Down on the farm

By Katy Gurley

The signs of the advancing suburbs are there—hamburger stops, gas stations, and discount stores. The roofs of brand new homes nested in subdivisions gleam in the sun on the horizon. The rumble of trucks and cars along the highway roars and fades in the distance.

Less than a mile away, around a corner and over a hill, sits 80 acres of serene farmland owned by the Meers family.

A winding gravel road off the highway leads to the farm’s old brick homestead, built in 1913 by Edgar Meers’ father. When young Edgar was married, the farm was soon passed to him and the seven children he would raise there.

Times have changed since the days when Edgar and Norine Meers were raising their children and making a living on the farm. It was a full-time job then. The livestock and crops they tended and sold provided the family income. Five strong sons and two healthy daughters grew to know and love the land that yielded and prospered year after year.

Today, things look pretty much the same as they always have. The main house and barn are not in a valley, but situated so that neither the highway nor the other signs of urbanized life can be seen from the farm.

Those signs are out there just the same. Slowly this small farm and many others like it in St. Charles County, and elsewhere in Missouri and the United States, are being swallowed up by massive subdivisions and shopping centers.

When Edgar Meers retired two years ago, his five grown sons did not hesitate to make a decision about the future of the farm where they were born and raised. Two, Ron, 33, and Kenneth, 28, had already built homes on the farm. Roger, 25 and Dale, 31, were still at home, while the eldest, Hank, 42, had moved just a short distance away.

Together, the brothers decided to keep their jobs off the farm and in their spare time help their father on the farm. Now, each of them rents some of the land from their father, and together, in a combined effort, they plant the crops and look after the livestock.

The brothers’ main business on the farm is selling the livestock—sows, pigs and steers. They grow hay and corn for feed, and soybeans and wheat to sell.

Edgar Meers, who is 68, still looks after the animals and, as his own special project, raises chickens and sells the eggs.

The brothers, meanwhile, seem to agree that being able to work on the farm and at outside jobs, too, is the best of both worlds.

Sharing the workload is a natural thing in the Meers family, Kenneth Meers says. He shrugged and just smiled when someone suggested that kind of family sharing is a little unusual there days.

“I guess if the farm didn’t have sentimental value, we’d sell it,” he said. “If we wanted to make real money farming, we could buy a bigger farm not so near the city. But I don’t know, we like it here. I can get away from things here—and I guess the country boy is still in me.”

The Meers brothers call themselves “city farmers,” but that title isn’t a tradition in their family. It’s something that was brought on them by the expansion of the suburbs. When Edgar Meers’ grandfather was born on the homestead, then closer to what is now Interstate 70, all the land was taken up by farms.

It stayed that way from many years.

“I guess it really began to be built up out here after World War II,” Meers recalled. “When I was a boy, though, there was nothing but farms here as far east as the Town of St. Charles”

The westward expansion, itself, is only part of the problem. Meers said that now that there are so many people in the country, he and his sons have to spend more time watching their property. If people wander in around the animals and get hurt, they blame us,” he said. “You can’t really farm when there are so many people around.

Nevertheless, the Meers family wants to stay where they are. And they plan to stay until they are forced out by overwhelming costs, expanding real estate ventures or high taxes…