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

Karen Haralson, who owns and operates Griffin Flat Cow Co., knows well the challenges that face cattle farmers today.
Still, there is no other life she would rather lead.

Years ago a lot of corn was planted on Pigeon Roost Mountain located about 10 miles north of Morrilton, Ark., on Highway 95. In part that’s how the mountain got its name. There was a lot of corn, and a lot of pigeons came there to roost. The corn is not planted anymore and you won’t find many pigeons but you will find Birkner Brother Limousin, home of Carl, Linda, Cody and Eric Birkner. This 80-plus acre farm has been in the family for two generations. Once row cropped, now the Birkners are “raising bulls on the roost."

Joe Bob Staton grew up in the shadow of Mt. Magazine. He always knew that he wanted to farm. When he married Carrie Isaacs almost 11 years ago, they started out on their own with 17 cows on a few rented acres. Since then, the commercial beef herd has grown to 120 cows on over 400 acres that they own and lease a mile or two from his dad’s Lazy S Ranch.

Do you happen to belong to one of those families that has a problem with cattle?  By a problem I mean, no matter how bad the market, the weather, the finances or the morale, you still keep raising cattle.

I love trees and I love history. So it is no surprise that I am retelling these two great, historic tree tales.

Maybe writers know writers without being introduced.  Each spring I try to make a pilgrimage back to the southwest and one place I like to go to is Cochise County, Ariz.  It is the least touched land of the sprawling cities that ate up all the farmland, ranches, citrus orchards and feedlots I knew as a boy.  I visited Benson, Ariz.,  a sleepy town on the almost always dry San Pedro River that runs north—one of the few rivers in this continent that flows north for 100 miles.  Astraddle Interstate 10, this was a stage stop on the Butterfield Stages lines, the same ones rattleddown through northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville to Fort Smith and then across the Arkansas River and south to Fort Worth to end up in San Francisco.