BISMARCK’S ALLENS ARE ALL-IN

HUSBAND AND WIFE COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER IN DIVERSE FARMING BUSINESS, AND THEIR KIDS ARE CLOSE BEHIND

By Dwain Hebda | Photos by Matthew Magdefreau and Justin Rotton

BISMARCK CURLS GENTLY into its nook of the Natural State, where a quaint collection of stores serves its 2,300 residents. Like many small towns, it’s seen its share of hard times, as evidenced by several vacant storefronts, but these days there’s discernible signs of renewed life. Two food trucks hum as they prepare for the lunchtime crowd, and the local gas station and. convenience store serves a revolving door of customers.

A LITTLE FARTHER DOWN THE ROAD is J.A. Farms Feed& Mercantile, the catalyst for much of this renewal and the home of the Allens, Arkansas’s 2023 Farm Family of the Year.

The family business is brisk. One after another in pickups and flatbeds, customers pull up to the Allens’ store for everything from toggle bolts to tomato plants and engine belts to britches. The Allen family is reflected in every square inch of the store. Jeremy and Magen Allen, and their kids Lane, Brody, Evie and Eli, run a diverse business with livestock, a feed mill, butcher shop, wrecker service, trucking, hayfields, roll-offs, hardware and auto parts, all a part of their journey through the years.

“I learned a long time ago that if something doesn’t work, we’ll roll with it. We’ll phase that out, and we’ll find something different,” Magen said. “It’s just believing in one another and having each other’s back on different decisions.

“It takes a lot of faith; faith in each other, faith in God.”

ALL-AMERICAN STORY

JEREMY AND MAGEN ALLEN couldn’t be more authentic Arkansans if their names were stitched on the state flag. The couple started dating at Bismarck High School, thus beginning a life together at times as winding as the roads surrounding their tiny hometown.

“I tell you, those two right there are the perfect match for each other,” said Matt Jackson, Arkansas Farm Bureau’s director of education and outreach and coordinator of the Farm Family of the Year program, who has known the couple since high school. “I don’t think Jeremy would be as successful without Magen, and I don’t think Magen would be as successful without Jeremy. “Jeremy’s got the thoughts and the ideas, he’s a go-getter, and Magen figures out how they’re gonna make everything come out at the end. Honestly, it’s the way that they mesh. They can see inside of each other’s heads as far as what they’re thinking and their vision.”

The vision wasn’t quite so clear early on. After graduation, Jeremy’s work ethic made finding a job easy, but as he recalls, nothing quite fit.

“I just didn’t know what I wanted to do. I tried everything,” he said.

Jeremy drifted through several roles, including as a car salesman, a college student and working for the postal service before returning to his family’s cattle and poultry operation. Meanwhile, Magen attended Henderson State University, where she earned a business degree that led to a nine-year career in banking. The couple decided to stake their own claim in agriculture. “It came time for us to say, ‘OK, we want to find our own land, build our own chicken houses’ or whatever it was gonna be,” Magen said, adding with a laugh, “I’ll admit I did panic a little at first when we signed the note on the chicken houses. I worked in loan operations, and I looked at the amortization schedule and, yeah, that was the wrong thing to do.”

Early on, Jeremy applied a sharp eye for opportunity both on the farm itself and in the related businesses that were to come, the flagship of which was a feed mill. The feed business started during a difficult year – 2008.

“We had to find a way to either keep feeding our cows something, because we didn’t have enough hay, or we were going to have to sell out. We’d started hauling gin trash, which is a byproduct out of cotton gins, just something to do to make extra money,” Magen said. “Well, the phone starts ringing, ‘Hey, can I get a load of that? Can I get a load of that?’ Then it’s, ‘I can’t handle a full truckload. Can you bag that for me? Could you mix something with it and make something in a thousand- pound bag?’ What started as just simply a way to survive quickly became a way for others to survive.”

The combination of opportunity presented and boldness to capitalize repeated itself again and again in the Allen family businesses. When the owner of the local wrecker service retired, Jeremy got a good price on the man’s tow truck and went to work, eventually growing to locations in multiple communities before selling the business. Another time, the owner of a local hardware store hung it up and opportunity knocked again.

“When there was no hardware store here, we decided, well, we’re going to start carrying nuts and bolts so we don’t have to go to another town every time we needed something,” Jeremy said. “Then it presented itself that we were spending quite a bit of money on parts and things like that, so I thought, well, we’ll just add auto parts to it.”

PASSING IT ON

THE ALLENS’ SUCCESS has proven a boon on many levels. Not only have their businesses and farming operation – now comprising 2,000 acres, owned and leased, on which they grow hay and tend a cow-calf herd – contributed tax revenue to the local economy, but they’ve also created 20 jobs across their enterprises.

Jackson said he’s equally impressed by the family’s success and their impact on other local entrepreneurs willing to follow in their footsteps.

“I believe, 100%, that they are showing others how a business can work,” he said. “Their willingness to jump into a venture like they have not only shows the community what they do but other businesses see the support that they’re getting. I believe that it shows some promise for the area when you can make that happen.”

The Allens run a diverse business, including livestock, a feed mill, butcher shop, wrecker service and auto parts store. Clockwise, from top: two of the Allen boys in the auto store; daughter Evie in front of one of the store’s shelves; oldest son Lane rounding up calves; and mother and daughter in the hay field.

The employee headcount doesn’t include, of course, the couple’s four children. The Allen kids have been well- schooled in the virtues of hard work for as long as they can remember.

“I was always with my dad, ever since he started the feed mill,” said Lane, 19, a welder. “It was always the deal in our family that if anybody needs help, you help them – and you finished everything you started. Working in the family business taught me to be able to talk to people who I don’t know about stuff, being able to do business stuff.

“My goal is to have my own welding business and that background is going to help me get started and get me where I want to go in life.”

Younger brother Brody, 16, said his roles on the farm and at the store set him apart from his peers, most of whom don’t have the work responsibilities he does, in addition to studies, sports and extracurriculars.

“I’m one of the only kids who works on a farm and works with feed. There are a few more, but it’s mainly just a certain few who do,” he said. “It’s taught me how to work hard, given me good leadership skills and showed me how to work on stuff.

“Growing up, I learned how to work on equipment. I’ve learned how to raise cattle, work tractors, learned about feed. Long term, I can see myself coming right back here after I get out of school. I like it here.”

Evie Allen has junior and high school left to navigate, but at age 10, her career goals appear pretty well set.

“I want to own the business when I get older,” she said. “I love going to the hayfields and working there, too. I think I will make a good boss, just from watching my parents.”

The youngest, 9-year-old Eli, has also put in his time. While he’s not keen on challenging his sister’s future takeover bid, he said being around the family business has taught him an important lesson: “Do things right the first time.”

In addition to educating their kids on what it takes to succeed in farming and in business, the Allens have also been shining examples to others in the agriculture industry. Jeremy and Magen were recruited to participate in Farm Bureau activities a number of years ago and have never looked back.

“Milton Shinn was the one who actually asked us to go to our first meeting,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t know what it was, so I went to the meeting and we started getting involved.”

The couple started in the Young Farmers & Ranchers program, eventually chairing the state committee and were named recipients of the 2011 Achievement Award. After taking a break to manage the kids’ activities, Magen joined and would chair the Women’s Leadership Committee, after which she won a seat on the district board and now also sits on the state board. She recently returned from New York City as part of the select Partners in Advocacy Leadership program.

Harry Willems, now retired, had worked with the Allens on the Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee. He remembers noticing their interest to lift up farmers and ranchers across Arkansas.

“It was kind of their rallying cry,” he said. “Certain people draw other individuals in, and they were able at that time to substantially build the young farmer program with their leadership. They made it look almost effortless; they had area meetings with 100 young farmers and ranchers there. Their leadership was something people saw and responded to.”

Jeremy Allen sifts through feed, one of his many business ventures, along with raising livestock on some 2,000 acres in Bismarck.

A FAMILY UNITED

NEITHER JEREMY nor Magen could find the words to adequately describe their emotions over being named Farm Family of the Year, but “shocked” comes pretty close.

“It was amazing for me to see all the hard work be recognized,” Magen said. “It was also a little strange, because we are friends with so many of the other families [nominated], or they were customers of ours. So, it was also like, ‘Well, no, they deserve it more than we do.’ But it was pretty cool.”

Jeremy said having had the time to reflect on everything the family had been through to get to its current point made him especially grateful for all that the couple had achieved.

“Being in business, you live it, you’re thinking about it and talking about it all the time,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation at the beach or the mountains or whatever, that phone rings, you answer it. That’s just how it works, and we understood that.

“I’m not going to say we’ve topped it out every time, no. We just did the best we could, and if something wasn’t working, we got out of it and did something else. The thing was, when opportunity comes around, you have to be ready for it and give it your all.”

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