Sustaining a Family Farm
by Deborah Wechsler (2004)

Elmwood Stock Farm
Georgetown, Kentucky
www.elmwoodstockfarm.com  

Elmwood Stock Farm is a multi-generational family farm producing a wide variety of crops and livestock. The Bell family, long-time farmers of Black Angus cattle and burley tobacco, began to diversify about ten years ago as a way to help the farm survive. When Ann came home from college, she began raising vegetables for retail sale at farmers’ markets in Georgetown and Lexington. Her brother, John, focused on raising vegetables on a larger scale for wholesale markets.

A few years later, Ann met Mac Stone at a Southern SAWG conference. Mac, farm manager for the Kentucky State University Research Farm, was also raising organic beef and vegetables on his own at the time. “Mac introduced us to some new ideas,” says Ann, “like organic production and raising pastured poultry.” They began farming together in 1998 and were married in 2002. Their farm is now the largest certified organic farm in Kentucky.

Each family member has areas of responsibility--Ann’s father, Cecil Bell, Jr., manages the beef cattle, hay, and tobacco; her brother, John Bell, manages the major vegetable crops, transplants, and farm labor; and Mac and Ann manage the organic poultry, lamb, and marketing. The whole family is involved in large farm decisions and meets over breakfast each Wednesday to plan and update each other.

Half of the farm’s income now is from the younger generation’s enterprises, and each year the acreage that is certified organic has increased. Their main wholesale produce crops are potatoes and tomatoes. For farmers’ market, they also raise a wide variety of vegetables, plus herbs, strawberries, and a few blueberries and blackberries. They’ve learned they can successfully raise potatoes, cole crops, lettuce, and herbs organically, but with tomatoes, peppers, and cucurbits, for example, it is difficult for them to raise a marketable crop organically. For these crops, they use the same organic techniques, soil amendments, and foliar feeds, scout crops carefully, apply IPM threshold levels, and use a lot less spray than most conventional farmers. Recently, they began experimenting with organic tobacco.

Barley is their main cover crop—they save their own seed--along with some hairy vetch. Rotations generally consist of one or two years in vegetables and winter cover crops, then three or four years in alfalfa. For crops raised on plastic, such as tomatoes, peppers, and strawberries, they use drip irrigation, but they also have some “big gun” overhead irrigation for tobacco and other field crops. Water is drawn from the large creek that crosses the farm.

One new project--large-scale, on-farm composting--involves everyone and will benefit all parts of the farm. Compost is made from stable cleanings from local horse farms, other local manure, and produce scraps from local produce packing co-ops—often as much as 6-8 dump truckloads a week, plus clay. They have purchased a screener and plan to sell bagged compost at the market and to nurseries as well as to use it on the farm.

Elmwood Stock Farm raises and sells certified organic beef, lamb, eggs, and chicken, and turkey. Cattle, sheep and poultry run on the same pasture. The poultry forage within a 40x40 electric-net enclosure with a 10x10 moveable hoophouse. They are locked in the house at night for protection from predators, and the enclosure and house are moved every few days. The farm uses some temporary fencing for the larger stock, but the rotation is informal in relatively large pastures. Pastures are mostly cool season grasses mixed with red and white clover.

While the farm receives a premium for its organic meat and eggs, increased costs, mostly for feed, directly offset these premiums. “Access to organically grown feed for the chickens has been a real challenge for us,” says Ann. “We are actually traveling to Ohio to purchase it, and the cost of feed for our organic laying hens is four times that of conventional feed.” To process the beef and lamb, they haul their animals to a USDA-approved processing plant about an hour away (USDA inspection is required to sell any meat at all in Kentucky). With no commercial processing facility for poultry in the whole state of Kentucky accessible to farmers who are not raising poultry on contract for large corporations, last year they had to haul their poultry to a USDA-inspected plant in Missouri, five hours away. “If we knew it would be such a challenge, we might not have started,” says Ann, “but there was such a demand at the market for organic chickens, we just really wanted to try to meet that demand.” Fortunately, a new USDA-inspected poultry processing plant—only a couple hours away--is due to begin operation this spring, encouraged by the success of a pilot “Mobile Processing Unit,” a cooperative project of the Heifer Project and the KSU Research Farm, designed to test the market for farmers and potential processors.

Recently Ann and Mac also began to experiment with raising a European-style variety of chicken, the “Rainbow”, for an even higher quality product. The Rainbow offers a higher percentage of flavorful dark meat, but takes half again as long to reach maturity. They’ll be watching the cost of raising the birds and the prices they can reasonably expect customers to pay to see if they can profitably raise this new variety.

Ann and Mac sell at two farmers’ markets and to restaurants, and offer home delivery. They use coolers to haul their meat and poultry products to the markets and restaurants. Their main outlet is the thriving farmers’ market in the college town of Lexington, 30 minutes away. On Saturdays, both Ann and Mac go, and she employs a few helpers from Lexington, but it is Ann herself that customers look for, so Ann is there most days of the week. Their customers’ appreciation makes a big difference to them: “It is so much work and you’re not really making much money, but then you have a customer who shows how much they appreciate what you are doing, and that keeps you going,” says Mac.

And appreciate it they do. Says Mac, “People tell us [the meat] tastes the way it used to, or the way it is supposed to, and that you don’t have to worry about what is in it. People eat our lamb who had given it up because they didn’t like the flavor before. We get a lot of repeat customers who seek us out, and when they travel, they buy extra to take with them. Customers say that ours are the only chicken and eggs they will eat now.” The same goes for their produce. Says chef Ouita Michels, “I love their stuff because of its taste, look, smell, feel, color, vibrancy, absolute freshness and quality. Everything they bring to me is nearly perfect... tiny white eggplant, huge luscious dripping black Russian tomatoes, beautiful lettuces and greens, poblanos to die for… my menus would be lost without that farm and their efforts.”

While Ann and Mac are the faces the public meets at the market, the whole family is working together to increase the sustainability of Elmwood Stock Farm. “We’re still in a transition from traditional cattle and tobacco farming to something that is more durable,” says Mac. “We’re in it for the long haul. We’ve made a vow that not on our watch will we lose this place to developers.”  

Location: Central Kentucky, near Georgetown and Lexington
Climate zone: 6  Soil type: Rich, limestone-base loams
Years in commercial production: Family farm for generations; diversification and organic starting in mid-1990s.
Acreage: 750 total. 475 are certified organic, with 400 in pasture, 75 in vegetable rotation.
Crops/products: Beef cattle (organic and conventional); 60-70 acres vegetables, some of it organic; organic chickens, turkeys and eggs; 35 acres of tobacco (mostly conventional; experimenting with organic)
Value-added products: Beef cuts, wrapped and frozen
Notable facilities and equipment: Three greenhouses for tobacco and vegetable plants, salad crops
Weeks in production: Produce spring-fall; meat sales year-round.
Markets: Direct sales to consumers at farmers’ markets and home delivery; deliveries to restaurants
Labor: Family labor (four adults), plus seasonal farm workers and market helpers