Name: Kim McGuire
In Town: Kim is a salesman for Legacy Farm and Lawn in Lockwood, Mo. Legacy is a full-line John Deere dealer selling all the Ag equipment, lawn and garden and commercial, all the way from lawn mowers to skid steers to tractors and combines.
Kim is based out of the Lockwood store and he calls on farmers out in the country too. "I cover northern Dade and Cedar and part of Polk (counties). My area is north and east of the store. Most of my clientele are beef and dairy guys. I've been in the ag industry since 1980. I've been with Purinton's (now Legacy) since 1996, Purinton's moved to Lockwood in 1995. Before that I worked at another John Deere dealer in Nevada."
In the Country: Home for Kim is Lockwood, Mo., within two miles of where he was raised. When Kim was a kid he said his family raised row crops and milk cows and hogs. Out of high school he started working in Stockton, Mo., for a short-line dealer and started raising some cows. "I've done that ever since. Now I run a small commercial cow/calf operation using registered Angus bulls. We raise our own replacement heifers. I run around 40 cows on 130 acres. I own and rent another 120 next to it. I bale all the hay for my father-in-law on shares; we probably bale 400-500 bales a year."
Family: Wife – Afton, married 27 years; three sons: Josiah, Kelby and Micah.
How do you balance full-time work and your cow/calf operation?
"I don't work a 40-hour job. In the summer it's whatever you have to put in. (When my sons were at home) I used to have an army of help. Usually in the winter I can feed all the cows and get that accomplished before I come on. Haying time is the hardest. Summer is a busy time at both places."
What is your biggest challenge?
"The volatility of the markets. If we can lock in our inputs; fertilizer and such, it would be a great help. I face the same things my customers face except on a smaller scale. What I do here is tied to what they do. Markets, fuel, fertilizer costs just like everybody else.
But if your credit is good and you take care of business, you'll do all right."
