Gentlemen Farmers: Cattle Herds of the Rich & Famous - Paperback

by Ronald Francis Eustice (Author)

GENTLEMEN FARMERS: FARMS & RANCHES OF THE RICH & FAMOUS: Full color; 290 pages; profusely illustrated with over 700 photographs. Today very few people can be described as "Gentlemen Farmers" and many would question the meaning of the term, but there was a time when it was fashionable and a status symbol for the wealthy to be gentleman farmers. This was especially true during the Twentieth Century when many wealthy individuals owned extensive farms and prize livestock of various species. There were hundreds and perhaps thousands of farms in Canada and the United States owned by rich and famous people commonly known as gentleman farmers.

Gentleman Farmer Defined

The term seems to trace its origin to late-medieval times in Great Britain and France where gentry (men of high social status), owned large parcels of land and hired laborers to care for the livestock and till the soil. The typical 'gentleman farmer' would normally be a person of wealth, although not aristocracy, who had no economic imperative to make a profit from farming, but operated a farm out of interest or pleasure. Farms varied from only a few to hundreds or even thousands of acres, and produced any number of types of grains, poultry, or other livestock. Most gentleman farmers employed a farm manager to oversee the operation and hired qualified labor to run the farm. The farm was seldom the chief source of the owner's income, but sometimes profit was a goal. Most gentlemen farmers inherited wealth, had private income, worked in a profession, owned a large business, married well or had some combination of the above. This book features five famous physicians from the world-famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota who had Holstein herds, Champ Goodwood Dairy in Missouri owned by a family that made their wealth building buggy springs, E-L-V Apache Ranch in Michigan owned by Eugene Vesely who grew up in poverty and made a fortune building camping trailers, James J. Hill, the "Empire Builder" who owned the Great Northern Railroad, and Charlie Ward, an ex-convict who built a specialty advertising business and the largest emplyer in St. Paul, Minnesota. Ward owned Holsteins and Guernseys on five different farms in Wisconsin. $60.00.