Ronald Entlicher of rural Polk County, outside of Bolivar, Mo., can look out his living room window to the 80-acre field across the way that his grandmother farmed.
Five generations of his Czech family, the only Entlicher family believed to be in the United States, have farmed the land he still lives on, which over the years has now grown to 500 acres. The acreage encompasses two farms where he runs approximately 125 head of registered Angus and registered Simmental.
Over the many years of a career in agriculture, Ron has been involved in various aspects of the cattle industry. He began with Holsteins in the dairy industry and milked until 1988. He also worked for the National Holstein Association as a classifier during that time. The classifier visits individual farms to evaluate the cattle and give them a numerical evaluation. He was also involved in team-roping for many years and despite a now constant battle with arthritis, he has returned to that a couple of times, at the urging of his friends and fellow ropers. He has also shown horses and raised some high accolade coon dogs over the years.
“It was good money,” Ron remembered of his time on the road, “but after two and half to three years, it was just too much time away, leaving all my girls behind. We didn’t hire much help on our dairy operation, doing it all ourselves and (his wife) Sue milked for me three weeks a month while I was on the road, so finally I decided, enough was enough. I also did a lot of showing of the dairy cattle in Texas, Kansas and Missouri, but as the girls got into athletics, it was time to do something different, something that wasn’t so time-consuming. They needed my time now and once I got off the road, I never missed a game.”
Ron and Sue’s daughters, Natalie, Ronda and Sheila, are grown. The couple also has seven grandchildren.
“My daughters could all mow a hayfield as slick as that table,” he laughed. “One of them still works a family farm, still milking.”
Today, Ron enjoys the more relaxed pace of raising registered beef cattle, taking calves to 500 pound calves in five to six months.
“That’s my goal,” he added. “They pretty well meet it or they don’t stay. And then it’s off to the stockyard. I don’t do any showing with the beef cattle and unlike the dairy cattle, if you have to skip a day once in a while, you can.”
While he said he enjoyed dairy farming, he enjoys the freedom of a beef herd.
“You know, every aspect of this industry has its best points, whether it is the competition, the showing, the dairy or beef industries. The showing, for instance, is high dollar but you can make a lot of money at it as well,” Ron said. “The beef gives you the freedom you don’t have in the dairy business, so it is not as confining. I had a lot of good friends that I would see on the road in the dairy work and I miss them. Some of them, of course, have now passed on, too so that is hard.
“On the other hand, we still have dinner here every Sunday afternoon after church with all the family and you cannot replace that. Not many families get to do that anymore.”
Ron’s wife, Sue, has also had a busy career off the farm.
“Sue has been a state representative these last several years, although she is not going to run for re-election this time, and was the county clerk for many years here, so that has helped us, too, providing another steady income when things got hard financially, like 20 years ago. We were converting over at that time from stock cows to registered, right about the time everything broke down in the cattle industry so that was a tough time.”
As far as advice for the younger generation coming into agriculture today, it’s pretty simple as far as Ron is concerned.
“You’ve got to have a passion for whatever part of farming you get into. This isn’t a come-and-go industry,” he said. “You’ve got to be in for the long run. If you are just looking to get rich, you are in the wrong business. This one takes time but if you have that passion for it, you’ll never really work a day in your life. My dad, Rudolph, was a workaholic, wanting to make sure he had something to leave for the next generations and he did. He also wasn’t afraid to teach me so he let me make decisions, even as young as 16, like picking the dairy heifers. I learned early so that by the time I was an adult, I didn’t have to turn to someone else to make my decisions. So my dad taught me a great deal about this line of work.”
While hard work has been a part of his life, Ron said there are a few things he’s never conquered.
“I can’t build anything and I can’t fix anything,” he said with a laugh. “But if, it’s got anything to do with cows, horses or dogs, I can handle it.”
