Hometown: Russellville and Ozark, Ark.
Family: Husband Corey Yarber and son Tate (1)
In Town: Paige Yarber is the Farm Service Agency County Executive Director for Franklin, Johnson and Logan counties.
“I’ve been in Ozark for about a year, but I have been with FSA for about four years,” Paige said. “I am on the farm program side, and what we do is implement programs to help farmers during disasters and that sort of thing. We help get money out the door to farmers with different programs through FSA.”
In the Country: Paige grew up on a cow/calf operation in Russellville. Growing up, she was involved in 4-H.
“I showed pigs, horses and rabbits,” Paige recalled.
After high school, Paige continued her education at Arkansas Tech University, where she received a bachelor’s in ag business and pre-vet medicine. She then obtained her master’s in animal science at Mississippi State University.
“Now that we have moved to Ozark, we bought about 10 acres where we have two horses and five goats,” Paige said. “We want to get set up to feed out goats. I dabbled a little with goats in 4-H, mainly from being in clubs with kids who had them, but this is our first experience to finish out goats.”
Paige hopes to begin direct marketing finished goats from their farm.
“I think there is some potential there,” she said. “We haven’t gotten a full plan together on that, but it’s the intent to market that finished product. It will depend on customer demand, but I think we will start with individual cuts and go from there. It would be nice to do wholes and halves, but it will depend on the market we hit.”
As they expand, Paige said they hope to have 20 or more goats of various weights to have finished goats available throughout the year.
“They are pasture-based, and we plan to rotate them through pastures,” Paige explained. “They are also on a finishing ration right now as they are about ready to go to slaughter.”
They are purchasing wethers for their program, but they may add some breeding stock.
“It depends on the market,” she said. “If we can get in on some nannies kind of cheap, then we might go that route. We are trying to keep our costs as low as we can. We will be flexible, and I’m not scared to try something new. We might get a small group of nannies that we work with to try and improve each year.”
Moving from cattle to goats, Paige said she is comfortable working with the smaller animals.
“I get some funny looks from people who know I grew up raising cattle and say, ‘Why goats?’ We don’t live on the family farm, and don’t have access to large acreage right now so it was cost-prohibitive for us to get into cattle right now, so this is the route we chose to go.”
Having her 1-year-old son around a farm was important to Paige.
“I am so excited he will grow up with some kind of agriculture background,” she said. “I hope we can get the goats going full swing, and he loves being outside to help feed the goats and horses, and I hope that continues.”
