Family: Wife, Jeania; grown children; and four grandchildren
Hometown: Lebanon, Mo.
In Town: As the service manager for Fabick-Caterpillar in north Springfield, Mo., Chris Schmalhorst is up and on the road early each morning.
“It’s a 100-mile round trip each day,” he commented. “I really don’t mind it though. I was actually born in Springfield but my father traveled a lot for his business so we lived all over, mostly in Georgia. When I was in the military, I was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood (located in Pulaski County, Mo.) years ago and really liked the area. When I came back here, after retiring, looking for a more permanent place with farm roots, I discovered my family was actually part of the Schmalhorsts that helped to establish Conway, Mo.”
In the Country: Chris and his wife, Jeania, who also served in Desert Storm, have their Double SS farm, 20 acres where they currently raise Boer goats, a variety and of chickens. They also have beehives.
“We also raise dogs, as you can tell,” Chris laughed, pointing out that at the moment they have four Great Pyrenees dogs to take care of a total of 13 goats and four kids, including a couple of bottle babies as yet. “They do a great job, keeping the goats safe, of course, but then as a family we’ve always been into the dogs. My daughter, who worked and trained dogs in the military, just retired and was able to take her last dog with her.
“Coming home to the farm each evening is my stress relief from a long day at work. I enjoy the quiet and the farm chores. We’ve had horses and Dexter cattle in the past as well as Nigerian pygmy goats. We’ve had up to 25 of the goats, but that’s really too many for us to keep up with; we try to stay a little smaller than that. Right now, I’d like to finish all the fencing and then I’m thinking about getting back into cattle at some point. I really enjoyed the Dexters, but they are expensive to get started so we’ll probably just go with commercial cattle in the near future.”
