Jennifer Poff Cooper
Cultivating the Farming Life – Family Style By Jennifer Poff Cooper Farming has long been a family thing through ups and down for the Childresses in NRV Childress Family Enterprises, Inc., has a storied history. The farming operation in Montgomery County goes back decades, according to President Floyd Childress III. (His brother, Charles, and son, Michael, own the business with him.) That doesn’t mean that the Childresses don’t operate with the most updated techniques and tools, though. It all started with Childress’s grandfather, a livestock broker who lost most everything in the Depression. With money Childress’s father was able to send home from his military salary during World War II – plus his poker winnings – the family started buying land.
1976 with a major in animal science and a minor in dairy science, having also been in the Corps of Cadets. Growing up on the farm, he had a passion for agriculture. But he also had notions of being an Army officer. So, he served in active duty military for a period, during which he met and married his wife. At the time, there weren’t options for serving in the Army without being separated from a spouse, so Childress changed his mind and reverted to active reserves, in which he served until 1984. That meant farming became his vocation, and he has been at it full-time for 44 years.
Childress has experienced his share of “We accumulated a sizeable land base when successes and failures. The biggest success, land wasn’t expensive,” said Childress. to his mind, is that they have held the family business together and are still farming. Childress graduated from Virginia Tech in Part of that success is that Michael chose
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t AUGUST 2023 / vbFRONT.com
