When most people hear the words “family farm,” there are some things that might come to their mind right away: pigs, sheep, freerange chickens, and local beehives to name a few. Things they might not expect: bath bombs, beard oil, a renovation fundraiser for a century-old CNW caboose, and the inside scoop on Walmart’s robot bees.
If you drive south of town to 4915 Dean St., you’ll reach HillBunker Farms, where you can find everything mentioned above and more. Regulars at Valerie Deegan-Johnson’s “Jackass Charm” corner store might already see a familiar face in Damon and Michele Hill, who appeared there last October – in vintage Army garb – to promote their G.I.-themed “bunker” products. At that point, HillBunker had been officially open for less than three months, but the couple’s “niche” farm has already become a local hit in the five months since. They plan to appear in this fall’s McHenry County Farm Stroll, and have already hosted several popular “open farm” events, inviting kids and adults to meet the “BabyDoll” sheep and “Kune Kune” pigs, play games, and watch movies projected on the side of their barn.
Damon Hill said that when he and his wife attended the Farm Stroll welcome dinner this month, they were reassured to find out that half of the people there had a similar background to themselves – “they had no farming experience,” Damon said, “they didn’t grow up in it, but they wanted to get in touch with their food. There are a lot of younger folks that are trying to get back to the land.”
Out of the couple, Damon speaks for himself the most – Michele Hill, who grew up in Schaumburg, ran a “rescue” farm for several years before she met her future husband, rehabilitating wildlife and caring for pets and livestock on their way to new homes. As Damon, a Texas native who went to high school in Crystal Lake, described: “I was on my way to downtown Chicago to live in a loft, and then I met Michele. I fell for her, I fell for the farm, and from there it was just kind of wrapped up.”
Michele said that part of their decision to start a food-producing farm was for business reasons, and part of it – in a story surprisingly similar to Katie Kelley of Woodstock’s Terra Vitae farm – came out of a personal health crisis, that could only be solved by bucking America’s mainstream food system.
“With the birth of my daughter ten years ago, I got preeclamsia,” Michele said. Formerly known as pregnancy toxemia, the condition results in high blood pressure during, and in rare cases like Michele’s, well after pregnancy. “I was on two meds five times a day for four years,” she said. “Nobody knew what was wrong with me. [When] we started trying for a second child, we had several losses, eight infertility treatments… nothing. I went to a holistic physician and we started changing everything we put in our bodies and on our bodies, so that’s how this all came to be.” And sure enough, Michele said, the change worked: “After we changed our diet and [personal products], we were able to get pregnant and keep our child… our son is four.”
Like the Kelleys, the Hills were inspired to make their own contribution to a better, more human food system – and they’ve eagerly taken notes from Terra Vitae, using pasture rotation to raise better-fed animals on less space, and taking advantage of an oak grove on the property as a “food forest” (which, according to Damon, results in “acorny” ham and bacon). Where HillBunker branches off from Terra Vitae – a project totally devoted to raising the healthiest possible food – is its personal product line.
Food isn’t the only area where modern corporations put the bottom line in front of of the bodily health of their consumers: everyday items like deodorant, foot cream, hand soap and conditioner contain a wide variety of exotic chemicals and preservatives, supposedly safe for long-term, continuous use, but ultimately untested in the real, human world for more than the last several decades. While there’s still debate over the link between these chemicals, such as deodorant-preserving parabens, and the increased incidence rates of various forms of cancer over the last half-century, the Hills have taken their life-changing experience going “cold turkey” on America’s chemical roulette-wheel as an inspiration to help others do the same. Aside from meat and eggs, their farm stand offers all-natural alternatives to the above products, plus body butter, a honey sugar scrub, and even “beard oil,” an almond-oil based facial hair conditioner.
As much as they can, the Hills make their own ingredients for their product line – honey for their exfoliating sugar scrub first and foremost. But in what seems to be a self-reinforcing system, modern agriculture’s chemical dependency is hurting their ability to do even that. Damon, a member with Michele in the Northern Illinois Beekeeper’s Association, had a first-person perspective on one of agriculture’s most bizarre ongoing catastrophes: Colony Collapse Disorder. “Everyone [in NIBA] is losing at least half their hives every year,” Damon said. “You’ve got to sell a lot of honey to make up for that.”
And honey is only the first stop on CCD’s path of destruction: almond crops, and other plants reliant on insect pollination, have already become much more difficult to grow. The result has been a thriving “bee rental” industry, and in conjunction with other factors, increasingly astronomical prices for almond butter, almond milk, almond oil-based beard conditioner, and so forth.
From his unique perspective as both a software engineer and a farmer, Damon was able to preview an even more mind-boggling solution to an already hard-to-comprehend problem: “I worked with AI and machine learning… [Robot bees] are flying right now.” The patent, filed in March of last year, comes from none other than Walmart, GMO and pesticide customer extraordinaire. According to Damon, the very pesticides popular with Walmart’s suppliers – glyphosate, aka Monsanto’s “Roundup” chief among them – have combined with the loss of plant genetic diversity from the GMO boom to create the Colony Collapse problem in the first place.
For people interested in these kinds of farming conversations, and in getting their own firsthand view of an innovative, responsibly-managed family farm, the Hills are starting on another unique project: converting the historic Chicago North Western caboose, that previous farm owners the Bates family brought to the property in the 1950s, into a Tiny House AirBnB. “I’ve met thirty people in the area who’ve told us they used to swim in our pond and change in the caboose, or they’ve ice skated and used it as a warming house,” Damon said. “They have childhood memories of the caboose, and they’re older than I am.”
Promoted on Twitter with the “#WoodstockCaboose” hashtag, the Hills will open their farm to the public on Saturday, June 29, for the “Save the Woodstock Caboose” fundraising event. The Hills’ GoFundMe page, with a $50,000 goal, currently has only $50 from one donor – but if they can pull their renovation off, not only will Woodstock have one of its lesser-known landmarks rescued, it will have a one-of-a-kind outpost for a “farmer’s eye view” on McHenry County.
For more on the farm, the caboose and the Hill family, visit them at hillbunkerfarms.com, or in-person at 4915 Dean St.
Willcockson Wordsmithing 