Farm on Willow Road is the Last One in Town

Corporate headquarters, shopping centers, residential subdivisions and a stop off the Tri-State may be what comes to mind when mentioning Northbrook today.

But hit the rewind button for 60 years or so and find a village with multiple farmlands supplying the greater region with wheat, oats and soybeans. According to the Northbrook Historical Society, most farms closed after the 1950s, when Cook County lifted the tax break that had been offered just for owning a farm. Some stayed longer than others, but all but one were gone by the end of the 1980s.

All but one. One that is still around today, and as of last summer, is still churning out crops.

The Gibson Farm is officially in unincorporated Northbrook, right at the edge of the guardrail on Willow Road, just off the highway exit at 3365 Willow Road.

It was purchased by Roy Gibson, a pilot at the nearby Glenview air station, shortly after the space was made into farmland in the early 1940s. Gibson - who passed away in 2008 - moved in with his wife, Honore and oldest daughter.

Soon after, Honore explained in a 2012 “Northbrook Voices” interview with Nancy Bishop, there would be seven new additions to the family.

“At the time we needed to find a bigger place to live,” recalled Honore, who died in 2014 at age 94.

“It was a brand new house and farm,” she said of the property between Sanders and Landwehr roads. “That’s how we came to live here, with our oldest daughter. Once she came here, there were seven more additions who were all part of the community.”

When the Gibsons moved in, the property sat on ten acres, but was reduced several years later to eight-and-a-half due to the development of the nearby highway.

“When we came here, one car an hour would be considered ‘rush hour’ and Willow only went to Sanders Road. The children were always safe, they had plenty of space to play football and baseball and were usually here on a Saturday night instead of out drinking.”

While farming eight of the property’s 10 acres, Roy would keep up the massive garden with the children while Honore would be busy “doing 12 loads of wash a day.”

“My mother gave me a washer and dryer, so I was blessed,” she said in the Voices interview, which was part of a larger cooperative project between the Northbrook Historical Society and Northbrook Public Library.

In addition to a load of kids, the farm had even more animals back in the day.

“We had a horse, and lots and lots of cats,” according to Honore. “At one time we had 22 cats living there. We had dogs - at least one at a time - and chickens, ducks and geese.

“We didn’t have any pigs, but there was a pig farmer who would often leave his manure at our corner. But that did not last long,” she laughed.

Through all the years, Honore - who worked at Glenbrook North High School for decades - claimed her family never “willingly” sold any of their land.

“We were forced to with the highway moving in,” she noted.

But still, it has remained a farm to this day. A couple of decades ago, the family hired a local farmer to take over the bulk of the farming work, and now his son still plants the crops to this day.

“It’s the only place I’m aware of in the Northbrook area that was farming this year,” Judy Hughes, president of the Northbrook Historical Society board, recently told Patch. “They rent it out to a local farmer and he did plant this past year.”

Hughes knows first hand how the farm has been a unique part of a village more recently defined by its growing business industry.

“When my husband and I were first married, we lived in a house on Landwehr Road where our back windows overlooked the farm,” she said. “Whenever the Historical Society does a bus tour of the area with the (Northbrook) Chamber, it’s always one of the places I point out as a hidden gem.”