Yes, it’s spring. Apple trees are blooming; cows are grazing the cover crops on our organic corn and soybean fields. The farm is in lock-down. Mt. Folly Enterprise employees are working remotely, and we are doing our very best to keep them on the payroll. It’s the year of the global pandemic. Though we don’t see…
It’s here and we are on it… World Soil Day is here. This commemoration stumped Bernie Sanders at a Town Hall before the Iowa primary, but now he knows that regenerative farmers feed the soil, and the soil feeds us. You may have heard about the human microbiome, a better understanding of which has…
This marks my 38th year at Mt. Folly. My mother, who farmed here before me, died this January. My ties to the land run through her, and Rachel Ware Bush before that, then Mattie Ware and Richard Ware before that, back to early settlement in “the beautiful level of Kentucky.” This truly is a family…
It’s official. 2018 was the wettest year in central Kentucky since area record-keeping began in 1872. Our non-gmo soybeans are still in the field. We’ve been unable to harvest them because we’ve not gotten a good period of dry. Driving into town, I see other farmers in the same situation, fields unharvested. It’s a real…
March and April 2018 It has been a cold, wet spring, and we need to get planting. We’ve weaned the fall calves, fixed everything that needed fixing, and spent two months slogging through mud, and more mud. Right now, the guys are testing the flame weeder, our weapon against weeds in our organic fields. March…
We made it through the winter without any big disasters, and are gearing up for another season. Calving and kidding started March 1, so the farm is happy with young calves and young goats. We haven’t had problems in either herd. Most of the spring seed is ordered, some is delivered, the fields are limed,…
January 2018 The big news for January is that we finished our granary, and started grinding heritage cornmeal and grits for local sale. We’ve sold some Bloody Butcher to a Ky. Distillery, and tried some for Wildcat Willy’s, perfecting the grain blend for our new distillery in our hometown of Winchester. Our goal is system…
Boy, did things dry out fast! For the past month, we have been irrigating the hemp crop and our vegetables for the farm-to-table restaurant at the distillery, opening this fall. The last of the hay is getting cut and rolled, and we wait impatiently for a part of the silage chopper, which broke after we’d…
We need food and farming for people to survive. At the same time, more than half our soil’s carbon has been lost to the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change and causing problems for all of nature, including humankind. We are learning how to fix that at Mt. Folly, working with The American Farmland Trust, The Savory…
