DAAHA Sponsors Speaker for National Agriculture Week


When:  Wednesday, March 20, 2013, 7:00 a.m.
Where: DeKalb County Farm Bureau
Cost: $10.00 per person for the Speaker Breakfast. Reservations required

John Fietsam of Monsanto will present "Drought Busting Genetics - How Breeding Innovations Helped Save the 2012 Corn Crop".

It is widely accepted that the yield reduction in the 2012 drought was not as severe as many expected it to be. It was also not as great as it would have been 15 years ago. The presentation will describe some of the recent innovations that helped make this possible.

Reservations are required for the program and are due by March 18th. Contact the DeKalb County Farm Bureau at 815-756-6361. Cost is $10.00 per person.

AGRICULTURAL HERITAGE PROGRAM PRESENTATION:: "DEKALB Story, Part I" presented by Rich Ryan

WHEN:   Wednesday, March 6 – NOON - 1:00
WHERE:  Ellwood House Visitor Center – 509 N. First Street, DeKalb
FOR MORE INFORMATION:  Contact DAAHA at 815-756-8737


The second “Brown Bag” lunch program of the Spring 2013 DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association’s (DAAHA) Agricultural Heritage Programs will be presented this Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at the Ellwood House Visitor Center beginning at noon.  The audience is encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch. Rich Ryan will reprise his talk to the DeKalb Alumni Association in the first of two parts. Part I, "Making Genetic Concepts a Farming Reality", focuses on the beginning of the Dekalb Agricultural Association.

The story continues with Part II on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at the Ellwood House Visitor Center, noon - 1:00 with "Achieving Success Via Furthering Innovations and Consolidations".

The Faivre Family: A Journey in Agriculture

On Wednesday, February 20th, Roger Steimel will be presenting the story of a family that emigrated from the French Alps to Illinois in search of opportunity and success. It is a story full of faith and fortitude.

The presentation will take place at the Ellwood Visitor Center, 509 N. First St. DeKalb, IL at 12:00 noon. At 2:30, Roger will be available in the Nehring Gallery at 111 South Second St. Ste. 204, DeKalb, IL for the opening of the Faivre family exhibit.

 ONE MILESTONE REACHED

DAAHA's dedicated volunteers have reached a milestone and a mixture of excitement and relief permeates the museum galleries. Mif and Paula along with new volunteer Tom have described over 1000 photographs in the museum original collection. These knowledgeable volunteers have recognized the types of plants growing in the fields and the various pieces of equipment used in agriculture. Many times, they were able to describe a process that was illustrated by the photograph.

Each photograph was described on a worksheet. This information will be entered into the collection software program and the photograph scanned to capture an electronic image. Once all of the images are scanned and the information checked for accuracy, it will be posted to the DAAHA website (www.daaha.org) under the collections tab. Anyone will be able to search the photographs by keyword to find certain subjects.


This is an exciting endeavor and the photograph segment of the collection is getting ever closer to being available to the public.

Patrick McGuire, Collections Intern

Patrick has been working with Elizabeth Horoszko this past spring processing the many DeKalb Ag materials in the DAAHA collection. Over 100 boxes of documents have been organized into many subjects such as, Sales & Marketing, Publications, Corporate Records. The picture shows Patrick beginning to describe the scrapbooks.

The DAAHA collection contains over 600 posters and ads illustrating the great variety of artwork utilized by the DeKalb Agricultural Association, Inc., representing many different products. The product most commonly associated with DeKalb Ag is corn. However, the posters and ads also highlight the characteristics of sorghum, cotton, alfalfa, soybeans, pigs and chickens.

Some posters and signs, such as these DeKalb Chix signs, were used by the company.  Other posters were intended for public display. 

NOON PRESENTATION:: DEKALB - 100 YEARS STRONG

“DEKALB – 100 Years Strong”

WHEN:   Wednesday, March 21 – NOON

WHERE:  Ellwood House Visitor Center – 509 N. First Street, DeKalb

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  Contact DAAHA at 815-756-8737

The third and last “Brown Bag” lunch program of the DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association’s (DAAHA) three-part lecture series – Agricultural Heritage Programs – will be presented this Wednesday, March 21, 2012 at the Ellwood House Visitor Center beginning at noon.  The audience is encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch.

In January 2012, a new coffee table book was published, honoring the 100^th Anniversary of DEKALB and its formation on Jan. 20, 1912.  DEKALB – 100 Years Strong commemorates a century of making farming better.  DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association (DAAHA) and the Northern Illinois Regional History Center furnished the pictures used in this mostly pictorial 100 year history.

The book was published by DEKALB brand owner, Monsanto, for a specific group audience and is not available to the general public. DAAHA board member and book editor, Emerson Wells, will offer a

PRESS RELEASE – DEKALB – 100 Years Strong – Page 2

PowerPoint presentation showing most of the pages from the 104-page book and give the reasons those particular photographs were selected for publication.  Mr. Wells will also give a view of the issues that prompted a group of farmers, businessmen, bankers and newspapermen to gather in 1912 and form the original DeKalb County Soil Improvement Association – and then later reorganize in 1917 into two groups.  One of these groups evolved into the DEKALB Ag (as it is locally known), and the other into the DeKalb County Farm Bureau.

Emerson Wells started working for "The Ag" upon graduating from Purdue in 1962 and worked in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota before moving to DeKalb in 1984.  He retired in 2000.  He is a past president of DEKALB Alumni Association and a founding member of DAAHA. 

 The DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association (DAAHA) is an organization focused on the collection and preservation of the storied history of agriculture and agricultural innovations in the northern Illinois area.  Its exhibits are open to the public on Wednesdays and Sundays from 2 – 4 p.m. in the second floor Nehring Gallery in downtown DeKalb.  Please call 815-756-8737 for more information.  Find DAAHA on the web at: www.daaha.org.

NOON PRESENTATION:: ORAL HISTORY OF THE ILLINOIS AGRICULTURE PROJECT

“Oral History of the Illinois Agriculture Project”

WHEN:   Wednesday, March 7 – NOON

WHERE:  Ellwood House Visitor Center –  509 N. First Street, DeKalb

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  Contact DAAHA at 815-756-8737

Dr. Robert Warren

The second “Brown Bag” lunch program of the DeKalb Area Agricultural Heritage Association’s (DAAHA) three-part lecture series – Agricultural Heritage Programs – will be presented this Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at the Ellwood House Visitor Center beginning at noon.  The audience is encouraged to bring a brown bag lunch.

The title of the program is “Oral History of the Illinois Agriculture Project”. The presenter is Dr. Robert Warren, Curator of Anthropology at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.  In 2007, Dr. Warren received a national leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, to develop oral-history interviews that document the history of agriculture in Illinois.  The project digitized old audio interviews with Illinois farm families, recorded new ones, and indexed all of the recordings.  Everything is now accessible on a website called “The Audio-Video Barn” (avbarn.museum.state.il.us) where users can browse 130 oral-history interviews with people involved in agriculture and rural life in all parts of Illinois.  Many of these interviews are with farmers and farm families in northern Illinois.

This free program is the second of three presented by DAAHA as part of  their “Agricultural Heritage Programs” series.  The next program, also to be held at the Ellwood House Visitor Center, is on March 22^nd – “DEKALB 100 Years Strong”– presented by Mr. Emerson Wells.