I live in Oak Park and am making plans to dig up my lawn to make a patio; we've been here 16 years and have never used chemicals. The area I need to dig up is roughly 300 square feet, dug to a depth of 8 inches. I have no room to store the soil, so basically it needs to be carted away as soon as it's dug. You can have as much or as little as you care to dig up. If you want to take it all, let's coordinate schedules, so we can dig and transport on the same day; I would also try to round up some neighborhood teens that I would pay to help.
Email me if you're interested.