The Calhoun County’s Farm Bureau Farm Family of the Year nomination for 2025 honors the fourth generation enterprise of Gresham Farms. Keith and Debbie Gresham, with son Clay and his wife Hannah, focus on cattle, hay, and timber on their 451 acres mostly located southeast of Thornton.
Keith’s grandfather Ed started the acquisition in 1925 and started raising cotton and other cash crops with some cattle, hogs, and chickens. Timber sales paid off the place and he later raised sweet potatoes, peas, watermelons, and peanuts.
“Our family lived on the place and my dad, Junior Gresham, worked as a carpenter and bought more timber land through the years,” Keith said. He and his brother always helped with the farm chores and it solidified his desire to live on the farm and be involved in agriculture.
Keith spread the love of the land to younger generations as an Agriculture teacher at Rison for over 30 years. His wife Debbie spent two decades in education as a paraprofessional in Fordyce schools.
The current focus is the farm, of course, and the never-ending maintenance and improvement tasks. Keith said they’ve had the most improvement in the last five years. With 50 acres of pasture ground in mixed hardwood and pine, the Greshams cleared, fenced, limed, fertilized and planted annual ryegrass and Bahia grass on most of that acreage. The work in progress on that project is the remove stumps from the timber harvest and level out the ground as time and funds permit.
With help from the Natural Resources Conservation Service Cost Share program, the farm has seven new paddocks using cross fencing. The Gresham’s goal is to create three more paddocks this summer, and build four water tanks on fence lines to serve multiple paddocks. The NRCS is also helping with weed control projects, All that work is for increasing the herd. Sometimes the increase is unplanned.
“One of our neighbor’s cow kept getting out and coming to Clay’s farm,” Keith said. “We bought it.”
On a more strategic plan, the Greshams purchased 8 AI bred Angus heifers a few years back to improve the herd, and bought a Charolais bull.
Top jobs for Clay are co-managing the cattle herd and building and maintaining fencing.
Keith and Clay, at right, explains to judges timber plans and practices.
On a timberland tour, Keith notes tree varieties and conservation strategies of water bars and fire breaks.
There is nothing cuter than cows!
The hardwood/pine mix accounts for 360 acres of the Gresham timberland partnership.
Their cattle are marketed at the Bradley County Livestock Barn, The Hope Livestock Auction, and sometimes a private sale. Occasionally, the family will feed out a steer for their own freezers.
Improvement plans for the cattle facilities include a new corral, sorting pens, a squeeze chute ad a head gate, plus a shed and hay barn.
Clay co-manages the livestock, among other farm duties, in addition to his job at Aerojet in Camden.
Debbie helps with feeding and watering, and even assisting in vaccinations, plus tending her chickens, making the farm a real family effort.
“I love being outside,” Debbie said. “I love to mow!” Not only does she keep the farmstead grass cut, she keeps the church grounds mowed.
Keith is more concerned with pasture grass. “If we can get better grass and get rid of the weeds we could run few more head,” Keith noted.
They may even expand into other species. Clay’s wife, Hannah, a music teacher in Rison Schools, wants a paddock for sheep.
A few years ago, they decided to produce their own quality hay for their animals. They have worked on the hay production to sustain their herd by following the U of A Extension Service Hay Verification Program that has resulted in production of 120 rolls (4x5) of hay with 10-13% protein on 12 acres. In some years, the yield allows for local sale.
The big enterprise is the timber land in partnership with Keith, Clay, and Keith’s siblings Carl Ed Gresham and Susie Ireland.
“It’s a hardwood mix with one plot pretty much pine, so overall more pine,” Keith said.
Local mills and timber buyers that purchase from the 360 acres include Wilson Brother’s Lumber, Anthony Timberlands, Ray White Lumber, Idaho Timber, and Sorrells Sawmill.
“Sometimes on blown down or dying timber, my son and I will cut and haul small loads to local mills or cut the lumber on our band sawmill,” Keith explained. That mill will also be used to process logs into lumber for their own future construction such as barns, pasture shades, sheep sheds.
For maintenance and conservation, the Greshams have cleared out rough roads around the perimeter and even throughout the woods as fire breaks and access to their private deer stand, plus have installed water bars for erosion prevention.
Harvesting and replanting of genetically improved seedlings works to improve the stand.
For the Greshams, commitment to the land means commitment to the community. Keith’s civic resume includes being the project manager for the Sadler/Gresham vocational building and overseeing the building of a new fair grounds in Rison. He has served on the boards of Farm Bureau, Cleveland County Fair, Chambersville Methodist Church, and Chambersville Cemetery, and the Arkansas Rural Volunteer Fighters Association.
Keith has served Calhoun County by being Fire Chief of the Chambersville Fire Department, where he was project manager for a new fire station in 2010 and was awarded Fire Fighter of the Year in 2012. He additionally started a community watch/ text group for northeast Calhoun County, and served as Justice of the Peace for 22 years.
Professionally, he is past president of the Arkansas Agriculture Teachers Association, has been a member of the Calhoun and Dallas County Cattlemen’s Association, as well as the state organization, and as a Beef Quality Assurance Educator.
Debbie’s community contributions include volunteer work at Dalton’s Place Assisted Living Center, 4-H, county fairs, and bookkeeper for the Chambersville Fire Department and the Chambersville Methodist Church.
Clay is also involved in church and is a volunteer firefighter.
Daughter Katie Gresham Gerard, a Fordyce Schools nurse, is also active in church working with youth and with the fire department as secretary. She and her husband Trey own and operate Saline Rive Tree Dogs, a hunting dog training facility, in addition to a welding and T-shirt business.
The Farm Family of the Year program selects top farm families in each county. Families are judged on farm production, efficiency, management, family life and rural/community leadership.
Sponsors of the Arkansas Farm Family of the Year program are Arkansas Farm Bureau, the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas and the Farm Credit Associations of Arkansas. Additionally, support for the program is provided by the Arkansas Agriculture Department, Arkansas Department of Career Education, Arkansas Press Association, University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service and Rural Development.
Crossbred Charolais/Angus cattle make up the 40-head Gresham herd.
Twelve acres of quality hay provides an average of over four tons a year for the Gresham herd.
