Growing the Future: Inside Historic Wagner Farm with Director Jonathan Kuester

Aaron Masliansky (00:01)
Welcome to The Chicagoland Guide and I'm your host, Aaron Masliansky. Today I am joined by Jonathan Kuester, who is the director of the historic Wagner Farm in Glenview. Wagner farm is a farm that's been around since the 1800s, is the last remaining farm in Glenview, one of the last ones in Cook County and is owned by the Glenview Park District. It's incredibly interesting. I had a

A great time yesterday, I got a tour of the farms and I've been there before. had a birthday party for my daughter many years ago, but there are so, so much more there. And I can't wait to share that with the audience here. So Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me today.

Jonathan Kuester (00:41)
Sure, yeah, great to be here.

Aaron Masliansky (00:42)
Yeah. and John, like for those who aren't really familiar with the farm, maybe they've driven by on Lake Avenue, right past Wagner, on the way to the Glen or on the way to the highway or the lake. and they see these cows there. People may have no idea. So tell us a little bit about that. Like why, why does this farm exist? What goes on here?

Jonathan Kuester (01:03)
Sure. Well, as you mentioned, it is the last farm in Glenview and one of the last farms in Cook County, certainly the last farm on the North Shore. It was purchased by the Park District in 2001 after the last Wagner family member passed away. So the Wagners farmed this land from 1902 until 1997, and then the Park District purchased it and opened it up as a public facility.

And it's here for people to remember what Glenview used to be like, to learn the history of Glenview, and also to learn a lot about agriculture, both historic agriculture and modern agriculture, where your food comes from. So that's our purpose. And I'm glad when people see the cows, that's always great when you're driving along just to see some cows out in the pasture, having a good time.

But I encourage him to stop by and learn about what we do because there's a lot that goes on here.

Aaron Masliansky (02:01)
There's a heck of a lot that goes on there. how did you get connected with running this farm?

Jonathan Kuester (02:07)
Well, I have worked in living history for the last 30 years. is this has been my career, working at living history farms. I came to the Chicago area to work for the Schomburg Park District, running a fairly similar facility. And the director here at Wagner, who was the first director who started it in 2001, was actually promoted to be a superintendent in the park district.

And so they hired me to take his place and continue the work here.

Aaron Masliansky (02:39)
And then, I mean, in order to be able to run a farm like this or have that understanding, I imagine it takes a unique background. So what's your background in farming and how did you get from that background to these types of living farm ⁓ places to work?

Jonathan Kuester (02:53)
Sure.

Yeah, well, I did grow up on a farm in central Indiana and, you know, my interest was not really in staying on the farm. I was interested in history and studied American history in school and wanted to work in museums. And so I started work in museums and quickly realized that there is a very strong link between agriculture and American history.

you know, until about a hundred years ago, the majority of Americans worked and lived on farms. And so I was kind of uniquely suited as someone who had lived and worked on a farm to work at those museums. And so that's, that was the start of my career. And I just sort of progressed through from site to site. This is the fifth museum that I've worked at all over the Eastern U S and, and I've worked in a variety of time periods.

everything from the 1780s up to the 1930s. So I've got a pretty broad background for American agricultural history. And that's kind what it takes to run a site like this. You have to know a lot about a lot of things.

Aaron Masliansky (03:58)
Yeah, you sure do. And I certainly learned that yesterday, walking through the farm with you from, be it the way that people lived back then or what the history is to the equipment that you use on the dairy cows. So we'll talk about that. But one of the things that I really learned as walking through there is you start to understand how the community shaped itself around the farm.

because you're in this living history, you're in a modern era, but then you start to see why are the roads the way that they are around the farms and how did everything develop from there and the subdivisions all around there. And things have completely changed. But when people come to the farm, you get this sense that I'm feeling and you get to have the sense of where your food comes from. So what have you seen as a community impact for this farm?

around Glenview or in general around the Chicagoland area because of it.

Jonathan Kuester (04:56)
Yeah, I mean, it is a very impactful site and we get a lot of visitors. They come through almost one hundred and fifty thousand people a year come through historic Wagner farm. And they're here for lots of reasons. Some people are just here recreating. just enjoying the open space. Some people are looking for the history. Some people are looking for where their food comes from. It really is a remnant of a landscape that existed, you know.

previous to Glenview's kind of development as a suburb. And so it is in its rightful location. This was not a farm that was moved. This was where it was. And so you get that feeling a little bit when you look at the pasture and you look at how the landscape kind of interacts. Even though we're surrounded by subdivisions now, it fits in its place because it's where it was really at. And so

I think that's important and I think it helps ground the community a little bit to realize that there was something here before the subdivisions were developed. it makes sense why some of the names are what they are and how things are laid out when you start to see that earlier version.

Aaron Masliansky (06:05)
Yeah. And what you see is like, there's the historic town portion, then there's where the dairy cows are. And then you have different areas where there's agriculture, you know, planted, and then you have this area where you can rent out, could have a birthday party like, like I did for my daughter. so there's a lot of different programming that you have. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jonathan Kuester (06:25)
Yeah, there really is. There's a lot of layers to the site. We kind of think of the site in three different mini districts. So we have a historic district, which are the buildings that the Wagner family built and are representative of our 1920s, you know, living history landscape. So you can tour their house. You can go down and see the barn. That's where most of the livestock are at. And then on the far side of the farm, we have our modern

farming district where we're producing food for sale through our CSA subscriptions, through the farmers market. And then in between, as you mentioned, there's kind of a public area that is a little more park like. It's a big open space. There's a play feature. There's a heritage center that you can visit. You know, when the farm was first developed, they were a little bit short on those amenities and quickly realized that

when you have hundreds of thousands of people coming through, have to provide restrooms, you have to build sidewalks, and you have to have those spaces. So we have a little bit of that too, but we try to balance it and preserve the historical integrity of the site while keeping it a working, living thing. It is a working farm. And so we have crop fields and we have pastures that are actually producing food.

Aaron Masliansky (07:39)
Who's actually working this area? Do you have full-time farmers? Do you interact with other programs?

Jonathan Kuester (07:47)
Yeah, so we have a small staff, myself and my farm manager are really the only people here with a farm background. I have a program staff and operation staff that kind of keep the site running. But, you know, it's largely up to us to provide the knowledge base for what's going on. But we do interact with some other groups that help with labor. We have an agreement with

True North Learning Cooperative, which is a special education district that sends student farmers and a teacher to the site five days a week. And they help us start plants in our greenhouse and transplant them to the field. They collect eggs. We also have a tremendous volunteer corps. have volunteers that come every day, literally some of them, and they do chores with the livestock. They collect eggs and wash eggs.

They help with the milking, they help with programs. They're in every aspect of what we do. you know, there's a lot of maintenance to a site like this too. There's a lot to keep up. And so every little thing that needs to be painted and repaired and maintained, we have a lot of volunteers that help with that.

Aaron Masliansky (08:55)
Yeah, people really care about making this succeed, which it certainly has. One of the things too that you had mentioned is that you bring children, students who are interested in agriculture and in a program where they can learn, tell us a little bit about that program too.

Jonathan Kuester (09:11)
Yeah,

we have a couple. So 4-H is one of our biggest programs. 4-H is a national organization. It's run through the USDA and it's the country's largest youth organization. And it's focused around building life skills and largely for rural communities. Not in our case, but most kids who are in it are from rural communities.

Aaron Masliansky (09:31)
Right.

Jonathan Kuester (09:34)
They develop projects that they show through the county fair systems throughout the country. And then those feed into the state fair systems throughout the different states. So we have a very unique club because they keep their livestock here and they show lambs, hogs and dairy at the Lake County Fair. They also do general projects. do hundreds of general projects. And that is really unique for this environment.

4H as I said is very common, but it's not common in urban areas so much.

Aaron Masliansky (10:03)
Is it hard to get people to want to do that since we're not in a rural area?

Jonathan Kuester (10:07)
Well, it's not been, you know, they started that club almost 25 years ago and it did start small as most 4-H clubs do, but it quickly grew and it has consistently had a waiting list for the last, you know, 20 plus years. And so we can only accept about 30 kids a year into that program. And we generally have a waiting list that's maybe 30 to 60 kids long waiting to get in.

Aaron Masliansky (10:33)
Wow.

Jonathan Kuester (10:33)
⁓

so there's a lot of draw to it. And, you know, no matter where you live, there are people that are going to have an interest in where their food comes from and how it is grown. and so we, you know, kids that are interested in that gravitate to us. they come through our summer camps, they come through our school programs. they see the site just as a visitor. And if they're interested, you know, they may try to join that four H club and then have a really.

exceptional experience after that. We also have interns and apprentices that we bring on throughout the year. Our apprentices are local kids, again, that are interested in growing food, which may be something that they're interested in being a chef in the future or going into food science. It doesn't mean that they're interested in being a farmer necessarily, but they're interested in that.

Aaron Masliansky (11:14)
you.

Jonathan Kuester (11:20)
that whole system. And so we give them a chance to kind of see the roots of it, where it starts, how it gets, you know, processed, put into food. And so that's a very powerful experience as well.

Aaron Masliansky (11:31)
And do a lot of the people that either go through the 4-H program or intern, do they end up in fields that are along with agriculture or animals? mean, do you see people becoming veterinarians and things of that nature too?

Jonathan Kuester (11:43)
Yeah,

we actually do. And that's one of the more surprising things. think the thought is because this is a suburban area that no one here is involved in agriculture. And that's just not true. Glenview actually has a strong food science culture even today. This is where Kraft Heinz is located. We have a lot of the industry here. People just don't realize that's what it is.

Aaron Masliansky (12:01)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Kuester (12:08)
But we absolutely have kids going into animal science, going into veterinary work, going into food science. There is a need for those kids to do that. They're going to be the ones that figure out how to feed us in the future. And they certainly, we see several that get a start here.

Aaron Masliansky (12:27)
And I think that's so important. know, people don't really realize where our food comes from or think that, okay, it just shows up. But it is critical for all of us to know how to grow food, how to do it, how to eat healthfully, learning about just how to plant the agriculture, how to deal with the land. mean, so much has changed in this country over the time periods. But I mean, you were mentioning to me that

The most dairy production in the United States was in Cook County up until a certain point. Is that correct?

Jonathan Kuester (12:57)
Well,

yeah, not dairy production per se, but the dairy industry was located around Cook County through most of the of the early 19th century and into the 20th century. So when we think about brands like Borden Milk that invented condensed milk, that was located in Elgin, the first milk train, which was a dedicated train to run milk into a major city so they could get fresh dairy products that was invented in Chicago.

A lot of our dairy laws that we still use today, the pasteurized milk ordinance, one of the earliest versions came from Chicago. So this was where the dairy industry developed. Immigrants from all over the world came to Chicago, you know, hone their craft, develop their products. And this is where they made it at. And it's completely gone at this point. There are no producers left in Cook County. There are very few

cattle left in County to produce any dairy products. that's kind of sad, but it shows how the industry has grown and not just the dairy industry, but food production in general has become a global industry. Corn that is grown here ends up all the way around the world and vice versa. And so it's much more complicated, I think, than the average consumer gives it credit for.

And the ability to go to a grocery store and buy an apple or asparagus or a peach any time of year is really mind blowing. If you think about what that takes in an area that has a, you know, not terribly long growing season. And it's all available here, just like it is everywhere in the U.S. So, you know, we try to talk about that and how those food systems have evolved and developed and changed and

Not always for the better. mean, we feed more people today than we ever have in the world, but there are flaws in that system also.

Aaron Masliansky (14:49)
for sure. mean, and I, you know, one of the reasons why you don't have all the production here anymore is because the land is too expensive, which is why all these farms were sold over time. I mean, if Wagner farm was sold for housing or something else, it would be incredibly valuable. You look at what happened down the street at the Glen, when that turned from a Naval base into a whole nother city, basically, I think it's 10,000 acres of land is the Glen. It's huge.

And that was just a massive redevelopment. So that would be here too, if not for the community wanting to keep this. I think it's, you that's, you see most of these farms or the production further outside the major city centers. And then because of transport, you can get things more quickly to places where you don't need to centralize it. Not like how it used to be with the slaughterhouses on the Southwest side of the city. So things have certainly changed, but

It was really interesting to me to learn why the food industry changed. And you were telling me a little bit about how there was a period of time where even like at the beginning of the 20th century in between World War I, World War II, farmers were making money. And then around the time of the Nixon administration, things changed. And I think for the audience, it's interesting to learn about this. So tell us a little bit about that history.

Jonathan Kuester (16:07)
Yeah,

well, I mean, you can go back and study agriculture, you know, basically to the beginning of time, and you can see these ups and downs. But the period from the 1890s to about 1920 are considered the golden age of agriculture in America. This was a point at which pretty much anybody could buy land, they could afford it and they could farm and they could make money.

And it led to a lot of speculation and techniques that weren't necessarily great for the land. Things like the Dust Bowl were caused by consequences of some of those practices. But the first time in history in America, farmers were making money. had income enough that they could improve their farms. They could send their kids to school. This is when we see new barns being built. We see great innovation in equipment.

when tractors are introduced. So we see a huge change in agriculture through that period up until World War One. And in the U.S., it continues a little bit longer than it does in the rest of the world because no fighting happened here during World War One. Most of the world was at war. We were supplying all of those countries. So we grew a lot of food at that time. But starting in the 20s,

we start to see the ups and downs come back in. And especially during the 1930s, during the Roosevelt administration, the system that was set up was designed to prevent farmers from overproducing. They didn't want prices to drop because there had been an overproduction in a certain crop. so farmers were encouraged, for instance, if they had a good corn year, to keep that corn in a crib.

and wait and sell it when the price was more stable. And the government would even buy you a corn crib. They would build a wire corn crib for you so that you could keep that and and and let it out once the market had stabilized a little bit. By the 1960s, there was a fear that the Soviet Union was going to outproduce us and that they were going to flood the world with cheap everything, really cheap food, cheap products, manufacturing.

And so the system of subsidies was changed and farmers were encouraged to grow on every acre that they owned as much as they could. And if that caused a deflation in the market because there was overproduction, the government would make up the difference through a subsidy. And that's the system that we still largely use today. Corn and soybeans are the biggest crops that get subsidies.

But if you are growing those crops and there's an overproduction in your area, the government will guarantee a certain price for it. And so it encourages not only production, but in many cases, overproduction. And that has led to a little bit of a change in the industry. For one thing, farms got a lot bigger. People that couldn't afford to stay in agriculture. And in the late 70s and early 80s, we had a

a pretty terrible agricultural recession where a lot of farmers lost their farms. Those that were left absorbed those farms and became bigger. And so we have been on that path for more than 100 years now, farms growing in size and the number of farmers shrinking. And so today only about 1 % of our population are actual farmers that own land and farm it.

And they're, course, tremendous landowners. They own most of the land in the United States outside of the federal government. And because they are such big producers, they have to put a lot of capital into it. Their equipment has to be big. Their structures have to be big. And so it makes it difficult to get started in agriculture. And it makes it difficult to stay in agriculture because you can't afford to keep growing all the time.

Aaron Masliansky (19:59)
Yeah, you can't compete with the big guys and because you have to have that type of equipment. And then also there's labor shortages. So your price of labor goes up. And then if you want to avoid that, then maybe you're doing things like looking at robots. So what do you think the future is for farming?

Jonathan Kuester (19:59)
on

Yeah.

Right. Yeah,

well, mean, robotics have certainly become into agriculture in the dairy industry. The majority of our milk is produced robotically. We see robots being deployed in fields to do things like weed and deploy and deploy herbicide and even plant fields. We can do that with drones now.

You know, self propelled equipment has been around actually for a while, but you can get an autonomous tractor if you want now. So it certainly is making its way in. And it's a question of, you know, this equipment is very expensive, but so is labor. And what are you going to invest in? And so I talked to a dairy farmer. This is probably three or four years ago, but he had invested in robotic milkers and they were milking.

probably about a thousand cows. And previously they had three shifts of workers that came in and milked and fed the cows. And so when he went to bed at night, he had people that worked for him working his farm outside of his house. Think about how weird that is. You're in your house sleeping and someone else is driving your tractor and feeding your cows. And so his solution to it was to get the robotic milkers. And then at night he went

in his house and went to sleep and the robots took care of the cows, but there weren't other people on his farm. So, you know, it's strange. It's a strange new world. But, you know, we're not sure where that's going to land yet. Exactly. know, robots and AI and all of that are certainly going to be a part of agriculture going forward. Nobody knows quite how, but it is going to be there.

Aaron Masliansky (21:52)
Yeah, for sure. And I mean, one question that people may have is, is it better for the cows when you're using a robot or this new type of equipment? Because one of the things that you had showed me was your dairy, the milker that you have there. And then there's the Homer's ice or there's an ice cream parlor right next to the milk. And I said, so do you make your own ice cream? And you told me, no, you don't. So tell me, tell us why. you know,

how the technology has advanced.

Jonathan Kuester (22:23)
Yeah. Well, mean, technology across the board continues to advance in agriculture. And a lot of it has to do with creature comforts, either comfort for livestock or comfort for farmers. Even if we think about, you know, what a tractor looked like 50 years ago with an open cab versus a climate controlled cab today, you can see the difference for a human. And that that same technology goes.

towards livestock to our dairy equipment, even the robotic equipment is certainly more comfortable for the animals than it was 50 or 100 years ago. It continues to improve. And in the dairy industry in particular, cow comfort is hugely important because a comfortable cow makes more milk. If a cow is stressed for any reason, their production is going to suffer. And that reason may be just weather. It may be, you know,

stresses that are introduced because of the feed system, because diesel tractors are driving back and forth and they're loud. It may be because of human interaction. What we find is that the cows take to the robots pretty well because the robots are hugely consistent, right? They always do everything the same way and cows like that. ⁓ Humans get tired, they get cranky, they get mad. You know, they don't like the weather. The robot doesn't care.

Aaron Masliansky (23:37)
Yeah.

Jonathan Kuester (23:43)
It's always going to do it the same way. But, you know, going back to our story about why we're not using our milk to make our ice cream. Twenty years ago, when the parlor was built as part of the Heritage Center, it wasn't really an option because there wasn't small scale equipment available. The dairy industry just didn't make it. And so we had to find old equipment to work. And it wasn't a

a situation that we could get a grade A license to produce milk. The industry has changed on that slightly because consumers have driven the idea of local food production back into existence. whereas food production left this area, it has started to come back in the form of microbreweries and

small dairy production and wineries and things like that. They all need the same types of equipment. And so it's available again. And so we can now buy a one cow modern stanchion milking system for our cows that 20 years ago wasn't really available. And now it is. So we have high hopes for the future and being able to.

to upgrade that equipment and really show what the dairy industry is doing today, not just what it was doing 40 years ago, but what it's doing today.

Aaron Masliansky (25:01)
Yeah, and I think that you have potential to sell that milk at that point because people do want local.

Jonathan Kuester (25:06)
Yes, if I was able to sell it, I don't think there would be any issue with being able to move the product. There's certainly a draw for it, as we see in our egg sales and our vegetable sales. And I think there would be a draw for the milk sales as well.

Aaron Masliansky (25:19)
Yeah.

absolutely. I really do think that there's a lot of people like you're saying who want local food, they want to know where their food's made, they want to know how it's made and be able to teach the next generations. And some of the places that I see around here is like the Talking Farm in Skokie. That's another place. I know my son goes to Evanston Township High School and they have different farms around there too.

It's important and I'm sure that's throughout the whole area that there are these places, Lincoln Park Zoo is one. And it's important that we have that. So the programs that you have where people can come in and see it, the live demonstrations, you're learning about it and hopefully being able to take that back to your community and teach people about it and have an appreciation for it.

Jonathan Kuester (26:00)
Yeah, yeah, we should never take for granted that there's going to be someone else to grow our food for us. Right. We need to maintain the skills. And even if it's in an area that it doesn't make sense monetarily, the land's too expensive here. We still need the skills. You know, there's no guarantee that everyone who lives here now is going to live here forever. I didn't come from here and this is where I am now. So people move around and we need those skills. If.

Aaron Masliansky (26:07)
Right.

Jonathan Kuester (26:27)
we get to the point that we can't produce our own food in this country, we'll be in real trouble. We need to maintain those skills. again, there are parts of our ag system that are broken and need to be fixed. And it's not gonna be my generation that fixes them. It's gonna be those kids who are in 4-H that come up with the answers for those. So, yeah.

Aaron Masliansky (26:48)
and those great programs that are at some of these universities around the country and in Midwest. And I remember there being, I went to the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and there's a huge agriculture department there. And they would always have the Ag Fair and I'd go and I'd see all the different animals. I mean, the amazing science that they're doing, learning about how to produce food better, how the animals are, you know,

Jonathan Kuester (26:53)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Masliansky (27:17)
even at that time, it was a while ago at this point, but you were telling me about the technology that's used to be able to track, let's say the cows. And you were saying like every little thing can affect milk production, any kind of stress. And I think it'd be really interesting to learn about like, how do you, how is it, are they tracked? What, what are they looking for? Those types of things.

Jonathan Kuester (27:38)
Yeah, you know, there are, as you mentioned, great programs at our land grant universities around the country that that maintain farms and do these things. But some of the tools they've developed, all of our dairy cattle in this country now wear what's called an 840 tag, which is an ear tag that is unique to that cow. So it can be traced. But it allows them to put a transponder on that cow and.

And from that, they can track things like their movement, their body temperature, you know, in some cases, how much they're eating, if that's through a trackable system, what their milk production is, if they're a dairy cow. And so very minute changes in the cow's behavior can lead to, you know, kind of big developments in that cow's life. can see if they're not.

moving as much if they're just laying in the corner. Maybe they don't feel well if they're overactive. Maybe they're stressed out about something like we can start to see those. And they do tremendous work. We talk about how more has changed in agriculture in the last 10 years than the 100 years before that. And that's been true of every 10 year period in the last 100 years. So it gets exponentially faster.

Aaron Masliansky (28:44)
Really?

Jonathan Kuester (28:53)
and we learn more and more. the work that they're doing today is really tremendous. mean, they understand those animals. And the same is true for crop production. mean, the things that they're doing in genetics and being able to really pinpoint, you know, it's not the case anymore that a farmer goes out and looks at a field and thinks, well, I'll just spray everything. They can pinpoint that stuff so accurately now.

It makes it more efficient. cuts down on waste. It makes it safer. It's really tremendous. And the American farmer is really a wonder. mean, the amount of food and material that farmers produce in this country for the small number of them that exist, you know, we feed the world and it's really tremendous work. But it is a science.

You know, agriculture is an art, but farming is a science. And you have to be able to understand that to really get it. It's not just about going out and throwing seeds on the ground anymore. You have to really pay attention to what you're doing. you know, we have some great systems to help people understand that. But it starts at this level where this site is at and just getting people to be provoked enough to think.

I want to know where that food comes from, or I don't want to know why it's that way. And then their journey begins.

Aaron Masliansky (30:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, you even showed me in the fields, like how you have several different types of crops growing and what might be right for one part of the field might not be right for the other. So you have to pinpoint it and certain parts of the field are, have been farmed for over a hundred years in perpetuity. So you have to be really careful about what you're doing with that soil.

Jonathan Kuester (30:27)
Right. Yep.

Yeah. Soil health is hugely complicated and very specific. It can change from one side of the road to the other, from one end of the field to the other. And so, you know, back when farmers were farming 40 acres, you could learn your land pretty well by just traveling across it. If you're farming 10,000 acres, you're not going to be able to remember where the sandy spot was or, you know.

where that clay knob is at. You have to have technology to help with that. so, you know, there's some really tremendous stuff out there. And I think that there's a perception that farming is easy and that, you know, that's just something people do out there in the country, but it's not. And it takes people that are really smart and really motivated to get it done.

Aaron Masliansky (31:13)
absolutely. It's quite incredible. And I think that's why it's so helpful for it to be in a local area where people aren't used to farming anymore. So it sparks those types of conversations. Now, somebody's listening to this podcast or driving by whatever it may be. What's the first step in getting into Wagner farm, learning about these things if they've got kids, like how do they start approaching it?

Jonathan Kuester (31:37)
Mm Well, we're open and we're free every day. So the first thing you can do is just stop by and you can visit the grounds. You're you're free to tour the grounds to see the livestock to come in the Heritage Center. And I think that's a great place to start. We have a number of programs and camps that we offer. You know, you can obviously have your birthday party here. You can come to a special event that we host a couple of weeks ago. We hosted Tomato Fest.

Tomatoes are our biggest crop, right? And so those are great ways to get started. And then if you're really interested in it and really want to learn, you can become a volunteer. You can take some of our paid programs. know, there are lots of there's a there's a pathway. There's a journey for every visitor that wants to come. But but don't be afraid to stop by. Just just come park in the parking lot and walk across the road and see what there is.

Aaron Masliansky (32:03)
wow.

When are the, when's the farmers market?

Jonathan Kuester (32:30)
The farmers market is every Saturday morning from eight to noon from the middle of June through mid-October. I think it runs through about the 23rd of October this year, if I remember right. But we're here every Saturday morning. We have it is a food centric farmers market. So our vendors are all producers. We have fruits, vegetables, proteins, fish, coffee.

you know, anything food related, you can pretty much find there and their local producers. So all of our farmers market vendors come from within a 200 mile area that they're growing their products in. So it's a great way to, know, you can talk to them about what their products are, where they come from, how they grow them, why they grow them that way. It's a tremendous resource. And again, it's it's free. You can just walk in.

Talk to anybody you want and pick up whatever products you think look good to you.

Aaron Masliansky (33:23)
It sounds delicious. And then also you guys are redoing some things inside the visitor center right now to the exhibit. When is that going to be ready and what's new about it?

Jonathan Kuester (33:32)
Yeah, yeah,

we were redoing our entire orientation exhibit. So the main exhibit in the Heritage Center was taken out about three weeks ago, and then we started reinstalling. And we hope to have that ready to go in early October. So it'll be it'll be coming up here pretty quick. We will have a grand opening at some point later in October. But as soon as I can get it open.

to the public will open it up and let people start touring through there.

Aaron Masliansky (34:00)
I think that that'll look a lot of fun. Like it's a lot of fun. mean, it's just a fun place to hang out and kind of, you know, immerse yourself in the history, but also learn about the present and the future. Um, and I think it's just another great testament to, uh, why this Chicagoland area is a great place to live.

Jonathan Kuester (34:18)
Yeah, absolutely.

Aaron Masliansky (34:20)
And for more information, there's also information on the web at the Glenview Park District website. So if you go there and then you go to their facilities, Historic Wagner Farm is there and there's a ton of information. I'll have a link to that in the show notes. But Jonathan, I really appreciate you coming on today, telling us so much about it. Is there anything else you want to leave us with?

Jonathan Kuester (34:42)
I mean, you know, there should be something at this site for everybody. So no matter what you think you need from this site, come on over and see if it's here because it probably is.

Aaron Masliansky (34:54)
Yeah, I certainly found that. But thank you so much and thank you everybody for tuning in.