Cliff McConville of All Grass Farms located within the Brunner Family Forest Preserve Wednesday March 8, 2023 in Dundee Township. (Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com)
Before his farming days, Cliff McConville worked in the Loop downtown for years, commuting to an array of jobs in the insurance industry from his home in Barrington Hills.
In 2011, McConville transferred to a remote job, and with an extra two and a half hours or so on his hands, he turned to raising chickens and a handful of beef cows on his property’s eight acres.
McConville, who spent his childhood in Mount Prospect before heading to Austin, Texas, for high school and college, had always wanted a farm and had become interested in the idea of regenerative agriculture through books and documentaries.
The farming and grazing practice of regenerative agriculture, heralded by environmentalists as a major solution to climate change and water issues, is a conservation alternative to conventional farming that focuses on rebuilding soil health and biodiversity.
With high demand for sustainably raised, grass-fed cows, McConville’s business took off. Today, alongside a 400-acre operation in Wisconsin, he runs 150 acres of pastureland within the Brunner Family Forest Preserve through a long-term lease with the Kane County Forest Preserve District.
Though county forest preserve and conservation districts are charged with restoring land to the natural prairie and woodland of Illinois, it’s a slow and costly process. As a result, large swaths of district land are often leased out to farmers like McConville while awaiting restoration.
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