A Farm's Namesake: Dickson-Murst

A day at Dickson-Murst Farm is not just a day at the farm for John and Juanita Murst. A day spent sitting in red rocking chairs listening to bluegrass music at the Montgomery farm off of Route 34 along Dickson Road is more a trip down memory lane.

John and Juanita Murst, of Yorkville, spent 30 years together on the farm. They raised a family, along with sheep, dogs and horses. It was the Mursts who sold the farm to developers in 2003 after much negotiation. 

Now, the preserved 4.5-acre farm serves as a community gathering spot on a handful of festive days during the spring and summer, an office for the Conservation Foundation and as an educational historic homestead. The farm is also almost completely surrounded by new homes.

"That's why we sold. Because the houses were coming in," said Juanita, who grew up on the farm. 

"Everything was booming. The developers were going crazy," John interjected. "I just got so disgusted with them."

"It was like a steamroller right over you," said Juanita of the developers' zest to buy the farm. "They didn't want the buildings; they wanted the land," she added.

At one point, developers offered to build a berm around the farmstead - an offer that the Mursts didn't find appealing. 

They remember living on the 108-acre farm: "We were way out in the country," Juanita said. The Mursts bought the farm in 1973 from Juanita's parents, Simon and Thelma Dickson, who retired and built a house across the street. 

When Juanita was a child, she remembers her parents raising pigs and dairy cows and growing corn, oats and beans. It was a grain and animal farm. She said her mom had a big garden and would cook a large meal every day for everyone. 

Before Juanita's parents, it was her grandparents and before them, it was her great-grandparents who maintained the farm. 

During the Mursts' time at the farm, they raised sheep, dogs and horses, and farmed the land on shares, meaning they leased it to a farmer. John worked at Illinois Bell for 39 years and later at KRG, an excavation company, for 14 years. Juanita raised the children (Julie, Bob and Tom) and the animals (peruvian dogs and horses). 

They have memories of an ewe giving birth to four lambs and Julie showing quarter horses and winning second in the nation. 

It was a fluke that John and Juanita met in the first place. John, originally from Bristol, was living in Mineral Wells, Texas, after serving in the Korean War. Juanita and three of her friends were on a road trip west when her mom told her to stop and visit her friend's son in Texas. The girls stopped in Texas and never reached their destination; three of the four girls ended up marrying men they met on the trip. 

Juanita is still surprised that she hadn't met John previously back in Bristol, since her grandparents lived there and he grew up near the church they attended. 

John's mother, Ethel, was the first registered nurse in Kendall County in 1920; his dad, Clarence, owned the Bristol Machine Shop and aside from being a machinist, he delivered fuel locally. 

Both John and Juanita graduated from Yorkville High School. 

They are both pleased that the farmstead was preserved back in 2006 when the Village of Montgomery allowed the Conservation Foundation to purchase the property for $10. 

"It's real nice to go out there," Juanita said.

The Conservation Foundation operates a program office at Dickson-Murst Farm. Find out more here.