Hampshire woman loves life on the farm
Pat Dumoulin was born and raised on a family farm and all 77 years of her life has known she never wants to be anywhere else.
Growing up near DeKalb she did a lot of outside work on the farm, calling herself a tomboy.
“I was with my dad a lot,” Dumoulin said. “I much preferred to be outside than inside dusting.”
As she got older and started thinking about marriage, Dumoulin knew one important criteria was that her future husband needed to be a farmer. Bill Dumoulin fit the bill. They married and bought his parents' family farm in Hampshire.
Corn, hay, oats, pig, cattle and chickens were just some of the mainstays on her parents' farm. Today, the Dumoulins have far less diversity, growing 700 acres of corn and 50 acres of soybeans. But the reason for all the rest is the 2,100 sows birthing hogs that form the centerpiece of their farm.
“Our grain is an input cost, not a revenue stream,” Dumoulin said. “Our pigs are our revenue.”
That input cost means about 8,000 bushels of corn is ground into feed every week.
The farm is home to Dumoulin and her husband, their two sons, a daughter and their spouses, and 20 grandchildren. All 28 live in a sprawling house on Walker Road.
“We all live here and work together,” Dumoulin said. “It works very well for us.”
New piglets are born every day, where they are fed and raised to about 45 pounds. Then they go off-site where they grow to about 250 pounds before being slaughtered for ham, bacon and other food products to be distributed throughout the world. Many of their pigs end up in Japan.
Dumoulin sits on several farming organizations, which means she travels a lot for conferences and meetings as she represents soybean farmers from Illinois. She was recently in Washington, D.C. in her role as a director of the Illinois Soybean Association and a board member of World Initiative for Soy and Human Health.
Dumoulin helped to recognize Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the George McGovern Leadership Award, which honors those who take an active role in combating protein deficiency in underdeveloped countries.
Though she's been to Washington many times to advocate for farmers, the Oct. 5 event marked her first trip to the state department.
But Dumoulin is no stranger to travel. She is passionate about farming and her own farm, but that hasn't stopped her from leaving it every now and then.
She graduated from Northern Illinois University, got married and left for Germany in 1956 with her soldier husband. They traveled all over Europe before coming back to farm less than two years later.
Now Dumoulin thinks she lives in the perfect spot.
“I think I have the best of all worlds,” Dumoulin said. “I have all the benefits of country living and all the benefits of suburbia.”
Plus, she said she can always get to Chicago or Madison for anything she needs from a city.
While taking care of the books for the farm, Dumoulin spent much of her working life as a statistics and economics teacher at Elgin Community College. She had never expected to work but there was a shortage of teachers and she had the skills for it. Teaching became a 30-year career for her.
Now retired, Dumoulin drives the grain cart in the fall to harvest corn and continues the record keeping she has done all along.
She doesn't call it work, though, because it's what she loves.
“I never wanted to do anything but farm,” Dumoulin said.
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