Meet the hartley Family

owners of crescent M Farms

About the Ranch

We started primarily just as a cow/calf operation. We would raise our calves until to weaning and then sell them. That turned into backgrounding, and now through the Show Me Beef program, we are finishing them all the way out to harvest. We also now offer custom feeding. We do indoor and outdoor feeding for anybody in the area that wants to produce Show Me Beef. We do farm crops a little bit, mainly to supply the feed for our feedyard, as well as custom hay baling.

Why Show Me Beef?

It's high-quality beef raised right here in Missouri. When you buy it, you're supporting the local economy. The pride that the farmers take in raising the beef, it's worth eating. For our farm, it's exciting. To see exactly where our beef is going makes us proud of what we do.

stewards of the land

All of our grazing lands are in rotational grazing. Rotational grazing is where you have several paddocks set up and the cattle are moved to a new paddock every day or every other day. The cattle graze the grass down in a paddock to no shorter than 3 inches and are then moved to the next one so the grass in the previous paddock has time to grow and recover. This keeps the grass and the soil healthy. In addition to rotational grazing, we have fenced off the river banks from the cattle and planted buffers of trees to prevent soil erosion.

Hartley FFF

Terms you may not know:

Cow/Calf Operation - Cows are bred and calves are born and raised every year on cow-calf farms and ranches, spending time grazing on grass pastures within sight of their mothers.
Backgrounding - Backgrounding is a beef production system that involves maximal use of pasture and forages from the time calves are weaned until they are placed in a feedlot.
Feedyard - Cattle spend their final 4-6 months at a feedyard being fed a scientifically-balanced diet and receiving daily care.