Ozarks Farm & Neighbor Newspaper – written for, by & about farmers

Don Smith of Hogden, Okla., was raised in Kiowa, home of famous country-western singer and TV personality Reba McEntire. In fact, Reba and Don are cousins with Reba’s father, Clark, being a major influence in Don becoming a professional cowboy and in meeting his wife. Don and Susan met at a rodeo in Wilburton, Okla., where both were competing and with both eventually becoming professional cowboys.

This is the story of a young couple deciding to build a farm from scratch, something unusual in this day and age. Cody Hays, now of Gentry, Ark., met his future wife Carrie when he was a junior in college at the University of Arkansas. Cody said, “Land prices are too high to make a purchase viable for expansion and leased land is competitive.” Cody and Carrie, however, were undeterred.

Two couples, Bryan and Amber Bench, and Randy and Nancy Williams, have combined their skills and resources to form Nature’s Green Grass Farms. Their goal is to raise tender and tasty grass-fed beef using nothing but what nature provides. They have chosen Devon cattle as the breed for their Everton, Ark., operation. The interesting thing about Devon cattle is that they were brought to America for the first time in 1623. If this rings a historic bell, that’s because the Pilgrims landed here in 1620, so it was just a few years later that three Devon heifers and a Devon bull first hoofed it onto American soil. The herd that the Benches and the Williamses now have is descendants of these cattle. Bryan is proud to call Devons a heritage breed, pure, not crossed with another breed. A few changes have been made since the first four were consigned from Devonshire, England, to the colonies. For example, American stockmen have developed a polled strain of purebred Devons. Interestingly enough, this traces back to a bull born in 1915 in Concordia, Mo., not too far from here.

Coming in at 959 pages, and with the unwieldy name of H.R. 2642 or the Agricultural Act of 2014, the Farm Bill, was signed into law February 7.

Automatic section controls (ASC) are the latest of a suite of technological devices that can help farmers use crop inputs more precisely for the maximum return. Although the devices can be expensive, farmers say rising production costs are making the equipment increasingly attractive.

There are a number of tools available to crop producers who want to hedge the value of their production – and dramatic changes are coming in one of them.