Legacy farms

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Editor’s note: This is part of a series on Century, Bicentennial and Heritage farms.

Illinois farm spans six generations

EARLVILLE, Ill. — For a sixth-generation farmer, the best way to propose to his future bride was with a banner draped on a combine at harvest time.

Kayla, also from a farm family, said yes to Jared Allen.

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Jared Allen proposed to his now wife, Kayla, through a banner on a combine at her family’s farm. Roots in agriculture run deep for the sixth-generation farmer.
Submitted photo

Jay Allen has the original deed which dispels an earlier family belief that great-great-great-grandfather Henry Warren Willey was a homesteader.
Photo by Phyllis Coulter

Illinois farm going strong after 170 years

THOMPSONVILLE, Ill. — The farmhouse in which Paul Miller lives came perilously close to being gone with the wind. Literally.

The 1925 Tri-State Tornado came so close to the Franklin County home that it actually pulled the structure toward it.

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Paul and Dennis Miller — Paul Miller (right) and his brother Dennis look over property records and plat maps confirming the 1851 establishment of the farm where they grew up.
Photo by Nat Williams

A tombstone sits on the grave of Robert Tate on the property of the Miller farm in Franklin County, Ill.
Photo by Nat Williams

Missouri family shares love of raising cattle

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — In the rolling cattle country of Osage County, Missouri, near an unincorporated community called Babbtown, Jason Schroeder and his family build on the success of past generations on their Century Farm.

They raise cattle like their family has since the 1800s on the farm. Since 2006, they have raised registered Black Hereford cattle.

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Iowa Heritage Farm plays a role in Angus history

REDFIELD, Iowa — While any farm needs to make money, it’s clear the most valuable asset on Jerry and Ruth Carrico’s farm is its connection to family.

The couple’s Dallas County, Iowa, farm has been in the family since 1871 and was certified as a Heritage Farm — for farm families that have owned at least 40 acres for 150 years or more — this year by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship.