visitors are offered on Wednesday and Sunday
afternoons June through September from 1 pm until 4 pm.
Tours are also available by appointment year round.
Garfield Farm Museum is the only 374-acre historically
intact former Illinois prairie farmstead and tavern
listed on the National Register of Historic Sites in
Illinois that is being restored as an 1840s living
history farm museum. The museum depends exclusively on
donations to preserve the incredible historic,
agricultural, and natural resources on the farm. The
museum is located in Campton Hills, IL off Illinois Rt.
38 on Garfield Road. For information or reservations
call 630 584-8485, e-mail info@garfieldfarm.org or
see www.garfieldfarm.org to
download a 2018 calendar.
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