Barb and Phil Watts are very proud of their farm, what they produce and what they do for the community. The commercial cattle farm in Alexandria, which they acquired in 2001, is located along State Route 161/37 between New Albany and Granville in central Ohio. They currently crop farm 2,100 acres and feed 2,000 Holsteins. According to Phil, “The first years were slower. Anybody who’s lived through the ‘80s knows that those weren’t good years to expand, and it went slower then. But we have survived that and the last 15 years have been more expansion than ever before.”

At 15 years old, when Dave Morrison landed his first job at a local sign shop, he would have no way of knowing that he’d found his life’s calling. He would have no way of knowing that he also would share this dream with his brother Doug and his children as they would together run a successful sign company and a prosperous family business.

It’s been several years since Dave Felumlee stepped away from his family’s dairy farm and opened his own operation, Claylick Run Angus Genetics in Newark. He began to learn the cattle business through a high school 4H project, and soon thereafter, purchased his first Angus heifers. The entire Felumlee clan, including parents Orville and Rachel (who have a separate 1,200 acre grain-farm operation) and his wife Dawn and kids Keri and Kacey, are proud caretakers of their family’s farm. Their years as dairy farmers have certainly contributed to their success at Claylick Run.

If you’re in the market for a refuse or recycling collection vehicle, a state of the art salt spreader, a hydraulic articulated municipal tractor, or an asphalt maintenance trailer, Heartland Bank is proud to introduce you to our friends at Bell Equipment Company.

Sometimes one random move leads you down a path you might never have thought to travel. For Tracy Beckman, owner of Beckman XMO, the purchase of a used one-color printing press in 1981 led him to open S. Beckman Print and Graphic Solutions. Back then, it was all about providing affordable, timely print services to his customers. According to Tracy, the biggest challenge of opening his business at that time was fully learning the trade and then understanding how to take appropriate financial risks. Today, 35 years later, the company offers the strategic and creative vision of an advertising agency, the technical expertise of an interactive agency and the in-house capabilities of a print production firm.