Lisa Smith
Family: Husband, Justin Smith, and son Cody.
Hometown: Dover, Ark.
Town Life: “I graduated from Arkansas Tech in Russellville with a degree in agribusiness. While attending school, I worked in a feed store and after graduation became manager in a business that specialized in hay equipment following only six months behind the counter. When that business closed a little over two years ago, I was hired as the parts and service manager at Russellville Kubota. My husband, Justin, has worked as a postal clerk in Russellville for 10 years.”
Country Life: “We live outside of Dover, Ark., and recently purchased 50 acres on which my grandmother still lives, bringing our total owned acreage to 90. In addition, we lease 160 acres with my mom and dad and share land and work with them but have separate herds. Our herd has still not recovered from the drought so we have only 10 mommas, mostly Charolais cross cows and a registered Charolais bull. We prefer Charolais because in the heat they are grazing and supplying an abundance of milk while black cattle are sometimes lying underneath trees to stay cool which doesn’t promote growth. We sell our calves at weaning in the fall at 500 to 600 pounds. We hay the 160 acres of lease land and over-seed our pastures with rye and wheat in the fall. The pastures are natural grasses including Fescue, Bermuda and Johnson, as well as naturally occurring Crimson clover. This year got chicken litter from a farmer in Magazine to use as fertilizer. We sampled the fertilizer for nutrients before applying it. That way we knew exactly what we were getting and discovered we didn’t need to add anything but replenished needed potash and phosphorus with slightly more nitrogen than we needed.”
Together and the future: “The house my grandmother lives in will need extensive updating in the future if we plan to use it. At the moment our country life is supported by our town life. Since both of us were born and raised on farms, we would both love to be full-time farmers sometime in the future, maybe by the time Cody, who is under 2 (years old), will be in high school.”
