Arkansas Neighbors

Planning for retirement entails a financial or lifestyle plan; or it contains both. The desired choice is one that does not involve more years of hard work. The hopeful aspect of retirement is that there will be enough funds to continue the current lifestyle or to make a better one. Retirement takes preparation whether it is through an employment plan or years of saving, reaped of hard work. Most farmers and ranchers know the hard labor and countless hours involved in maintaining a successful operation. Choosing farming or ranching as a retirement choice can be lucrative or ultimately just hard work, or again – it can be both.

When Bart and Pam Petray met 15 years ago at a two-stepping class, neither had any farming background. Bart was a full-time surveyor and Pam a speech therapist. The couple has two grown children, Megan who lives in Texas with the couple’s two grandchildren and Blake who is joining the Air Force and beginning basic training this summer.

Weather is always a concern when beginning or managing a farm or ranch. Heat stress, drought, flooding or freezing temperatures can impact the operation of the chosen crop. Grazing options may become limited or in abundance. An exit plan or a Plan B carries the burden when the actual plan begins to fail. Protecting the lifestyle means being in tune with Mother Nature, creating grazing boundaries, providing adequate shelter, maintaining a healthy herd via vaccinations and/or forage and keeping predators out.

Kenny and Stephanie Kirk are not your typical livestock farmers, meaning that are born and raised with livestock all around them. Rather they were both “townies” and graduated from Springdale High School. However, Kirk was highly involved in FFA and placed second in the state for individual livestock judging. He also worked on farms during high school and looked up to Gene Shockley who had a cow/calf farm and the Parsons family who ran a feeder operation. Kenny said, “The bug bit, and I knew I wanted in.” Kenny knew two things: he wanted to farm and he wanted to live in Madison County.

Justin and Chana Usrey and their two sons, Kenny, 11, and Darrin, 8, live outside of Huntsville, Ark., where they raise turkeys and a commercial cattle herd. The couple married in 2000 and purchased 78 acres and another 30 later. They also rent an additional 320 acres and are considering expanding that acreage.

Sunflower Heritage Farm in Japton, Ark., is located on 120 acres and home to a wide variety of mostly heritage animals. Patty Stith and her mother, Roberta, and brother, Kenny, began the heritage, conservation-conscious animal farm in 2012. One of their conservation methods includes refurbishing and using old and existing buildings whenever possible. Another is using their animals to clear land naturally by first allowing pasture hogs into unimproved areas to forage and then admitting goats for browsing. Patty said, “That simple process gives you a park.”

Rod and Jamie Garman of Ground Zero Farms in Watts, Okla., run and operate Ground Zero Construction in Siloam Springs, Ark. “We got started with a construction company in 2004. We mainly do dirt work, utilities and build subdivisions,” Rod said. He bought about 350 acres to start his ranch. “As the construction company grew, we just kept buying land around us and own around 1,800 acres now,” he said. Ground Zero Farms also leases another 2,000 acres. “We run about 350 registered Red and Black Hereford cows and about 450 commercial cows,” he added.

Allen and Donna Shumate of Elkins, Ark., run a 3-year-old grass-fed commercial beef operation on nearly 1,000 acres of combined owned, shared and leased land. They have three registered Angus bulls and 80 mixed mommas with the goal of gradually increasing the herd to 100 mommas with 175 calves growing from weaning to butchering at all times.

Myle Ratchford said, “I can’t remember not being on a horse rodeoing.” Myle was raised on a polled Hereford cattle farm in Elkins, Ark. After graduating from high school, she married and started raising and training horses in Oklahoma. She then moved back to Arkansas in 2008 and brought her operation Myle Ratchford Training Stable to Treat Farm. She remarried and lives in Kingston, Ark., with her husband, Michael, and children, Whitley who is 18 and attending the U of A for a degree in animal science, and Ryder who is 3. Michael works in the local logging industry, a nice complement to her horse farm.

“That’s the way I like to sell bulls,” could be heard as the gate slammed shut on one trailer, and the next truck and trailer pulled in. It was a good sale day for Keith Cagle of Rose Bud Feeders, LLC, that cool Saturday morning in late March, “$65,000 worth of bulls in just a couple of hours from a couple of different operations.”