Although it is gone now, the original farmhouse — so the family story goes — was the site of the first lap-sided house west of Springfield, Roger said, in a time when all other houses in the area were log cabins.
“(My grandfather) built it himself — and dug the well,” Roger said. “He had to go through 20 feet of solid limestone to get to the water. There’s still chunks of limestone laying around that he took out of there.”
The nation’s Civil War touched the farm in the 1860s when, Roger’s grandfather, George Ewing Duff Jr., and his son took turns taking care of the land while also supporting their cause on the battlefields. While one stayed home, the other was off fighting. Family history has it that at one time, the younger man was captured and was being held for execution the next morning, but Grandpa Duff rode into the enemy camp that night and rescued his son.
Through the Depression
The Great Depression of the 1930s brought really tough times. Roger’s parents, who owned a portion of the farm by then, had to mortgage the place in 1933, but with hard work and sacrifice were able to pay it off in 1935.
“They had a hard time hanging onto the farm during the Depression,” Roger said. “Mom taught school; she made $50 a year, sometimes.”
At one point, his dad sold cattle for $8 a head to the government for a program that disributed the meat to locals at no cost.
“They’d load the meat on wagons and park on the Sarcoxie square, and people could go and get free meat,” Roger said. “We went through some pretty hard times back then.”
The hard times also included the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when much of Oklahoma blew into Missouri and his grandfather’s well helped the family weather the storm.
“We used to draw water from the well and wet sheets and hang them over the windows to catch the dust at night,” Roger recalled. “It helped.”
Roger can’t tell you exactly when his ancestors arrived in southwest Missouri or how much land they began farming with. Or exactly who was farming where, although his great-grandfather is buried near Pierce City and his grandfather once owned a sizable acreage.
He can tell you his Ozarks roots reach deep, and, although divided through the years by inheritances, part of the original farm – purchased from the railroad sometime before 1860 – is still in the family. A chunk of it belongs to Roger, another portion to a cousin. Roger grew up on the family farm, and his dad inherited a portion of it in 1927. They grew cattle, wheat, corn and a big garden, and their Jersey cows gave four cans of milk a day.
“I was an only child, so I got to work on the farm,” Roger said. “I had cows to milk and eggs to gather. It’s just what we did.”
Back in the 1930s, the farm’s biggest cash crop was strawberries. During the season, Roger’s dad hired workers at $1 an hour for a 10-hour day to hoe and weed and take care of the eight or nine acres of strawberry fields. Roger got to help, too, but at a lesser wage, even as the son of the owner.
“My dad paid cash every day,” Roger said. “He’d have rolls of silver dollars to pay with.”
In 1944, Roger bought his first brand new tractor, an Allis Chalmers that cost him $630. He and his dad “ran it pretty much around the clock” in the spring and summer, his dad working on 350 acres during the day and Roger at night. Their major crop at that time was wheat.
…and the Wars
Roger served in the Navy during World War II, “getting in on the action in Okinawa” near the end of the conflict. After being discharged, he attended college on the GI Bill, earning an associate’s degree at what was then a two-year junior college in Joplin, and completing bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education at Pittsburg, Kan. For 38 years, he was a school administrator, spending 36 years in the Joplin public school system.
In the 1960s, Roger began taking on more and more responsibilities at the farm, helping his father. When his dad died in 1986, “I had full charge of it then,” Roger said.
“I’d take care of the cows on Saturdays and nights. I would come home after school, get in the truck and head for the farm,” he said. “We’d haul hay in the middle of the night sometimes.”
And Today…
At 82 and with land in three locations, Roger now focuses on raising cattle — a commercial herd of about 75 and a herd of about 40 Angus/Hereford crossbreeds — and keeping up with the changes in agriculture.
“You’ve got to try to keep up with all the latest, and I don’t know if I can keep up or not. There’s a lot going on,” Roger said.
But he certainly tries. In fact, he just finished installing an intensive grazing system with a new well, pipelines and freeze-proof waterers. The land has been divided into 10 paddocks.
"And 12 more gates to open,” Roger chuckled.
Like other farmers, Roger struggles with rising costs of equipment and supplies, especially fuel and fertilizer.
“At one time, I thought $40 an acre was too high; now they’re talking $5,000 an acre,” Roger said.
Some days it may be tempting to consider selling the land for development, and Roger has been approached more than once. But what the land has meant to generations of his family, as well as its enduring legacy for Duffs yet to come, stay his hand.
“I just hate to sell it. I figure it’s as good a thing as I can leave the next generation,” he said.
