Miraldi’s Millstream Rd

I or should I say my family and I built that house in 1976.

Hi Jerry, thank you for sharing your connection to the house in the photo! It must be incredible to have been a part of building such a special place. We'd love to hear more about your memories of McHenry County in the 70s. Were there any particular events or landmarks that stood out? Also, did your family do any farming on the property? We're always fascinated by the changes in the landscape over time.

My wife and children helped build this property as a 'BiCentennial (1976)' memory. The property consisted in 12 acres that we intended to make into a landscaping nursery. In the process we ran into several challenges that I would like to say were all overcome. These challenges are still talked about fondly today. My children weren't always pleased we moved them from a suburban life to a rural country life. But it must not been as bad as all that as they, grown up, now have nearby country homes.
As time went on and a slowdown in the building industry we decided to change direction from a 'Landscape Nursery' to a 'Personal survival Farm'. We created a large garden, raised chickens, and purchased a couple pigs and two feeder calves while at the same time working the land to raise and feed the animals. During this startup project we found we had more than enough food, eggs, chicken, pork and beef than we could consume ourselves. This lead us to find families who were interested in buying our over abundance. In the meantime my brother and his family moved nearby buying 10 acres of land and building a house for themselves. Now with the combined land, 17 0r 18 acres we were able expanded our food production. Over a period of a few years we eventually grew our production to 15 hogs, countless chickens & turkeys and beef cattle (12 head at one time). The process of increasing the amount of animals was on the number of customers and the amount of land to feed and care for them we had. Most of our customers, if not all, came from recommendations of existing customers. We got it to the point that we were feeding 15 or 20 families besides our own.
I believe I posted a picture of our farm as it developed.
More to come later if interested.