Name: T. P. Hubbard
Family: Wife, Vance, daughters Julie Smith and Lori Cossey, grandson Seth Taylor Cossey, granddaughters, April and Ashlee Smith, great-granddaughter, Ava Smith.
In Town: Hubbard Reality & Auction in Marshall, Ark., keeps T. P. busy five days a week, and Saturdays whenever there’s an auction. “For years I had the Shelter Insurance Agency also, and I’ve been in real estate for 33 years. I show land several days each week, and people stop in all the time just to see what I have available, and I get lots of calls from people.”
In the Country: The Julor Ranch owned by T. P. and Vance Hubbard covers 176 acres. They’ve lived there for 38 years. Another 125 acres he inherited from his dad, Penn Hubbard, is family land that dates back to the early 1900s. “Our ranch is named after my daughters, Julie and Lori,” he said. “For 40 years I raised beef cattle, but I got out of the big-cow business. Now I run 60 head of calves. I bought them when they weighed about 450 pounds. Along with some grain, they’ve grazed and fattened through the summer and I’ll sell when they weight about 700-750 pounds. This is the first time I’ve tried my hand at feeding out calves, so I’ll have to wait and see what happens. I still put up hay, 100 round bales this year.”
How do you balance the farm and the town office?
“I live on the farm, and I have a cell phone in my pocket. If the office phone rings while I’m away, the call comes to my cell.”
Why do you farm?
“I’ve just always been there. Dad farmed and raised cattle, so I grew up that way, and I’ve been around horses and cattle all my life. Once I started farming on my own, I’ve always had horses. Right now I have seven Quarter Horses, and I do a few local trail rides.”
What advice would you give young people wanting to get into farming?
“It takes a lot of money starting out from scratch. But if a young person grew up in it, and works family land, or inherited land, they’re going to have a better chance that it will work out for them. Costs have about doubled in the past two years. Rotating pastures cuts down on cost of fertilizer. However, to get high quality hay, farmers have to do some fertilizing. One reason some people don’t make any money, is because they don’t have enough cattle. The more cattle a person has, the more likely he’ll be successful.”
By Jeanie Horn
