April 2007 - Volume 68, Issue 4
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Queen of the Kingdom of Callaway continued...
“This mix of gama and red clover lets my cattle maintain their rate of gain,” he said. “Especially in a drought like we had in 2005.”
As he looked out over the crown-shaped bunches of grass with their fringy seedheads, Clifford mused, “I wish I had a hundred acres of this stuff.”
A Healthy Prairie
Like most farmers, Clifford appreciates any approach that helps him make more money with less cost and effort. His reasons for using Eastern gamagrass for help with his farming operation, however, are unusual and deeply personal.
In the early ’90s his wife, Mary Ann, got sick and couldn’t get well. It turned out that she is allergic to petro-chemicals—or anything made with oil. She and Clifford replaced their synthetic carpets with wool and cotton rugs, and they gave away any item of clothing made with polyester or acrylic.
Although the changes Mary Ann and Clifford made to their house kept her safe inside, they couldn’t protect her from the things Clifford commonly used in his row-crop and cattle-feeding operations: oil, herbicides and fertilizer. What do you do when you discover the main tools you use to make a living threaten your beloved’s health?
“We decided to put the fields near the house in native warm-season grass,” Clifford said.
Mary Ann herself came up with this solution one bright fall day when she and Clifford had driven south of Kingdom City to visit her cousins, Larry and Garry Houf.
At the time, Larry was the Department of Conservation’s district wildlife supervisor for the Ozark region. He and Garry, a forest biologist with the Mark Twain National Forest, had planted their family farm in native warm-season grasses, which turn rich, warm shades of gold, orange, red and purple in the fall.
“Mary Ann really liked those colors,” Clifford said, “she asked why we couldn’t plant those grasses on our place.”
At the time, Clifford didn’t know much about planting prairie grasses or designing management-intensive grazing forage systems, but he soon found out.
Helping Hands
Clifford first met Missouri Department of Conservation grassland biologist Steve Clubine in 1991 at a Missouri Prairie Foundation meeting. They talked about adding native warm-season grasses to Clifford’s operation.
About This Article
Author
BONNIE CHASTEEN wears many hats in the Department’s Outreach and Education Division. She coordinates communications for the Web site, writes for the Conservationist and edits print publications. When she’s not writing about conservation, she’s cooking, painting or traveling to visit family and friends.
Photographer
CLIFF WHITE is a life-long Missouri resident. After nearly 10 years as a staff photographer for the Missouri Department of Conservation, Cliff recently took on management duties as Art Director. Now he supervises on an unruly gang of super-creative folks. In his spare time Cliff likes to play old-time folk and bluegrass music, float fish and chase the occasional turkey.
