Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210310
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
STILL RIDING HIS RANGE
You don't often find Southwest Virginia farmers tending their livestock herds from horseback. This ain't Texas, after all.But out Prices Fork Road, that's where you'll find beef and sheep farmer Bill McDonald. Outfitted with leather chaps, he surveys his pasture from the back of JaMar, a 6-year-old, part quarter-horse mare.
McDonald, the Virginia Jaycees' outstanding young farmer of the year, tends 1,100 acres in Montgomery and surrounding counties. He is 31, a big man with a friendly manner and a bushy reddish-brown mustache.
A 500-acre farm, about a half-mile off Prices Fork Road, has been in McDonald's family since 1763, when it was deeded to an ancestor by the governor of Virginia. Bill McDonald is the seventh generation of his clan to farm and live on this particular piece of land.
Thursday, McDonald traded in his horse for a jet plane. He was off to Moline, Ill., where he competes this weekend in the U.S. Jaycees Outstanding Young Farmer Awards Congress.
He is among nominees from 40 states who will compete Saturday to become one of four national outstanding young farmers for 1992. This is the annual event's 36th year, with Deere and Co. of Moline having sponsored it for the past 16.
McDonald is a partner in the family farm with a brother, who is not directly involved in the farm operation. He began farming in 1983 after earning an animal science degree from Virginia Tech.
He has doubled his commercial cattle herd to 180 and increased the sheep flock to 140.
Soil conservation efforts are one of the criteria for the Jaycee award. McDonald used grass waterways, rotational grazing and protected watering areas as soil conservation techniques.
He is a member of Alpha Gamma Rho, a national agricultural fraternity, and has been active in the Farm Bureau. He is not a member of the Jaycees. He was nominated for the state award by a neighbor.
McDonald is past president of the Blacksburg Saddle Club and is president of both the New River Valley Sheep Club and the Virginia Beef Cattle Improvement Association.