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Central Illinois | Maurice Wilder bought the farm in late nineties from (?) Gillette, who had bought the farm from the Italians. Anyway, Jerry Moss was the last manager for Gillette and did a great job there. Wilder turned the farm from a show place to a sh#$ hole, and finally sold the farm off in several parcels. The Nature Conservancy bought the main farm (5500+_ acres) and several hundred acres on the west side if the highway, while Fish and Wildlife bought most of the west side side. The Conservancy rented out most of the farmland for four or five years while tearing down buildings, houses and the feedlot. Everything from the headquarters is now gone, replaced by a parking lot, ramp and dock. CIPS (now Amerin) weighted down the natural gas pipeline with straps and concrete every few hundred feet to keep it from floating up as the water overtook it. We custom harvested 1,500 acres of wheat off of it the next to last year it was farmed. What a pleasure. I would never have thought the water would overtake it, but as wet as the last two years have been, it happened When we hit normal or dry weather, it will be interesting to see what happens. Have a bunch of pictures of our and neighbors combines and crew harvesting the wheat.
Someone brought an old timer on to the farm when we cut the wheat. He told of growing up on the farm before it was leveed, when there twenty some houses in the bottoms. He told of Thompson and Flag(?) Lakes going dry most summers, and how they would go in and plow them up and try to get a short season crop off. He (and us) shook our heads at what was happening to that once great showplace. | |
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Whatever happened too Norris Farm
