Missouri Neighbors

When Gary Koch was a young man, he and his grandfather raised Shorthorn cattle. He later had Hereford and Angus.

Diversification was a lesson that Brad McCall’s grandmother, Marie Murrell, preached often and one that he and his partner, Everett Clamp, have taken to heart at Steins Creek Farm in southern Laclede County, just north of Grovespring, Mo. On 1,100 acres, they raise 15 head of registered Herefords, as well as 250 head of commercial cattle, 40 head of registered Dorper sheep and 15 registered Boer goats. Their operation is made up of two neighboring family farms, belonging to Brad’s paternal and maternal grandparents. They have combined the two farms into one agricultural enterprise named for the small creek that runs through the land.

In the mid-1940s, Paul Bridwell spent a summer traveling the country in a railroad box car with 13 Milking Shorthorns cows. He had just gotten out of high school and was the herdsman for the state’s Milking Shorthorn herd.

Producing the best animals possible is the goal of BF Farm, and owners Mark Bengtson and Jodey Fulcher.

Being a beef producer is in Glen Cope’s blood. Raised on the family farm near Crane, Mo., he helped continue the legacy started by his great-grandparents, which began as 200 acres, and now spans to over 2,500 acres of pasture and hay ground that reaches as far north as Aurora, and in Barry and Stone counties.

Earnest Shields is quick to say he’s no farmer, but he does like to raise a few hogs.

Jason Osborn, born and raised on a Howell County, Mo., dairy farm, outside Pomona has continued his family’s tradition of a life in agriculture. And like so many in the Ozarks today, that included work in a local factory for 10 years to sustain that way of life.

To say that horses have taken Charlie Van Dien on a journey of a lifetime is no exaggeration.

“We live in a food desert,” Barry Mullins, resource development coordinator with the Missouri Ozarks Community Action (MOCA) commented recently while strolling through his organization’s Richland, Mo., community garden site. “We may not think of it that way but we have a growing number of small communities here that no longer have a grocery store and that is particularly hard on lower income families.”

No matter how you shake it – surviving in the dairy business is a difficult venture. However one Ozarks dairy remains steadfast in an industry where mega dairies continue to edge out smaller, traditional dairy farms.