Godfreys carry on family tradition at Glass House Farm

HENDERSON — A Henderson couple carries on an ancestral tradition with a cattle operation named for an old farm in England.

Richard and Rita Godfrey own Glass House Farms Limited, a diversified grain and livestock business named in honor of Henry, Richard’s great-great-grandfather.

Henry had a farm in England also called Glass House Farm, which derived its name from the glass factory it shared a road with.

While the Godfreys do plant corn, soybeans, and a little hay, the main focus of their farming is in breeding and selling feeder cattle from their own personal stock.

“Our family has always been in the cattle business,” Richard said as he detailed the origin of their business. “My dad works with us. He’s retired, but he still comes out when he wants. I grew up with it. It financed my college education. Can it be in the DNA?”

The Godfreys mused about their determination in the cattle business and the long family tradition they have carried on, leaving no room for doubt about their love for cattle farming, a practice they have carried on for almost 33 years.

Richard started his first cattle herd at twelve years old as a 4H project.

"When I left for college I had a nice sized herd," said Richard. "When I came back I didn’t have any, but I also didn’t have any college debt."

After college, Richard and Rita worked various jobs for nine years while waiting for a farm to rent. They found that farm in 1980, and began their operation just outside of Red Oak. 

Currently, Richard and Rita have about 75 pairs of livestock within three pastures.

The calves drop in the Spring and will stay paired with their mother until September and October, when they weigh about 600 pounds. Then they are ready to be weaned. In November, when the calves reach 700 pounds, they will be sold.

Each pair is identified by ear tags with matching numbers. Rita keeps data with the ear tags in a computer system that holds records of every cow and calf they have owned. It records what each calf weighed, what the average weight is, how long between calves each cow goes, the sale weights, average days of age, and the production standard of each cow.

"If the cows aren’t producing as well as the others then somebody else gets the opportunity to own them," Richard said smiling. "So we try to make our weaning weights climb with a selection. Rita keeps track of all those numbers. I just listen to her reports."

The Godfreys never keep an open cow on the farm. An open cow is a heifer that is not pregnant.

"We have a young man who buys our open cows in the fall," Richard explained. "He runs a fall calving season, so this way he doesn’t have to wait a year. Its like buying replacements for him. He can take our open cows and breed them. We’ve been doing that between six and eight years now."

This spring the Godfrey’s had a successful production with 46 cows dropping calves within the first 22 days. They do all natural breeding and have facilities equipped for calving on their own property, as well as across the street, that provide a safe and efficient environment.

"Inside its warmer," Godfrey said. "At least we can get them out if its snowing and cold. One night I figured the cow’s temperature at roughly 100 degrees and it was 50 degrees below wind-chill, so if a calf hit the ground that night, its environment had changed 150 degrees. You better be there when that happens or its not gonna work out. We can get them out of the cold for that new calf to get cleaned up and get that first milk. Once the little calf gets up and gets that first milk, they’re tough."

Richard and Rita describe the cattle business as a labor intensive and restrictive business that runs 365 days a year.

"We never have a schedule until after chores," Richard said. "We get up, and if the cows are out, our schedule just changed. If we’ve got a cow having a calf and having trouble, our schedule just changed. If we’ve got a sick one, our schedule just changed. So until we’ve taken care of the livestock, which is priority... then once that’s done we move on to planting or putting up hay. At our house, the livestock comes first."

Rainy days provide an opportunity for the Godfreys to visit town for supplies and parts or to fix fences as they need to.

"But even on rainy days, you never know what might happen," Rita said.

She is undoubtedly a pillar of support in the operations of Glass House Farms Limited.

"You could call me the right hand man if you wanted to," Rita said smiling. "I try to help with the cattle as much as possible, with procedures, with keeping track of which cow is in which pasture, with keeping track of vaccinations. I’m even there to hand things to them during an operation, like a nurse, to help things move along. I’m not a cattle person... I’m a cattleman."

As busy as they sound, the Godfreys have actually cut down their cattle operation by half over the past two years.

"We don’t feed anymore," Richard said. "We just don’t think we’ve got the time or the size to feed cattle. There are bigger and better lots that can take care of that, so we just stick to selling calves."

The Godfrey’s eluded to several reasons for the change, such as losing pasture to row crops, the economy and labor. But what seemed to weigh heaviest on their minds was the constantly changing regulations.

"We have too many people making too many regulations that haven’t got a clue what they are talking about. They’re overstepping anything that the law was designed to do. It’s a very scary situation," Richard said.

The regulations are effecting smaller cattle feeders and farmers much more than some may have realized.

"The initial understanding was that if you were less than 1,000 head in a CAFO, Confined Animal Feeding Operation, that there would be less regulation. They keep moving those numbers," Richard explained."Now they are looking at operations of 300, so they will just keep going down. Those 300 head operations won’t be able to spend the money to meet what the requirements are for that day, and they’ll quit. The regulations will run the smaller operators out of business."

As for the future of Glass House Farms Limited, the Godfreys don’t believe it will stay in the family.

"We have one nephew that sells machinery, one that’s going to law school and a niece that’s going to be a teacher. They’re not coming back here to play in the dirt," Richard said.

"Economically, I don’t know how it would work for them. It would be really hard because our operation is fairly small, comparatively," Rita added, illustrating further how difficult it has become for cattle farmers to cope in an industry riddled with the shrapnel of regulation warfare.

"Our operation will stay about this size until we retire or find somebody to bring in with us, which we hope is a possibility," Richard said. "That’s exciting... trying to find that person."

In the end, the Godfrey’s and others in the cattle industry want one message to get out.

"We are out here doing a job that we love," Richard explained."We’re doing it to the best of our ability, and we want to continue to do that. We want to continue to tell our story... that we do it right. We hope that we can get that story across... that its a business, but we wouldn’t put up with it if we didn’t like it. Its a choice to be in it, and we want that choice left for the next generations, so they can, in fact, do this without the total crushing regulations."