The farm was named Levelcrest Farms by the senior Baughmans and the partnership carries that name. Of the total acreage 105 acres are non-tillable. The tract is made up of the original 560 acres in the Urban and John Parker farm, the south-most 240 acres Harold and Gladys purchased from the Bert Rominger family, and the east-most 24 acres were purchased from Clint and Effie Miller at their departure to California.
This land was farmed by one of Iowa’s first soil conservationists. “H.C.”, as Harold Baughman was known, was a commissioner of the Davis County Soil Conservation Board. He received state recognition as a soil conservationist in the 1960’s Grassed waterways, contour planting of row crops, drop-inlet structures, terracing, strip cropping and crop rotations all being erosion management techniques of his time were used on Level Crest under H.C.’s stewardship. He introduced use of agricultural lime to the county shipped from Florida and sold it from railroad cars which docked at Steuben switch near Hwy. 2.
The re-routing of Highway 2 was a major negotiation during Harold and Gladys’ lifetime. This took out the old highway, the north turn of an “s”-curve which ran between the U-Barn and the house and placed the new highway along the site of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad which ran in front of the ‘south barn’. A county road to the Davis County Farm remains today, dividing the house from the U-Barn.
Until 1977 the farm operation included raising registered Angus cattle. These a breed which had been on the place since Parker’s bought the farm 20 some years earlier. From the Parker’s Harold and Gladys also purchased the start of a Brown Swiss dairy herd and both breeds flourished, the Angus Cattle continuously on this farm for over 75 years. They were housed in a 1901 state of the art barn and were pastured throughout the 105 acres of grass land and once could be watered by 19 wells which fed a spring or were fed by the spring.
