Chuck Bauer, Volunteer at Garfield Farms, lectured on the history of corn, including the type used in the 1840’s and how farmers manipulated corn to create the variety we have today.

Garfield Farm and Tavern, listed in the National Register of Historic Sites, is a 281-acre farmstead and former 1840s teamster inn 40 miles west of Chicago and 5 miles west of Geneva, Illinois. When Timothy Garfield and his family built the brick inn on the family farm in 1846, it became a center for community activity. It was an inn for hundreds of teamsters and travelers, a ballroom for jubilant 4th of July Dances, a meeting place, and a place to drop in for good company and a mug of hard cider.

The coming of the railroads ended the inn-keeping basis for the Garfields, and they continued to till the Kane County soil. The last Garfield family owner, Elva Ruth Garfield, founded the museum in 1977 to teach about America’s prairie farm heritage.The museum brings together the farming experiences of the past 150 years with an appreciation of the natural environment that the Garfields found when they came to Illinois.

Recorded Sunday, September 20, 2009 at Garfield Farm and Inn Museum.