Clayton Caldwell
Family: Wife, Amy Caldwell; daughters Adeline, 8, and Anajewel, 5; and son Rhett, 2 1/2
Hometown: Hunt, Ark.
Town Life: “When I graduated from college, I worked outside of the area for a few years but returned to where I was born and raised. I have worked for First Security Bank in Clarksville, Ark., for 10 years and am the vice president of lending. My job is to handle both commercial and consumer loans. In addition, until this year, I also taught finance and banking at the Arkansas Tech University Ozark campus. My wife Amy is a high school English teacher in Ozark where she has worked for 13 years teaching 10th and 11th grade English. I also stay pretty involved in community organizations.”
Country Life: “My grandparents frequently talked about farming in their younger days, and I always knew that was how I wanted to live too. My children are the eighth generation in Johnson County, Ark., on my mother’s side, and Amy and I wanted to raise them out in the country, the way we felt was best. We live on 24 acres in the nearby Hunt community where we built a house six years ago. Prior to that, we leased out the land. As soon as we moved out here, I planted a garden and fruit trees. We plant something a little different every year. Once I threw leftover pumpkin seeds in the flower bed, and the kids ended up with blue ribbon pumpkins at the fair. As far as livestock, horses came first, which my father-in-law, Johnny Williams, and I purchased together. Then I decided it was time to learn chickens and built a coop where I had a perfectly good fig tree. We have Rhode Island Reds and sometimes sell the eggs. Our most recent addition is three goats, which I purchased last spring to be my brush hogs and which I rotate once a week using cattle panels in the wooded areas. The goats are half Nigerian Dwarf and half Boer. It’s fun to clean up and improve our place, and the animals are a big part of that. The next step is for our girls to start showing the animals.”
Future: “I’ve got lots of ideas about where to go from here. Some of these include raising feeder calves and selling them before winter or expanding either the chickens or the goats and perhaps adding sheep.”
