The Cowboy Way

Mark Boardman poses for a photo at Flickerwood Arena Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018 in Jackson.

Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian

Mark Boardman, owner of Flickerwood Farms, Flickerwood Arena and Flickerwood Angus LLC Talks Life Philosophy

When he was 10 years old, Mark Boardman wanted a horse. In order to get one, his mother told him he had to get a job.

So, Boardman got his own 29-house paper route within the city limits of Cape Girardeau, where he lived. His mode of transportation to deliver the newspapers? His horse.

Mark Boardman poses for a photo at Flickerwood Arena in Jackson.

Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian

“I guess I’ve felt like I should always be a cowboy, from the beginning on,” Boardman says, despite the fact no one else in his family was involved with horses or agriculture. “It’s just who you are. I don’t back down. … I don’t have to change to be somebody else so I can fit in and be a chameleon to blend in to something. I can fit in anywhere. I don’t care if I’m shaking Donald Trump’s hand or what it is — I don’t feel uncomfortable about that. This is who I am. Maybe that’s why I’ve worked for myself all these years. I march to my own drummer. And I’ve managed to survive, one way or the other.”

The young Boardman grew his newspaper route to include 450 houses, employing a couple of other people to work for him. And then at 12 years old, he started a business boarding horses for extra income.

This early foundation of conviction, vision and entrepreneurship was only the beginning of Boardman’s penchant for growing the resources he had. Today, Boardman owns three businesses: Flickerwood Farms, Flickerwood Arena and the business he owns with his oldest son, Flickerwood Angus, LLC.

A way of life

It wasn’t always a smooth road creating what Boardman has today, however. After college, Boardman worked as a pharmaceutical salesman for a year and a half, ultimately deciding it wasn’t for him. Instead, he began farming. This period of his life contained both good and challenging times, he says. When he dispersed his herd of cattle eight years later, he says it was the biggest dispersal in the U.S. that year.

In 1984, Boardman started his wood shaving for livestock business in Cairo, Illinois, and also began a hay business. Three years later, he decided he wanted to move locations.

Mark Boardman drives his ranger through one of his pastures while checking on his cattle in Jackson.

Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian

“We were fortunate enough, we found this field right here and cut a hole in the fence and came in here and started building,” Boardman says. He and his wife, Donna, built a barn on the ground off of Interstate 55 exit 105 near Fruitland. They named it Flickerwood.

Throughout the ‘90s, the Boardmans expanded the barn, as well as built Flickerwood arena and an additional barn. The recession of 2008 dealt a hard blow to their wood-shaving business; when it was running smoothly again in 2013, a fire devastated the barn the business was housed in. Though their profits were significantly reduced and it seemed they would have to close, the Boardmans kept all of their employees. They decided to rebuild.

Through it all, they rodeoed. The Boardmans started a youth rodeo at Flickerwood Arena, where Donna worked registration and Boardman announced. Their sons, Kadin and Cimarron, after spending their childhood practicing the craft, attended college on rodeo scholarships. Today, Kadin is a professional calf roper — which is now officially called tie-down roping — in the Great Lakes Circuit, and his wife is a professional barrel racer. Cimarron is a professional calf roper in Texas.

A modern-day cowboy

A cowboy, Boardman says, is someone who does not try to emulate anyone else, but whose actions and words align with their beliefs and who they are. It is, he says, a state of mind.

“A cowboy would be pretty single-focused, would be very determined and not afraid,” Boardman says. “You can be a cowboy and be in New York [even though] you don’t think like the rest of the people. I don’t think I think like the rest of the people. I think in a different direction.”

This includes living by two rules, Boardman says: Say what you mean and mean what you say. Get educated and work hard.

This is how Boardman lives his life.

And while he doesn’t do it for recognition, others have noticed. Last year, he was presented with the Horseman of the Year award from the Cape County Cowboy Church where he is a founding member. It was presented to him for his contributions to Cape Girardeau County, including his commitment to his businesses and the ways they have positively affected the economy, generating revenue in the area through events that often bring in 600 contestants at a time from other regions.

Even more, he was honored with the award for his commitment to the cowboy way and the manner in which he has positively impacted thousands of peoples’ lives within the equine industry by providing a place to not only rodeo, but also for children to learn responsibility and life values.

Boardman says one way he learned responsibility was through being the president of his fraternity during his college days at Southeast Missouri State University, where he double-majored in zoology and animal science. He still pursues these passions through his businesses, as well as through his interests. He enjoys learning about ornithology, he says; even the name “Flickerwood” is a nod to this, commemorating the name his mother gave to his childhood home, thanks to the woodpeckers — flickers — that drilled into the western cedar wood of the home.

Hard work, too, is something Boardman enjoys; he works 60 or more hours each week and then often puts on events at the arena on weekends. Being all he can be, he says, is one of the tenants he lives by.

“No one can drive you. You have to do that. And I think most people undersell themselves,” Boardman says. “But to get more out of it, you’ve got to push harder. You’ve got to be willing to do more, because competition’s fierce. While you’re sleeping, I’m probably working. While you’re doing something on a Saturday, I’m probably still working. I go to church on Sunday, and I’ll probably come back and work some more. And I’m not telling you everybody should do that, but I’m just saying you can spend your lifetime on 40 acres and never get all the work done. That’s just the way life is.”

From under his tan cowboy hat, Boardman’s eyes hold the steady, honest gaze of a true cowboy.

He says, “I’m not smart enough to know whether I should or shouldn’t, I just plunder on.”