The Final Years of the Family Farm
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Caitlin Cooper
Team Luster
Over nearly 70 years, Katie and Buster Newberry have grown their farm in Maryville, Mo., from around 200 to roughly 1,000 acres, raising everything from sheep and cattle to corn and beans. Now, their fields and tools mostly sit at rest. Gone are the days of hogs and harvest, of Katie’s once-popular ceramics studio and Buster’s best machines. They started to lose hope for the farm's future when their daughters, Gayla and Glinda, married “city boys.” The farm is now in its final act.
Each day, Buster fires up his beloved ATV after breakfast to care for his cows and zoom between barns, where his tractors collect cobwebs. Katie spends her afternoons boxing up their many belongings. The couple, who are both battling cancer, are savoring every minute left on the farm they nurtured.
Buster Newberry, 87, does morning chores on his farm near Maryville, Mo., before feeding his cattle.
Buster cruises across a pasture in the heart of his 1,000-acre farm. Buster's wife, Katie, 81, gets nervous that he'll hurt himself while doing chores on his own.
Buster walks through a cornfield that he leases to other farmers.
Buster, his wife Katie and their daughter, Gayla, read a story in the Maryville Forum after eating lunch. Their daughters both live in the region but are not following in Buster’s farming footsteps.
A piece of crocheted home decor hangs in the family's living room on the farm where Buster and Katie have lived since 1965.
Katie spends her afternoons organizing belongings so their daughters won't have to sort through them in the coming years. Katie unpacks a box of dishware to use as a shelter for a litter of barn cats.
Buster gets out of a truck stored in the barn. As an only child, Buster learned how to farm from his father.
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