A rich family history
RICH HILL, MO. – Like so many other Ozark farmers and ranchers, brothers Kyle and Kellen Fischer have had to face some difficult economic decisions in recent years. They are the fifth generation in their family to farm their many acres in rural Bates and Vernon Counties, outside Rich Hill, Mo. Their father, Dean just recently retired from farming with them.
“For many years, we raised bulls and heifers to develop them for their owners, our customers, from weaning weight to breeding age on fescue, supplementing with silage,” Kyle explained recently. “We probably raised 8,000 to 10,000 registered bulls over the years that our customers then used for their commercial herds. We even had some of the first crossbred bulls with the Charolais and Wagyu cattle when they first came to this area. There has been livestock on this farm ever since it started with the first of our family who came over here from Germany.”
Kyle says they would certainly qualify as a Century Farm although they have never gone through the process of being declared as such. Even so, with such a rich family history, the brothers made the decision to get out of the cattle business and concentrate on their row crops and hay production. Today, they grow corn, soybeans, and triticale, a hybrid cross of wheat and rye, as well as hay.
They market their soybeans to ADM in Deerfield, Mo. where the crop is turned into soybean meal and bio-diesel fuel and their corn goes primarily to poultry farms in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. They sell some locally for hog feed. They also retail the triticale to local farmers who use it for forage or as a cover crop to plant to improve the soil and protect against erosion.
Their primary specialty, however, has become square bales for horse Their hay mixture includes pure timothy, Bromegrass, mixed fescue and orchard mix. They also do straw bales.
“We have about 500 acres in hay,” Kyle continued. “We have a machine called a Bale Baron, which is actually manufactured in Canada. It puts the regular horse hay bales into a 21 bale bundle, which looks like an extra big square bale. Most people handle them in the bundles and then just cut the twine to separate them into the individual square bales.”
Kyle’s wife, Amy is an assistant librarian in the Rich Hill school district where Kyle noted he also went to school. They have three boys, ages 15, 11, and 5 and a daughter, age 13. Kellen’s wife, Jennifer is an ER nurse at KU Medical Center.
“The older kids have now reached an age where they help on the farm to some extent. Our days are never the same. With the help of three full-time employees, we do all of the hauling of our own grain into our facility and most out. We do all of our own fertilizing, strip-tilling, spraying, planting, harvesting and haying.”
Kyle concluded. “Our time – mine and my brother’s – is basically taken up by three things: the current farm economy, the weather, and finding qualified farm employees.”
