Extended family treasures the ol' homestead

The family farm is quickly disappearing from the American landscape - especially from places close to urban areas like Chicago.

Since the end of World War II, acreage farmed by families has progressively been replaced by subdivisions. Crops and farm fields are becoming a thing of the past in northeastern Illinois.

But one family in Lake Villa is determined to preserve a way of life when it comes to their family farm.

Betty and Dan Heffernan say hardly a month goes by (at least until recently) that a developer doesn't call them with an attractive offer for their 55-acre farm along Town Line Road. But Betty has vowed that her portion of the farm, which her father acquired in the 1930s, will not be sold and covered with tract homes.

Betty and Dan are getting older and, unfortunately, they won't be around to safeguard the farm forever. However, for now, their 11 children and 19 grandchildren have joined forces to keep the farm going.

For the past four years, this massive group of Heffernans has come together each October to run a monthlong pumpkin fest at "Susanna Farms" to make sure that the property can pay for itself in the future.

"We realized that if we didn't do something to make sure the farm was self-supporting, my grandparents might have to sell it, and we couldn't let that happen," said Trevor Heffernan, a grandson and senior at Western Michigan University.

They batted around several ideas, like planting Christmas or apple trees on the land or even getting into organic farming, but none of those ideas seemed workable considering the family is spread from New Hampshire and North Carolina to Oregon, and everyone has their own full-time careers.

Then Trevor remembered going to a pumpkin farm in Lockport when he was growing up.

"There were hayrides, pig races, pumpkins and it was lots of fun," said Paul Heffernan, Trevor's father and a resident of LaGrange.

"We thought that would be the best idea because we would only have to be open for six weeks and we thought, 'How hard can it be to grow pumpkins?'," said Paul, who like his brother Robert is a trader in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's hog pit.

Of course, it turned out to be much harder than they thought. You have to constantly cultivate around the plants and spray them and you are at the mercy of Mother Nature, they said.

"And it involves lots of psychological counseling with the pumpkins," joked John Heffernan, another son who lives on the farm and does much of the work when he isn't working as a trading software consultant. "You know, 'You're going to get carved, but that's OK' - stuff like that," he laughed.

But despite the challenges, four years after the venture began they are still in business and growing every year.

This was a bad year for pumpkins in Lake Villa because there was too much rain, the Heffernans admitted, but they still managed to grow some nice ones and have purchased the rest of their inventory from a farmer just over the border in Wisconsin.

But pumpkins aren't the only thing the Heffernans are cultivating. Laura Heffernan, who works in advertising for a dance magazine in Chicago, took it upon herself to plant lavender this year and is hoping that by next year they will be able to add lavender to their list of items on sale.

Laura also handles the herb garden.

"We started out pretty basic and each year we add more to the farm," Trevor said. "And each year it seems that more and more of us get involved. Some of my cousins from California and Oregon spent the summer working on the farm, getting it ready for the fall festival, for instance."

Another cousin, Adam, a design student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, drew up the template for a complicated corn maze that is cut when the corn is only 6-inches high, and then maintained the rest of the growing season.

Matthew, an electrician in Colorado, ran the necessary electrical lines. Mark, a farmer in Wisconsin, loaned them a wagon. Luke, a superintendent with Leopardo Construction in Chicago, obtains old wood pilings that the farm cuts down for totem poles that visiting kids and families work together to paint.

Every Heffernan sibling is involved. DJ, an urban planner in Oregon, helped write the farm's business plan. And Elizabeth, a retirement planner based in Boston, works remotely all six weeks of the yearly fest, keeping track of the day-to-day operations.

"Everyone does something," said Paul. "We are really blessed that we get along so well. Humor goes a long way, you know!"

This year the festival includes the sale of pumpkins, corn stalks, Indian corn, gourds and mum plants. There are also hayrides, a five-acre corn maze and a smaller sunflower maze for small children, face painting, crafts, totem pole painting; horses, pigs and chickens to commune with; and a rather gourmet "snack shack" run by Bryan Heffernan, owner of the Shrimp Walk restaurant in Highwood.

School and Scout field trips, as well as birthday parties, are also welcome.

You won't find any slick marketing at Susanna Farms. All the signs are painted by hand. There is no gift shop, although Ann Marie Heffernan, the nurse in North Carolina, sewed some festive fall baby bibs that are sold from a picnic table.

For the visitors, Susanna Farms is all about homespun sensibility, country air and making family memories. And for the Heffernan family, it is all about preserving their family farm and sharing its charm with others.

"These developers want to build on every scrap of land there is," Betty lamented. "But I love the open space. I worked these fields when I was growing up and today young people don't even know where food comes from."

Yet, even Betty wasn't a full-time farm girl. Her father, Jay O'Bryan, was the owner of Lorraine Lingerie, yet he spent most weekends and every summer farming his 380 acres in Lake Villa. When he died in 1965, the land was split up between his five daughters and the family home was donated to an order of nuns for use as a convent.

According to Elizabeth, Betty and Dan Heffernan raised their family in a similar manner to the way Betty was raised. The Heffernans spent weekdays in Northfield where Dan sold heating and air conditioning systems. Weekends and summers, however, were spent on the farm with the eight boys living in a bunkhouse and the three girls and their parents living in the 100-plus-year-old farmhouse that once belonged to the farm manager.

Dan and Betty moved to the farm full-time about 30 years ago.

Even though the oldest son, DJ, lives in Oregon, he, too, manages to come back to Illinois several times a year, including during "Heff Fest," as he calls it.

"I really treasure that land and want to see it kept undeveloped," said DJ in a recent e-mail. "Wetlands and fens get lots of preservation headlines. But in Lake County, the remnant upland open space and wildlife habitat is arguably a rarer type of resource area than the bottom lands, especially for mixed oak woodlands and prairie."

The fertile Heffernan farm continues to cultivate a lot of family memories.

"I know that my father would be singing for joy and ecstatic to see how much his grandchildren and great-grandchildren love the farm," Betty said.

"We offer people a good experience in the country and in exchange we have fun as a family, employ some people and make enough money to pay the real estate taxes," added Dan.

And now that the family is opening the farm to the public each fall, Betty said that it is "wonderful to be able to share this land with other people so that they can get a taste of what a real farm is. So many of the farms closer to Chicago are now gone, unfortunately."