MEET MAGGIE KEITH OF FOXHOLLOW FARM, CRESTWOOD, KENTUCKY
One family’s journey into regenerative and biodynamic farming.
“My mother didn't actually start thinking she wanted to sell meat. She started by saying, I want to heal the land ... Our intention is to build a community and to heal the land more than just take from the land and sell a product.”
--Maggie Keith
HART HAGAN: My guest is Maggie Keith, Marketing Manager and fourth-generation Steward at Foxhollow Farm in Crestwood Kentucky.
Maggie, how are you doing today?
MAGGIE KEITH: I'm great.
HART HAGAN: Good. Tell us a little bit about the history of Foxhollow Farm and your family's journey with the farm.
MAGGIE KEITH: Like you said, I'm a fourth-generation Steward. That means that I'm the fourth generation to be on this farmland in my family. First of all, I'd like to thank all the indigenous people that were here on our land before we came.
My mom and I are very passionate about calling us stewards rather than owners because we do want to be good stewards of this land and care for this land, just like many generations before us and many generations to come.
My great aunt Margaret purchased the farm, the main manor house and about 800 acres in the 30s with her husband. At that point, it was a dairy. They grew wheat and different grains to feed the animals. My aunt had a kitchen garden and an apple orchard. And she loved doves, so she had some dove houses that are still around.
My grandmother was very passionate about farmland and the woodlands. She ended up inheriting it from her aunt when she passed away in the 70s. At that point it was still a dairy. But in the 80s, the dairy was not able to sustain itself. A lot of small dairies shut down in the 80s. At that point my grandmother made the decision to lease the land to a three crop rotation of wheat, corn and soybeans, and a whole lot of chemicals.
She was a vegetarian, she had an alternative health clinic. She thought very organically and ate very clean. She just didn't see how the farming operations could also be organic.
I inherited from her the notion of seeing where our food comes from and what's in our food. She just didn't happen to turn her farmland into that mission as well.
It was a three crop rotation farm until 2006 when my mom, my aunt and my uncle decided to stop that lease. The lease had come up for renewal. They decided to stop that because in 2000, my grandmother got Alzheimer's, and it was up to my mom, aunt and uncle to decide what to do with the family farm.
That's when I came into the picture. I grew up coming out here visiting my grandparents. I remember running through the soybean fields and getting super itchy and sticky, and then playing hide and seek in the cornfields with my brothers.
So I remember the crops, but even though I had a family farm, I had no connection to actual farmers. I'm the first generation of my family to actually farm the land.
In 2006, we got our first 30 head of mama cows. It was in July. I was still at Appalachian State University at that time. I came home to see that event and be a part of it. But then I went back to college.
It was my mom's vision--and my aunt and uncle were very much on board--to create a biodynamic farm community. The infrastructure was not there at the time because it was cropland. So there weren't fences and water. But the goal was to fence in the land that could be used for rotational grazing.
Rotational grazing of cattle is what my mom decided to do in order to take care of the land, for mowing, aeration of the soil and fertilizing.
She didn't actually start thinking she wanted to sell meat. She started by saying, I want to heal the land. So I think that's why we found success. We are very mission driven. Our intention is to build a community and to heal the land more than just take from the land and sell a product.
But I was in business school at the time. And I said we need a revenue source if we are going to keep this farm going for multiple generations. So I wrote a business plan to market and sell grass-fed beef here in Kentucky.