Missouri Neighbors

Paul Wallen left the racetrack and automotive repair industry and got on the fast track to raising Beefmasters full time after experiencing success with the breed first hand.

Lonnie Cook is a third generation farmer who continues his family’s tradition of raising Charolais and Charolais cross cattle on 640 acres once owned by his grandparents, Arthur and Mary Cook. Along with his brother, Derrel, who lives three miles up the Osage Fork River from Lonnie and his wife, Jean, they run 80-90 cows on his property.

Just short of being a century farm, Crystal Springs Limousin, knows cattle with great quality and has been raising such cattle, for some time. Bill Burch’s family started not in the beef cattle business, but the dairy industry when they moved to the Neosho, Mo., area in 1919.

Vance and Gloria Mattson started with 10 Angus cows when they first moved to Everton, Mo., in 1999. But that just wasn't really cutting it for them. "Gloria wasn't really comfortable with them, so we started looking for something smaller," Vance said.

Ed Cahoj, a cattle farmer in Polk County near Halfway, Mo., remembers the day he became aware of soil fertility. He was 7 or 8 years old on his dad’s farm in Kansas. The land had just been plowed, and like any good farmer, his dad picked up a handful of the freshly turned sod and smelled it.

For the past 32 years, Terry Halleran has been an agriculture educator in southwest Missouri – beginning in Pleasant Hope and in classes at University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri State University, Ozarks Technical Community College and for the last many years, as the ag teacher at Buffalo High School.

What has four legs, a tail, likes to work and has ears almost as long as your arm? Why, a mule, of course. A mule is a hybrid cross between a mare and a jack – with a combination of such diverse traits, you get the best of both worlds: the size of a horse, the stamina of a donkey and who can forget those famous ears? Bill Jackson, of Ozark, Mo., in Christian County knows these hybrid equines inside and out – he has spent more than 50 years of his life with them. “I’d rather work a mule anytime than a horse,” he said.

Jay Wilkins is one of those whose town life and country life are so entwined that figuring out where one ends and the other starts is hopeless. Jay is both the Agricultural Division Chair at Crowder College in Neosho, Mo., and their farm manager. His wife, Tresa, also works at the college.

Former ranchers, originally from Arizona, Margo Chilcott and her husband, Brian, came to the Ozarks seven years ago and fell in love with a place, a 100-acre valley outside West Plains, Mo., in rural Howell County. Both currently work in real estate in southern Missouri.

For Jim and Judy Protiva, of West Plains, Mo., pastured poultry has been part of their lives for almost 20 years. “We took our maiden voyage with chickens in 1996,” recalled Jim. “From there we continued to grow, adapt and raise chickens and turkeys for individual sale and consumption.”