About us.
We haven’t always been farmers and that’s not a bad thing.
Mary grew up working in a very conventional medical world, living in the suburbs, but spent a ton of time on her grandparents dairy farm and also always had horses boarded at local farms. She always thought she would have a farm full of horses when she grew up. Instead her life journey took her through working in the medical field, a firefighter/EMT, retail and receiving manager, food service manager, equine veterinarian assistant, and 911 dispatch to name a few. Today she is very thankful for the wide variety of work experiences as being a full-time farmer combines them all!
Dave grew up in the rural southern part of our county, joined the military and has spent his life working for the federal government most of the time.
There’s what in dog food??
Our journey began with what we thought was a simple question… “What’s in dog food” The path after that can only be described as God’s plan for us, certainly not the one we saw for ourselves.
We never dreamed that such a “simple” question would change every aspect of our lives. We learned about what’s in “conventional’ food too and when we couldn’t find food that wasn’t adulterated in some way we started raising our own. In 2011 we were blessed with our farm in Kentucky when we started raising larger livestock. We didn’t want to raise “normal” breeds and there began our journey into rare and endangered heritage livestock. As our flocks and herds grew so did our need for more livestock guardian dogs and when we couldn’t find dogs raised the way they should be raised, we started breeding Anatolian Shepherds as well.
The farm grew enough quickly that Mary quit her “real world” job and became a farmer full time. It’s been a journey that constantly changes but the love of the animals, raising the healthiest animals possible has been worth it. Mary became very involved with the county Extension Office, was part of many committees graduated from the Agriculture Entrepreneur Leadership Program as well as teaching classes on raising livestock and poultry naturally. For many years the farm was part of the award winning “The Best of Kentucky” Kenton County Farm Tour introducing the public to a different approach to farming.
The farm business grew quickly and there were areas that needed attention that, in a way, got left behind in the process. It was decided to take a break of sorts from an online presence to ‘bring things up to speed’. We found it hard to teach what is best to do when some of these areas were lacking in our own program because we couldn’t keep up. This time also allowed us to re-prioritize things, concentrate on selecting the best breeding stock, and most importantly – seek God again in all our ways. There’s more to the story, but we’ll save it for another day.