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

I’ve been encouraged lately to consider the importance of our inherent right to life, liberty and property. No doubt, we all take these simple entitlements for granted all too often. All political concerns of right to property aside, to me, the saddest infringement on our right to property is when citizen robs citizen.

The symbol of the American farm scene has been the red barn. The first farm I owned had one on it.  And you can still see the old gable roof structure today on the right of I-540 before you drive uphill to the Bobbie Hopper Tunnel.  There was something about buying an old, run down red barn. I had grown up on an Ozark farm and owning a red barn gave my partners Monty and Sumner Smith and I some pride.  I can’t explain it now, but in the midst of all those persimmon sprouts, rundown fences and eroded patches of once-fields, there was always that barn.

"This one will do to watch,” Harold stated as the red bull made his third lap around the corral before loading into the trailer with his two buddies.

"I never knew I was an outdoors-type person,” Jamie Haase said, smiling from the seat of her beat-up Ford farm truck. After years in the Extension office in McDonald County, Jamie realized that a full-time job at the farm was the ideal place for her.

It’s been a balance between a life called to ministry, a business in buildings and construction and a love-affair with the family farm that’s kept John Wilkins busy all his years.

Limousin cattle are the focus of Pinegar Limousin. Make no mistake about that. But when it comes to improving the breed, Ty Heavin, ranch manager at Pinegar is quick to point out the advantages and benefits of the increasingly popular LimFlex. LimFlex can be a cross between anywhere from a 75 percent Limousin and a 25 percent Angus to 25 percent Limousin and 75 percent Angus.