The Dairy Queen
Tracing Lake Bluff’s farming roots through the story of Crab Tree Farm
The values Kate Cole sees in the Farmers Market today - knowing where our food comes from, understanding the work behind it and valuing the people who produce it - have surprisingly deep roots in Lake Bluff.
More than a century ago, another woman was building a farming operation here around many of those same ideas. Long before Crab Tree Farm became the Lake Bluff landmark we know today, it was home to the ambitious dairy operation of Grace Garrett Durand and her husband, Scott Sloan Durand, a Chicago sugar broker.
Grace first began raising dairy cattle at their Lake Forest property, where what started modestly soon grew into a serious commercial enterprise. According to materials The Chat found at the Lake Bluff History Museum, by around 1905 she was selling certified milk for babies and invalids from a herd initially made up of Holsteins and Jerseys. She would eventually develop a prized herd of Guernseys.
But as the dairy grew, so did the realities of farm life - and their Lake Forest neighbors were not particularly fond of the odors that came with it. The Durands needed more room. In 1905, Scott purchased roughly 250 acres of the former Henry W. Blodgett dairy farm just north of Lake Bluff and gave the property to Grace. By 1906, she had moved her growing Crab Tree Dairy operation there.
Grace turned Crab Tree into a remarkably modern dairy farm, breeding and selling purebred Guernsey cattle and producing milk for the Chicago market. After a devastating fire destroyed the original farm buildings in 1910, Grace commissioned prominent Chicago architect Solon Spencer Beman, best known for designing Pullman, to create a new complex of fire-resistant farm buildings, which remain part of Crab Tree Farm today.
The property is still a working farm, while the historic farm buildings have been restored and now house internationally recognized collections of Arts and Crafts furniture and decorative arts. Durand believed deeply in the quality of what she produced and in doing things with care - a spirit that feels remarkably close to the one Kate Cole brings to the Farmers Market today.
Their worlds could not be more different, yet both understood something simple: how our food is raised, who raises it and the care taken along the way matters.
“My cows are my friends. I never look at a cow but I think of the little child that it is going to feed. I feel that the natural milk, of course, for the baby, is the mother’s milk, but in these days when it can’t be, then we have got to supply that milk with the cow’s milk. As I view the mothers of the future, men and women, as I see a bottle of milk going out from my dairy, I never look at it but what I think of the little child that the milk is to reach. My heart is in it; that milk must be clean. That milk must be right; it is going to some little baby, and these cows are producing it. It is a beautiful thought I think, when you can feel that way toward your cattle, that you can feel that it is doing some good in life.” - Grace Garrett Durand