SIGN ROCK, VA – Mark 4:26-27 says, “So is the Kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.”
And so it is, and has been, with Mike McDowell of Locust Level Farms in Halifax County. A fourth-generation farmer, over the past 45 years he has transformed his family’s farm from a flue-cured tobacco operation which also raised cattle to not just a cattle-only operation but also one of the pre-eminent Black Angus seedstock producers in the eastern U.S.
Concurrently with developing his beef operation McDowell has been a true man of the Word, sharing the Gospel with members of his community (by teaching Sunday school) and throughout the beef industry.
“I just feel the need to tell my cattle farmer connections about the Gospel,” McDowell said. “This farm has always been about being part of His Kingdom. God gives us the opportunity to spread the Word, and we use the farm to do that.”
At his first on-farm sale – a female production sale in 1998 – before he brought the first animal into the sale ring, he told the crowd about his faith and the influence it had on him and his family.
“People were here from as far away as Texas and Oklahoma,” McDowell recalled. “But before we sold the first cow I told the crowd about the Gospel. And I’ve done the same thing every year.” As his actions clearly demonstrate, there is no doubt about what comes first in McDowell’s heart.
Since he first started selling registered Black Angus in the early 1980s, buyers have flocked to McDowell for the high quality of his cattle. For almost as long, people have also asked him to share with audiences his relationship with the Lord. For decades McDowell has been in demand to speak at industry events about his faith.
In 2011, McDowell was serving on the pastor search committee for his church, County Line Baptist Church in Vernon Hill. After a period of unsuccessful searching, the chair of the committee told McDowell, “We want you to be our pastor.”
That request surprised McDowell. “Though I had long felt the call to evangelize,” he said, “it was not a goal of mine to pastor the church.”
He asked the chair of the committee for some time to pray on the request. That evening, he went home and turned to his Bible, seeking guidance.
The Book opened to the second book of Timothy, chapter four, which has the initial verses “I charge thee … preach the word.” McDowell could not ignore such a clear sign and agreed to be the church’s pastor.
Today, congregants drive from as far as an hour away to be in McDowell’s flock. “I don’t have an agenda,” he said. “I just preach the Word. I find that people are drawn to that. I believe people are hungry for the true Word of God.”
McDowell graduated from Virginia Tech in 1978 with degrees in agronomy and animal science. His first year back, he sharecropped three acres of tobacco from his father, T.K. At the time, the farm didn’t yet have H-2A workers and the curing barns were all log barns. Eventually, the farm purchased and converted to bulk barns.
The last year McDowell sold tobacco was 1999. At his peak he was growing 70 to 80 acres of the leaf. “Tobacco enabled me to get in the cattle business,” he said.
Over the past 45 years, Mike McDowell has built one of the most highly regarded Black Angus seedstock herds on the East Coast. Photo by Karl H. Kazaks
When McDowell returned home from Tech, his father was raising registered polled Herefords. The farm started raising registered Angus in 1980, selling their first Angus a few years later.
Today, Locust Level has 225 registered Black Angus. They have an annual on-farm production sale the second Saturday of November.
Since 1980, McDowell has seen enormous change in the Black Angus breed. “It’s become the industry leader,” he said. “The amount of performance data which has been collected over the past decades is massive.
“When I started out the animals were highly maternal but didn’t show a lot of growth. Today the genetic base is broad enough that cattlemen can select for carcass quality or maternal characteristics.”
McDowell’s goal is to have in his herd a balance between terminal and maternal qualities. Having sold cattle as far away as California and South Dakota, he knows some buyers are looking to drive performance. Other buyers prioritize calving ease – for example, the small herdsman who works a public job and is not always on hand during calving.
Will Roberts works with McDowell in managing Locust Level’s herd. “I’ve worked for Mike for three years but known him for 17 years,” Roberts said. “He’s developed a herd with some of the best maternal genetics on the East Coast.
“He stays on the cutting edge of Angus genetics, staying on the forefront to make sure the buyer’s need is met when the animal leaves the driveway.”
In addition to breeding for growth, carcass qualities and maternal qualities, McDowell takes advantage of the development of DNA testing to select for other traits, including foot score, hair shed, heifer pregnancy and docility.
“I’m a genetic whole herd testing kind of person,” McDowell said. He wants to know how all of his animals score, not just the best.
He uses ET in a small fraction of his herd, using purebred recip cows. “The goal is to not just improve the herd but improve the breed,” he said.
The decades of effort McDowell has made in that regard have not gone unnoticed – in 2019, McDowell was named Southeastern Farmer of the Year.
“Any success we have, God has sent,” he said.
For example, in 1998, the year of his first production sale, construction of the sale barn was completed just two days before the sale. The building was standing, but McDowell didn’t have any handling equipment. He called someone, and they just happened to be travelling in a path which would take them past Locust Level, with a schedule which permitted them to provide the handling equipment for the first sale. Heaven sent.
There have been plenty of challenges as well – such as a straight-line wind event which tore up the sale barn. There was also the time lightning struck and killed nine of McDowell’s top bred heifers.
“Any time I had a question, though, God has sent me an affirmation,” McDowell said.
In 2008, McDowell had questions. Beef prices had slumped, and there was not much buzz in the build-up to his annual sale. The night before the sale, in the drizzling rain, McDowell dropped to his knees in the field outside the sale barn and prayed for the sale to be successful.
That year, as usual, McDowell began the sale by speaking about how he felt called to use the farm to serve the Kingdom of God. That year, a good number of sales went to an unexpected buyer.
That buyer told McDowell, “I’ve been sent to you. I’ve heard some things I needed to hear.” The man, sadly, died less than two years later.
“He saved my year financially,” McDowell said. “I hope I helped to save his soul.”
by Karl H. Kazaks
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