We’ve Embraced the Folly at Mt. Folly

Dear Friends,

At Laura’s Lean Beef, we built a company selling beef throughout the United States and Canada. This changed the food system on a large scale, as we were the first company to sell beef raised without antibiotics or growth hormones nationally. Today, meats raised without antibiotics or growth hormones are available in grocery stores everywhere.

Now, we are taking on something even harder: building a regional food system by growing, processing and distributing new products, from farmer-distilled whiskey, to hemp CBD, to Mt. Folly beef, to regenerative products grown by other farms in our region.  Information about these products, including where to buy them, is now on our website http://mtfolly.com.

Where does this leave Mt. Folly Farm and this website, mtfollyfarm.com? Energized, as I get to embrace the folly here! From our adventures farming organically, to the farm’s inclusion on the Kentucky Registry of Natural Areas, to our first large scale crop of certified organic sunflowers, join us here for the “agony and the ecstasy” (that phrase shows my age) of regenerative farming.

You can even stay at Mt. Folly by renting the Homestead Cabin. I’ll give you a quick tour. We always have events in the works, so make sure to sign up for the farm newsletter, and follow our facebook page.

Why does this matter?

Do you think ag chemicals harm human health? Do you think that industrial farming reduces soil biodiversity, thus limiting soils’ ability to cycle nutrients and store carbon?   Do you think the economic and policy decks are stacked against farmers who transition to organic?  Do you think organic farming is just darned hard, requiring a different set of skills than chemical corn and soybean rotations and feedlot-raised cattle, pigs and chickens?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, join us as we try to figure out a better way to farm, while proving it is a better way to farm, just harder. This may be Folly, but we’re going to do it.

Sure, we are data driven. Who isn’t, especially when one piece of data is the balance in your checking account? We also have soil tests, soil carbon test, soil biological tests, hardness tests, organic matter tests…. lots of tests by four groups of researchers. When the researchers leave, we are driven by observation, team building, team planning.

We’ve embraced the Folly and hope you will too.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Our Mission

Business is a part of life, part of the American way. But it doesn’t have to be rapacious, leaving a few rich people and many poor people. It doesn’t have to plunder the earth. Mt. Folly Enterprises, which I’ve funded, is owned by 9 people, all of whom are from east and east-central Kentucky. As the company grows and prospers, more people will become owners, and I will become a minority shareholder. Shared ownership, including decision-making and profit sharing, requires time spent listening, learning, planning and doing. We can depend on each other to create a culture of continuous improvement.

The natural environment is in crisis. At the same time, nature can heal herself.  Industrial farming is at war with nature; we are not. To pilot nature’s healing, we are creating a new model of people, work and the environment, with a regenerative farm at the center and energetic local businesses radiating outward. Over time, the specifics of this template may change – the businesses may shift, an iterative process of learning may lead to new ways to be regenerative — but the process of discovering and improving the system will remain.

Genuine change comes from the street and fields — from the bottom, not from the top. Therefore, we remain focused on our community, its local faces, its strengths and its flaws.  Since we are committed to real change, our goal is not to scale up, but to scale outward, not to centralize power and
resources, but to distribute them.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve been farming all of my adult life. A drought and a cattle market price crash in the early 1980s helped me make a decision to start Laura’s Lean Beef. As it grew, the company became a complex puzzle of financial management, producer contracting, calling on retail accounts, balancing supply and demand, building a loyal customer base and answering to regulators. It drew me away from the day-to-day of running a farm which I missed, but it taught me many lessons about the shape of the global food system, which I needed to learn.

It took a couple of decades, but we built a nice business. Then in 2008, I had a horseback-riding smash up which put me out of commission for several years. We sold the company, and I thought I might retire. I moved to an island, settled in, but soon wondered how many yoga classes, seminars, and talks could I withstand. I like to work, and my husband is a working man. So back to the farm we came, to start again.