What’s real in the hills

Research briefing compiled Wednesday, September 9, 2026

These are publicly reported goat-adjacent, farm-critter, and Ozarks-wildlife stories as of the week after the Marshfield Expo. The articles in this packet are fictional pieces that riff on these facts. They are not interviews and they do not put words in living mouths.

Just off the calendar

• Ozarks Homesteading Expo — Friday–Saturday, September 4–5, 2026, Ellis O. Jackson Park / Webster County Fairgrounds, Marshfield, Missouri. The ticket page now lists the event as over. Organizers had advertised 40-plus teaching sessions (livestock raising and processing, cheesemaking, canning, soap, foraging, herbal medicine, soil, solar, beekeeping, blacksmithing, livestock guardian dogs) and 150-plus vendors. Saturday opening ceremony had been listed around 7:50 a.m. Hands-on notes before the weekend included chicken processing with Yardbird Pluckers (and a plucker drawing), sheep shearing, rotational grazing, and rainwater collection. Prior-year coverage of the same fairgrounds event cited thousands of visitors and a full hotel/Airbnb stack in town. This paper has not seen a certified 2026 headcount as of press time.
• Whiskey Throttle Farm / The Bath Parlor, Marshfield — Bobbie and Johnny Brooks keep registered Nigerian Dwarfs on about 21 acres and sell goat-milk soap two days a week on the square. Local color from Ozarks Farm & Neighbor (Feb. 16, 2026); still the farm that sat nearest the Expo’s front gate.

Coming up

• Teal season — September 12–20, 2026 (MDC). Six daily, 18 in possession. Sunrise to sunset.
• Archery deer and fall archery turkey — both open September 15, 2026. Deer archery runs Sept. 15–Nov. 13 and Nov. 25–Jan. 15, 2027. Fall archery turkey matches those windows. Firearms turkey portion opens Oct. 1 in open counties. Early antlerless firearms deer: Oct. 9–11 in open counties.
• 40th Annual Dixon Cow Days — September 18–20, 2026, downtown Dixon, Pulaski County. Live music, parade, 5K, car show, youth pageant, hot-dog eating contest, and a raffle to take home a live cow (promoters: “or TWO”). Sunday is a praise-and-worship close with the Dixon Ministerial Alliance.
• Arkansas Goat Festival — Saturday, October 3, 2026, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Perryville Park, Perryville, Arkansas. Free. Goat parade, costume contest, lingerie show, soap-making demo, two stages, vendors (list reported full). Municipal goat park on site. No dogs.
• Howell County court — Logan A. Davis, 20, of rural Willow Springs, is summoned for an initial appearance September 28, 2026, before Associate 37th Circuit Judge R. David Ray. Public charge: one felony count of first-degree property damage. West Plains Daily Quill (Aug. 19) reported a June investigation on Forest Service land off Private Road 5371: damaged electric fencing and six dead goats (two nannies, four kids), tire tracks to the animals. This paper records the charge. It does not record a verdict and does not fictionalize the case.
• Grazing school — Shannon County three-day grazing school listed Sept. 28–30. Howell County Extension: 417-256-2391.

Flash drought, hay, burn bans

• Missouri’s statewide drought alert expired September 1 after nearly a year (DNR / Gov. Kehoe’s order). Local conditions did not get the memo. Brownfield Ag News (Sept. 8): Missouri Department of Agriculture’s Tony Hancock said southern Missouri was “getting pretty serious, pretty fast” — springs drying, named creeks running thin, some producers already on supplemental hay. Joplin quotes on bred cows and pairs ran about $400 to $800 lower than the prior month on feed and market uncertainty.
• Drought Monitor figures circulating this week put roughly 27 percent of Missouri in moderate-to-extreme drought (D1–D4 near 26.8 percent; D0 adding more dry ground). Flash-drought language is being used for western Missouri and northern Arkansas.
• KY3 (Sept. 7): fire districts including Ozark and Nixa issued outdoor-burn bans after the state alert expired. Later compilations listed countywide bans in Howell, Oregon, Polk, and Jasper, plus Bolivar. Mark Twain National Forest: moderate fire danger. A midweek cold front was expected to bring showers and storms late Wednesday into Thursday.
• Arkansas burn-ban maps checked this week showed every county under a ban. Confirm with the county before lighting anything that used to be legal last month.
• University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Extension (Aug. 4, still standing): New World screwworm is a documented threat to small ruminants as well as cattle. Sheep and goats accounted for 18 of 42 confirmed U.S. domestic-animal cases as of mid-July (Texas and New Mexico). Arkansas remained free of confirmed cases but asked producers to watch wounds and report suspects.

Wild side of the same hills

• Armadillos. MDC furbearer biologist Nate Bowersock told KRCG (July 24) that nine-banded armadillos are expanding north in Missouri, helped by milder winters, and “are here to stay.” They dig. There is not much that deters them. A MoDOT wildlife-crossing study this summer also captured trail-cam armadillos on the night shift.
• Deer, turkey, coyote. A Smithsonian / Missouri camera project retracing Lewis and Clark mammal surveys (Jefferson City News Tribune, Sept. 8) pulled young turkey and young coyote, plus white-tailed deer and two squirrel species, off 15 cameras left out since June. Archery week starts Monday.
• Crossings. A statewide roads-and-wildlife study flagged high deer-collision corridors even inside urban cores and recommended using existing bridges and underpasses where animals already travel (News Tribune / Missouri News Network, Sept. 1).
• Bears and hogs. Missouri’s black-bear estimate remains on the order of 1,000 and growing; 2026 bear season is Oct. 17–30 with a raised permit and harvest framework. Feral-hog work continues under the multi-agency partnership (thousands removed in recent annual reports; hogs still a crop, water, and disease problem where they persist).
• Pollinators. Expo classrooms included natural beekeeping. Standing Ozarks coverage (KSMU / Beekeepers Association of the Ozarks) keeps repeating the unfashionable truth: honey bees matter, and so do the native bees that never get a festival booth.
• CWD policy shift (background). MDC said in July it has no plans for targeted deer removals this winter and will lean on hunters and landowners for chronic wasting disease work.

Goats and the rest of the yard

• AppleJo Farms, Eldon, Mo. — Public farm page in September 2026 announced a retirement plan; owner intends to keep select does and named bucks and was bottle-feeding a large kid crop at last posting. This paper records the announcement. It does not invent a farewell tour.
• Still on the local color card: Ozark’s Treasured Acres Farm, Ava — late doelings Mayhem and Midway; Selene Grand Champion Nigerian Dwarf. DeLapp Mountain Ranch, Hartville — ADGA Nigerian Dwarfs and a mixed flock. Robertson operation, Jackson County, Arkansas foothills — about 200 sheep and 50 goats, plus heritage poultry, pigs, and guardian dogs. The Goat Ranch, Dade County, still named for goats last kept there in the 1950s. Bear Creek Boers, Lebanon, continues posting 2026 Boer sales into Arkansas and in-state.
• Boone County rescue (already reported Sept. 3): about 70 barnyard animals from an eviction — goats, sheep, lambs, two turkeys, dozens of chickens — were all claimed by Sept. 1. Goat and sheep adoptions capped at four per home.
• Kansas City trunk kids (already reported): Denver and Aspen, two bottle-age kids found in a stolen-car trunk in August, adopted after foster hold by KC Pet Project.

Standing cautions, not new local alarms

• North Carolina mobile petting zoo (Farm Adventures, Harmony / Iredell County): three baby goats tested positive for rabies after a skunk entered a pen in late July; a fourth presumed positive. Exposure window cited July 28–Aug. 27 across a statewide tour. WBTV / Gray (Sept. 7) reported nearly 300 people evaluated and more than 200 advised to vaccinate. No human rabies cases in that state since 2011. This is not an Ozarks outbreak. It is a reminder that wildlife, pens, and fair-season handling still matter here.
• Shade, two water tubs, no midday hauling, and no brush pile with a match in it remain the whole early-September sermon.

Items already fully reported in the August 28, August 30, and September 3 packets and not re-broken here: Sale of Champions dollar figures; Heart of the Ozarks Fair Vegas kid; Crisco of Backbone Bluff; Treasured Acres kidding wrap; the Boone County seventy; the trunk kids as first-day news.