Neighbors

While the green movement has focused more attention on environmental-friendly farming issues, farmers have always been environmentalists because their livelihood depends upon environmental sustainability that provides healthy land and healthy production.

When most people are young, they earn money in order to spend it on a new car or truck or clothes.
Both Shannon and Melissa Fancher of Huntsville, Ark., chose a different path – and it’s paying off. They now own 164 acres and have 10 broiler houses as well as almost 70 cows and 17 heifers to be bred next year.

Sean Bansley didn’t begin his working life as a farmer.
He was a union carpenter who ended up having a small farm in Illinois, then a larger one in Iowa. He now has close to 300 acres near Harrison, Ark. Sean and his wife, Carol, are now both on the farm full time, and have worked with Berkshire pigs for more than six years.

Billy Bolch is a self-proclaimed beef eater.
“I think beef should be served three times a day,” he said with a laugh.

Michele Broxton of Rolla, Mo., operates Broxton Cattle Company in Phelps County, Mo. and her mantra is “Never underestimate the power of a woman with a prayer and a plan.”

Horses, goats and show dogs. That’s how Brenda Murray of rural Dallas County outside Urbana, Mo., characterizes life on her family’s 84 acres.

Scott and Michelle Ramsey have raised Cargill turkeys for 20 years on 250 acres in Summers, Ark. The hen raising operation consists of one brooding house with 17,000 poults and two grow-out houses with another 17,000 hens staying for a total of 12 to 13 weeks. Scott clearly remembers March 1989, when Arkansas was hit with a serious winter storm and he helped to save brood birds from being destroyed on property he was to purchase six years later. Scott said, “I worked all night for chocolate chip cookies, but they were worth it.”

Dave and Pat Sargent retired from dairy farming in 1990. At that time Dave decided to raise vegetables on 1/2 acre of their 40 acres outside of Prairie Grove, Ark., for personal use and “for something to do.”

“There are some dates in life you remember, February 5, 2008, is one of them for us.” The story of Dan and Patricia Stewart of Mountain View, Ark., doesn’t start on that ominous date, but their road in life does take a turn at that moment in history. “We use that tornado as a time post in our lives, pre-tornado and post-tornado.”

Over 40 years ago Jerry and Betty Laughlin took their passion for horses and hard working spirit and developed a business that now involves three generations.