How It Began
Bobby Humphress came back to Kentucky from Florida in the late 1980's and found
his daddy's farm back up for sale. He bought it, and started the long, slow, laborious process of reclaiming the
pastures, building a decent road up to them, and setting a double-wide mobile home on a foundation down at the bottom, close
to the main road.
Over the years he and his wife Alene have invested countless
hours and immeasurable effort into the long process of making his childhood home the workable farm property that it is today.
In addition to a well-built road to the top which replaced the cart track used at the turn of the century, he had two ponds
dug, fenced the perimeter, fenced the pastures to separate them from the forest, and built a 30' x 40' metal work
shop across the creek from their little house, down by the state road.
Time and age overtook them, burdening them with medical bills and slowing them down with unforeseen
illnesses, so in the summer of 2005 they put the property up on the market, listing it with a company that advertised it on
the Internet. That's where I found it, and went to see it in December 2005; we made an offer within three days
of that visit, and to my delight, I was soon the owner of a farm in Kentucky, my "exit strategy" for retirement,
as we call it in the Navy - or, my life's work, as I know it to truly be.
When folks ask me, "What kind of a farm do you have?" I tell them
I'm a grass farmer. They expect to hear about a dairy farm, or Kentucky horse farm, but my farm will be a place
that grows a variety of good food, both animal and vegetable, with little input other than sunlight, rainfall, and judicious
application of soil-building minerals. No, I haven't got any livestock yet, but I will soon - meanwhile, the developing
grass and clover pastures are establishing the foundation for what I hope will be a very productive, intensively managed,
forage-based livestock farm. That means I might try just about anything, but I'll start with beef and lamb and some
poultry, along with a small market garden, and go from there.
But
the grass, or more accurately, the forage, is the main thing. Ruminants like cows and sheep are best raised on pasture
for a number of reasons. Chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks also fare very well on pasture, and I hope eventually to
grow a few acres of grain crops to provide the majority of the supplemental grain they need to prosper.
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