Allen Busse and his Farm

 In the Chicago area, particularly in the northern portion, the name “Busse” probably takes you to the woods - Busse Woods - and to the man-made lakes where tens of thousands flock every year.  Officially known as “Ned Brown Forest Preserve” (I’ve never heard anyone call it that), Busse Woods is one of the largest holdings in the Cook County Forest Preserve system - so large, that it stands out as a dark green blob among its developed surroundings when viewed from aerial maps.  It’s a good preserve for herps, too, especially the section north of Higgins Road, but we’ll get to that another day.

There’s an interesting story about the preserve’s namesake.  Busse Woods was named in honor of William Busse, a Cook County commissioner and local, in 1949.  William Busse came from a VERY long line of Busses in the area, which began with Friedrich (1800-1877) and Johanna (1803-1878), German immigrants who arrived in 1848.  While the story of William Busse is probably a good one, tonight I’m focusing on Allen Busse (1925-2013), great-great-grandson of Friedrich and Johanna, and an extraordinary character in the story of Elk Grove Village’s history.

Friedrich and Johanna, a real fun-loving couple

Allen Busse was born on his family farm, specifically, in the kitchen of his ancestor’s 1872 house, located south of Higgins Road in Elk Grove (“Elk Grove Village” today).  This was just one of the many Busse farms that dotted the landscape at the time.  His upbringing was decidedly rural.  Suburban encroachment had not yet reached that part of Cook county, but it was looming.  

Allen Busse as a young boy

Allen busy with corn

On November 19th, 1943,  Allen would leave his family farm to enlist in the United States Army.  He served with the 13th "Black Cat" Armored Division during World War II.  In 1947, he married Margery Scharringhausen, later fathering two sons. He continued farming his 72 acres full time.

Over the ensuing decades, other local farms were sold to developers.  Some became subdivisions, some became light industry, and many were sold to develop and expand a military aircraft plant and airfield called Orchard Field Airport, later expanded and renamed O'Hare International Airport.  Due to its proximity to such a large and busy airport, Elk Grove Village quickly became one of the most densely-packed commercial hubs in the Chicago area.  By the 1970s, less than a handful of farms remained in the area, as the last holdouts hoped to get the most for their land.  Those who wished to remain despite developmental pressure would soon become discouraged at the rising taxes in the area, to a point where selling and relocating became the most pragmatic option.  Many historic, multigenerational farms were simply left behind for the bulldozers to forever snuff out.

By the 1980s, Elk Grove Village had been completely transformed into roughly half residential and half industrial, with no real open space to speak of, with the exception of a 72 acre patch of soil known as Allen Busse's farm.

Allen Busse, 1993

Allen Busse, variously described as stubborn, colorful, gruff, cantankerous, rugged, and resolute, stood his ground.  While other Busses went on to college and worked in banking and business, Allen kept on farming.  

"One branch of the family was more progressive...they became citified.  They were the 'town people'.  We (his parents and grandparents) were 'rural people,'" Busse stated in a 1993 interview.

As early as the 1970s, the Chicago Bears inquired into his farm for building a new stadium.  Busse didn't budge.  He played games with the Bears when they returned in the late 1990s to try to sweeten the deal.  He offered his farm to the McCaskeys for a ridiculous sum of money at the time ($30,000,000), which the Bears declined.  I think he knew they would.  Busse's well-publicized games of cat and mouse with developers were legendary.  He had strong ties to his property, and repeatedly scoffed at men in suits who came knocking on his door.

But Busse wasn't greedy.  While fending off multiple offers from big corporate developers, Busse, an Elk Grove Village paid-on-call firefighter between 1959-1973, gladly donated a four-acre corner of his land for a new firefighting training facility in 1998.

The Busse farm in later years. Note the notch in the lower right-hand corner, containing the Elk Grove Village firefighter training facility.

"Why should I prostitute this farm? The son-of-a-guns hound you like a dog after a rabbit, but I know that all that suspender-snapping is poppycock. For one thing, you pay 71% estate tax when you're over ten million dollars. Then there are fees for annexation, stoplights, left turning bays, and now a real estate transfer tax. All of a sudden you're not talking about much money. Besides, if I knew what I wanted to do with $600,000, I wouldn't be peacefully raising alfalfa on this land and chopping wood all winter long for $4 an hour." - Allen Busse, 1993

Allen Busse, right, after donating four acres to the local fire department for a new station.

The farmhouse itself was located at 955 East Higgins Road. A 1992 article for which Allen and his wife Margery were interviewed contained the following description:

"The house stands near Higgins Road, across the street from a Lou Malnati's pizzeria. But it's secluded among tall trees and bushes, and I later learned that many local people don't realize the farm is there.

Behind the tired, olive brown shingled house is a barnyard cluttered with tools: old tractors and trucks, stacks of cut wood and bricks, bales of hay, a collection of tree stumps, piles of rocks, and a dumpster partially filled with scrap iron.

Sitting down at Allen and Marge Busse's kitchen table, I felt like I was in the heart of farm country. The kitchen appliances and furnishings were plainly utilitarian, and the shelves were filled with bottles and gadgets that looked like they'd been there for decades. Permeating the air was a feeling of continuity, the sense of an unbroken connection to the land." - Robert Heuer

Reading this, I can't help but feel great regret for never knocking on that door while Allen was alive, even though he was sometimes known to greet unannounced visitors with a loaded shotgun in his hand and a surly expression on his face.

After Margery passed away in the early 90s, Busse appeared to concede that selling was his best course of action. A national trucking firm approached Allen and offered a significant sum of money, and the thought of selling, and then downsizing to a smaller farm downstate must have seemed like an attractive prospect. But right before the deal was finalized, his two sons came through, assuring their father that he could stay if he wanted (he did), because they would handle the finances upon his death.

So, once again, Allen got his way.  He gave the trucking company their earnest money back, much to the surprise of many, and got to live out most of the remainder of his life on the farm that was so dear to him.  

"When I die, this farm dies", insisted Allen Busse.

Allen Busse died in September of 2013 at the age of 88.  Except for the last few years during which he resided in a retirement home, he had spent his entire life living and working on his farm.  His son Tim took over operations for a while, but he had no real interest in farming here, and, the developer's sweet songs were tantalizing.  

Busse's old pickup truck and a pumpkin patch, 2017

Tim Busse

In January of 2018, Tim sold all of the land to an investment group who planned to redevelop the property into a technology and industrial park projected to be worth over one billion dollars. This included the four acres previously owned by the Elk Grove fire department, who agreed to move their facility elsewhere. Everything - the training station, the trees, the 1872 farmhouse - was swiftly paved over. A monolithic data center is among the group of huge, pale-colored buildings that now occupy the site.

Sadly, only two weeks after the sale, Tim passed away at the age of 65, joining his brother Rudolph (had had passed in 2001) and his father Allen in death, and ending a very long farming tradition in Elk Grove Village.

The following is a series of photos of the Busse farmhouse I took in the late summer of 2016.

It was a very sunny day, forgive the overexposure

A black farm cat

2016

Two years later from the same perspective (via Google maps). In place of the historic home is a sign stating, "Heritage meets Innovation in Elk Grove". Okay.

I felt that this story needed to be told again because there are important lessons here. How this story affects you might be very different from how it affects me, but one thing is certain: most of us can learn a thing or two from Allen Busse.

Harmonie Hills

 The small town of New Harmony, Indiana is a feast for the history buff.  Truly.  There is so much to see and learn for a town so small.  It was formed in 1814 by George Rapp (1757-1847) and members of the Harmony Society - the first such settlement in the United States outside of Harmony, Pennsylvania.  Its members had escaped religious persecution in Germany and wanted to live completely independently in the (then) western frontier.  This arrangement didn’t last long, however.  The town’s isolation had profound negative effects on commerce.  Malaria was also a major factor; much of the surrounding landscape was swampy.  And being such a short distance (fifteen miles) from Kentucky - a slave state - didn’t sit well with the Abolitionist residents. 

George Rapp, 1835

The town was subsequently sold to Robert Owen (1771-1858), a wealthy industrialist from Scotland.  Owen wanted to create a “utopian society” where education, science, technology, and communal living were major tenets.  In fact, New Harmony did become well known as a national center for natural history, hosting several notable figures during this time.  Among these was Thomas Say (1787-1834), who spent his final years (and died) in New Harmony.  Say has been credited with documenting the first known observation of a reptile or amphibian in Illinois when he described a nesting “Lake Erie tortoise” (Northern map turtle) near Shawneetown, Illinois, only about thirty miles from New Harmony:

“On the 27th, several of the party went out to hunt in the forests, and swamps, north-west of Shawneetown.  At about four miles distance from the Ohio, they arrived at the banks of a small pond, three miles long, and only three or four hundred yards wide.  Here they killed a turkey, and some small birds.  On the bank of the pond, was found a specimen of the Lake Erie tortoise, depositing its eggs in the sand, at about twenty yards distance from the water.  It had made, with its feet, a hole in the sand, two inches in diameter and four inches in depth, enlarging towards the bottom to three inches.  This species occurs frequently in the pools and stagnant waters along the Ohio.  We first met with it near the rapids at Louisville”.

Thomas Say, 1812. My guy was ahead of his time hipster.

Interestingly, this occurred in 1819, about seven years before he moved to New Harmony from Pennsylvania.  Is that not super fascinating?  In 1819, he was a member of Major Steven Long’s Yellowstone Expedition to the west to collect specimens.  He practically passed the town he would end up moving to later on.  At that point in American history, it’s a pretty unbelievable coincidence.  But I digress.

Robert Owen, 1834

Owen’s social experiment was met with many challenges and the culture he had been trying to foster largely ceased around 1828.  Afterward, the town developed much like any other small river town in southern Indiana.

One of Owen’s sons, Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) was an Indiana congressman when he expedited the bill that established the Smithsonian Institution in 1846.  Back then, as widespread as the study of natural history was, it was still a very small world.

Fortunately, a lot of the early architecture remains in fine condition.  A portion of the town comprises the New Harmony Historic District, and it is very walkable and remarkable.

Mattias Scholle House, c. 1823

Orchard House, 1860

David Lenz House, c. 1819-1822

Barrett-Gate House, 1814 & mid 1800s

Owen Community House, 1830

Fr. Lauple House, c. 1822

Wolf House c. 1819-1822

Rapp-Owen granary, 1818

The old City Building today houses Firehouse Antiques & Oddities. This is a MUST-SEE for anyone who sees little to no value in "normal" stuff.

Hiking the nearby Harmonie Hills State Park/Nature Preserve was a lesson in frustration.  I arrived in the morning - not too early - and there was absolutely nobody there.  The gate attendant even made it seem like my visit was questionable.  Evidently, “hiking” isn’t a normal response to “What are you doing here today?”.  And maybe it was because this place isn’t very hiker-friendly.  I struggled to find a trailhead anywhere, and when I finally found one, it was poorly marked and dead-ended on a road after maybe half a mile.  Along this trail, in a tiny wooded opening, was an operating pumpjack at an oil well.  Again, it just seems odd to me to see these in dedicated nature preserves.  I hiked to the banks of the Wabash and rested a while.  The air was still, and silent.

Other architectural interests in the general area.

Rosenbaum & Brothers building, 1910. Mount Vernon.

Alles Brothers Furniture Co building, 1879. Mount Vernon.

Bud's Hardware, 1884. Mount Vernon.

Early & mostly intact building (date unknown). Evansville.

A trip to Indiana’s bottomlands introduced me to more of the Midwest’s cypress swamps.  And while hiking the trails near Hovey Lake (also poorly maintained), I couldn’t help but turn a log or two.  I also scanned the river in hopes of re-enacting Say's 1819 "Lake Erie tortoise" observation, but nary a tortoise was seen.

Buttonbush swamp

Southern leopard frog

Marbled salamander

Five-lined skink

One more item on my agenda was to visit what is believed to be Indiana’s southernmost cemetery, Stroud Cemetery.  Getting there requires lots of dusty backroads down a bend of the Ohio river.  The cemetery is easy to miss.  It is essentially an overgrown patch of weeds among a very flat expanse of cropland.  My only reference to this cemetery were a couple of photos on Find A Grave.  In them, the headstones had been removed and sort of leaning against a tree stump.  I found the headstones lying atop some dead shrubbery, indicating that they had been recently moved again.  Only two were legible - a W. E. Hawkins, and a W. A. Stroud (Died in 1847, just short of their tenth birthday).  Next to the cemetery was a small overgrown rise, likely the site of a homestead long ago. 

Humble Parquito

 

Humble Parquito before the plants fill in.  5/11/13

In the spring of 2012, I began my internship with Friends of the Parks, a non-profit parks advocacy organization in Chicago.  My role was site steward for what was then called the Dunning-Read Conservation Area (DRCA), now the Dunning Read Natural Area.  The Dunning Read Natural Area is located on the grounds of the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center, about one block from my mom’s house where I had lived from the time I was fourteen until I bought my first house just a few miles away.  During my internship, I spent most weekends there, helping to lead programs and habitat restoration efforts while drafting a site management plan. 

From the files

Not long into my internship, I received an email from my manager, stating that a local beekeeper expressed interest in setting up hives on site.  After a few back and forth emails, the beekeeper and I agreed to meet on-site to determine the best location for the hives.  I met the beekeeper - Marcin - out back by the red shed on a pleasant sunny day.  I took a liking to Marcin pretty much right away.  He explained why setting up the hives at the base of a gentle south-facing slope would work best, but the site engineer vetoed that vote and recommended an area next to a large radio tower.  Marcin maintained that the tower area was too shaded for the bees.  A little more back and forth, and we determined that putting hives at the DRCA just wasn’t going to work out.  

Later that summer, Marcin reached out once again and asked if he and his beekeeping crew could use the site to host their National Honey Bee Day festivities.  I regretted that we were never able to accommodate his desire to install hives on site so I approved and helped set up the event.  Marcin and his scrappy beekeeper crew came through that hot August day, with a tent, honey tastings, and some educational materials.  For being in a crumbling, weedy parking lot of a mental health facility, the event went pretty well.  

Marcin struck me as a down to earth kind of guy.  He was a tall, bearish figure, sporting long hair tucked behind a bandanna and a chin goatee.  These attributes belied his gentle and deliberate demeanor.  If there was one thing I picked up from him early on, it was his fascination with honey bees and his willingness to educate others.  A clear parallel existed between us - we both were really - and I mean REALLY - into things most people misunderstand and often fear.  It’s an ethos rare as hen’s teeth.  These are the kind of people you want to hang on to.

At some point, Marcin invited me to a community garden he and his crew had built on three empty lots at 1630-1634 Richmond Street in Humboldt Park.  Upon entering the garden, my mind was blown.  The garden was lush and full of fruits and vegetables growing in well-manicured plots.  Everything was available to neighbors who needed fresh food but couldn’t find or afford it.  There was a big stack of rain barrels catching water off of an adjacent apartment building (1638) and an ingenious watering system tapped into each garden plot.  There was a mulched path for visitors to use and local artwork all over.  There was even a wooden outhouse where one could piss into a biodegradable mixture of sawdust.  

Photo courtesy of the Humble Parquito Facebook page

And of course, the bee hives.  There were lots of hives here, some Marcin’s and some belonging to local members of his crew.  It was an incredibly tranquil environment in the midst of a bustling neighborhood.  This was Humble Parquito, a true up-and-coming place for community involvement, networking, and reflection.

Marcin, 2013

Before I knew it, I became a regular here.  The 2013 National Honey Bee Day festivities were held here, which attracted people from the neighborhood and beyond.  Marcin organized bonfires during the summer/winter solstice and spring/fall equinox.  Everyone would bring a plate to share, and while I’m a big-time introvert, I found good company here.

Marcin offering a true beekeeping experience to visitors on National Honey Bee Day in 2013

Sometimes it was hard to remind ourselves that the land Humble Parquito occupied was borrowed, and that at any moment, this thing that so many people created could be wiped clean, and fast.  And that’s exactly what happened.  In March of 2014, I received a text from Marcin notifying me that the lots had been sold to a developer.  Humboldt Park had become the next Logan Square and thousands of suburban/out of state hipsters wanted to live there.  The following eulogy was posted on the Humble Parquito Facebook page on March 14th, 2014:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)…our time is coming to an end at 1630 North Richmond.”

 A late night emergency meeting was held on an adjacent lot, across the alley at 1621 Humboldt Boulevard.  Most of the Humble Parquito crew was there, in the darkness and battling the cold wind.  There was a feeling of defeat amongst the attendees, yet Marcin had little time for sorrow.  That night, a plan was proposed to relocate Humble Parquito to this new site.  Feelings varied.  Most were understandably attached to the “OG” Humble Parquito, and crushed to learn its fate.  There was also the lingering concern that 1621 Humboldt might not last long either.  Ultimately, all went home that night knowing that there might never be a Humble Parquito ever again.  

I wasn’t present when Marcin and members of his crew were forced to clear the garden in preparation for development. It happened so fast.  It could not have been an easy task, physically or mentally.  

In 2014, three modern single-family homes were erected where Humble Parquito once flourished. The Humble Parquito crew half-heartedly maintained the new Humble Parquito at 1621 Humboldt for a few years until the eviction notice came through. The very last bonfire occurred there on December 21st, 2016 - winter solstice. In 2018, a large condominium was constructed there.

The new Humble Parquito in July 2014. Photo courtesy of the Humble Parquito Facebook page

Former site of Humble Parquito

Losing Humble Parquito was a crushing loss.  But one thing Marcin understood is that friendship transcends a place.  Yes, Humble Parquito was an opportunity, a meeting place.  But its demise couldn’t stop what it had created.  Eventually, Marcin would leave the city and relocate to an exurban part of Elgin, in a small, old homestead awkwardly surrounded on three sides by large-scale new development.  There, against a backdrop of drab tan condos and uninspired single family homes, he continues tending to his bees and gardening, seemingly unfazed by the greedy land grabbing and rapid suburban sprawl.  And he still hosts bonfires, where his aging crew still regularly meets.

In a way, Humble Parquito lives on.

In loving memory of Christine DiMiceli

The OG crew

The tradition continues. 2025

Marcin and my daughter, 2025