Missouri Neighbors

Kenny Hinkle is not psychic, but he tries to be. While many people don’t know what they are going to have for dinner next weekend, Kenny is working hard to make sure that we can have high quality and reasonably priced beef on our tables – 5 years from now.

Dick Nugent is a Master Gardener and the manager of the Community Garden at the Houston branch of the University of Missouri Extension Service. He is just one spoke in a wheel that has been turning for a long time. The University of Missouri, founded in 1839, was the first publicly supported institution in the Louisiana Territory.  In 1888 the Missouri Agriculture Experiment Station was opened in Columbia, Mo. Later, in 1910, the Missouri Extension Council was established and ready to reach out to all areas of the state. In the past century they have worked, studied, analyzed and recorded successes as well as failures of hundreds of ways to get the most out of Missouri land.

"Ten years ago, it started as a joke,” Katie Stewart, vice president of the Southwest Missouri Goat Producers Association, explained how her family’s involvement with Boer goats began. “Bob (Katie’s husband) brought home three baby goats from the sale barn for our children. He called them 'weed eaters' and from there…” she waved a hand towards the lot full of 40 South African goats known for their meat production.

Houston and Kenda Giles share a dedication to all things natural. They farm 120 acres just north of Carthage, Mo., and raise grass-fed dairy and beef cattle, chickens, pigs and sheep without using steroids, hormones or antibiotics.

"If it weren’t for him,” were the words mustered by both Chad Foster and his father-in-law, Ben Coleman simultaneously. The two men stated those words about one another, as they discussed their cattle operation in Hickory County.

Carol Pool is your typical American cowgirl. She is hard-working, fun-loving and knows her way around a horse. She’s been a cowgirl her whole life, all 70 years of it. Growing up around fox trotters, near the town of Eldridge, Mo., she’d always been fond of horses. Her interest in the sport of barrel racing didn’t begin until she saw a picture of a barrel racer turning a barrel on a beautiful, strong horse. Carol said with her contagious laugh and smile, “I wanted a picture like that to hang on my wall.” 

Daphne Sartin described the farmer as 'the eternal optimist.' "Very few people get up every morning and go to a job they can’t control,” she said. She explained that they have no control over the weather or prices.

After 34 years of teaching, Bill Roberts hung up his hat and retired at the end of the 2010 school year. He spent the last 25 years teaching Agriculture Education at Marshfield High School.

Rocky Rush is an expert at growing things. He knows how to grow crops – farming more than 1,000 acres of row crops, and even raises soybean seed for Andrews Farm and Seed. He knows how to grow pigs – he and his father operate for Murphy Family Ventures and over 50,000 pigs pass through their doors every year. He knows how to grow a good family – he and his wife, Karen, have been married 27 years and have two children, Tyler and Shelby, and a business called Karen’s Kutting Korner. He also knows how to grow good cattle.

Jerry and Michelle Sanner’s Hidden Farm, as they call it, in rural Polk County is well-named, tucked in amongst the rolling hills outside Humansville, Mo. “I started with commercial cows,” Jerry explained, “but we’re converting over to registered Angus at this point.  We’re working with Jeff and Shoni Wilson out of Clearwater, Mont. There’s 50 years of research behind the genetics in the herd we have established with top producers here in Missouri. It’s all about raising great-tasting beef. You cook chicken and you have to put  spices on it to make it taste good,” he laughed. “We want to raise beef that when you cook it or put it on the grill, that’s all you need. We want people to eat beef.”