84-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 6,1990
April Moll And Daughters Operate Steer Farm
VAL VANTASSEL
Berks Co. Correspondent
ORWIGSBURG (Schuylkill
Co.) “I’m a farmer not a house
wife,” April Moll said
emphatically.
April isn’t exaggerating when
she stales her profession. With
responsibility for 50 Charolais
cows and 100 dairy replacements
as well as 250-acres of cropland,
April is busy from morning to
night with farm work.
The work is hard but April isn’t
complaining. Unlike many wives
who got the farm when they mar
ried the farmer, April has been
dreaming of working on the farm
since her youth.
“I think farming is an infection
that gets into the blood. You just
can’t get rid of it,” she explained
scratching the ear of her golden
retriever, Dancer.
Walking toward the bank bam,
April reminisced about her love of
agriculture. “My parents had a
dairy herd and they just couldn’t
keep me out of the bam. I started
with Jerseys and when my parents
sold their herd I kept my animals.”
“I was 11 years old when the
herd went so I had to milk my ani
mals every morning before
school. We used the milk to make
butter, among other things,” Moll
said.
Eventually, April’s parents,
Albert and Mary Jane Green, sold
their Strausstown home and
moved into the Blue Mountain
School District. “I wasn’t allowed
in the agriculture program at'Tul
pehocken, but I was welcomed to
join the FFA in Blue Mountain. 1
only had two years but I learned
some important things there. I had
a chance to weld and I do all our
on-farm welding jobs.”
It was during her high school
years that April received her first
Charolais. “There didn’t seem to
be that much future in dairying for
me so I decided to try a beef
animal.”
After graduation, April spent
several years as a milker before
entering Penn State in agriculture
education.
“I was 24 before I went to Penn
State. While I was student teach
ing I realized that I had to choose
between teaching and fanning. I
wanted to farm.”
April and her husband, Frqnk,
started developing their beef herd
13 years ago and bought their own
farm two years later. Frank has his
own veterinary practice. While
many farmers might think a
spouse in the medicine business
would be an ideal arrangement,
April pointed out that it could be a
drawback. “Frank has a large ani
mal practice. He is on call 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
April enjoys working with her beef but admits that-she sometimes uses persuasive
techniques rather than brawn to work with the big animals. Despite her size she and
her daughters manage the herd with minimal help from her husband, Frank.
Even when we make arrange
ments to do a job together, some
one can call with a case of milk
fever and he has to leave.”
While the Molls do hire a teena
ger part time, April and her three
daughters, Jennie, Melissa and
Heather, take care of most of the
vvork themselves.
“The girls feed the calves. We
have about 20 dairy calves that we
keep in hutches. We buy them
from local farmers and raise them.
After they are bred we let the far
mer who sold the animals to us
have the option of buying them
back,” April said.
Most of the 100 head of
replacement animals are grades.
“An area farmer has been thinking
of retiring and recently sold us
some of his registered calves.”
Jennie, 11, has already picked
out a winner to take to next year’s
fairs.
“I really want to be a farmer and
I want to have a dairy herd,” she
explained as she led the calf out
for a picture. Jennie already has
quite a start on a beef herd with
four Charolais animals of her own.
She also augments her beef and
dairy enterprises with horse feed
ing for a neighbor.
“She really wants to be a far
mer,” April said. “Her grades at
school are excellent and she is
planning on going to college.
We’ll just have to wait and see
what she does.” Jennie recently
joined the Blue Mountain Jr. High
FFA program.
Melissa, 10, and Heather, 9,
haven’t made any career plans.
“I’m going to wait another year to
decide,” Heather declared.
April isn’t pushing the farm on
her daughters. “I’m not encourag
ing them and I’m not discouraging
them. They have to make up their
own minds. They are good help
and we’re glad to have them get
ting involved in the farm.” '
The girls have a couple of
incentives for getting their chores
done. This summer they earned an
Nintendo for helping out They
also earn animals for their work.
That’s quite a reward consider
ing the prizes they’ve earned with
their market steers and breeding
animals. Melissa topped the
Schuylkill Fair Market Steer
Show for the second time in three
years. “It was a mistake. Mom
picked the wrong animal,” Melis
sa explained.
“I try to pick out the animal I
think is going to do the best when
they’re small. Then we give the
best steer to a different girl each
year. Normally I do pretty well
because I know how their mothers
did and that tells me who should
be best. It was Jennie’s year to
have the best animal, but it just
April and her daughters, Jennifer, Melissa and Heather, work together to take cars,
of the family’s 100 head of dairy replacements and 50 head of Charolals beef.
didn’t work out that way,” April
said.
Jennie did have the top breed
ing Charolais at the show fol
lowed by Heather’s reserve.
The bam on the Walnut Lane
farm is full of replacements. April
points out her paper shredder and
skid loader with the same sense of
pride most women show in new
appliances.
“We’re short bedding this year
so we’re using newspaper,” she
said. “Neighbors bring us news
papers and we get additional paper
from the Times News in Carbon
County.”
‘The shredder works well but
it’s noisy,” Melissa said.
“It’s also dusty,” her mother
added.
7^
and her daughters have 50 Charolais cows to work With. The
Charolais are kept on a 20-acre lot surrounded by residen
tial housing.
April uses a small skid loader
for cleaning the bams. “We have a
skid loader on the farm here at
home to clean the bam and feed
the replacements. We have
another at the farm with the beef
animals. We have to have small
ones because of the low ceiling
clearance. Sometimes it feels like
you’re trying to clean the bam
9 wmesiead
with a spoon but we are able to do
a good job in the comers. Using a
skid loader for feeding saved us
from having to put a feeding sys
tem in.”
Despite modem conveniences,
there is still plenty of manual labor
on the farm. Entering a second old
bam, April commented “You nev-
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