Cliff McConville, owner of Farm Store and All Grass Farms in West Dundee, greets his guard dog in the egg chicken pasture. The dog keeps hawks and other predators from stealing the chickens. McConville built the moveable structure fso the birds could move freely around the pasture and still have a safe place to roost and lay eggs. (John Starks | Staff Photographer)
Cliff McConville learned to milk cows the quintessential 21st century way: from a YouTube video.
Working from home in 2011 for a Texas-based company, the then-48-year-old looked out at his 8-acre Barrington Hills property and decided it would look better with a couple of cows in his horse barn. And a chicken or two. It would be a good way to spend the time that he had spent commuting earlier in his insurance career.
“Maybe that I was my midlife crisis. I don’t know,” he joked. “I needed a challenge. I wanted to do something that I had a passion for.”
He started off with just a little raw milk and some fresh eggs for him and his family, maybe some neighbors. Before he knew it, well, “It sorta just started taking off,” he said.
The milk and eggs became a side business.
“And then that side business just really kept growing much faster than I ever expected. There was just so much demand,” he said.
His side business became his primary business, All Grass Farms. Now the former insurance man runs a farm along the Fox River in West Dundee that he leases from the Kane County Forest Preserve District and a second farm in Wisconsin. He sells products from nearby artisan food producers at the Farm Store on the West Dundee property.
Without any knowledge or experience, he went into farming. He admitted it’s been a “steep learning curve.”
You could say McConville, now 60, became a farmer organically.
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