On a beautiful Fall day this past October, I jumped in my car and decided to take a drive. I was alone on this trip, as it was spur-of-the-moment. I rolled the windows down, turned the radio up, and just drove. I followed KY-55 out of Taylorsville and all the way to 421 in New Castle, KY. As I rolled into town, numerous historic buildings caught my eye, causing me to pull over and take photos. I returned on another Fall day to take a tour of my original findings; the Henry County Courthouse and The Berry Center.
The Berry Center was a very unexpected surprise. I was expecting a tour of the historic home with its history. That’s not what took place. Instead, I received a tour of The Berry Center’s “campus” and learned of Kentucky’s farming industry and The Berry Center’s mission. It was an absolute delight, and I can’t thank Michele and Ben enough for taking time with me that day. I learned so much, and it honestly made me stop and appreciate Kentucky’s farming industry in a way I never had before.
I knew when I left that day that I had to write about that trip, but I wasn’t really sure how I would do it. The Berry Center campus includes three very different historic buildings, but that’s not what they are about. The Berry Center is focused on supporting Kentucky’s farmers today, so I wondered how I would bring Kentucky history to you. It finally dawned on me that I would approach this post a little differently. Kentucky has been a farming state from the beginning, so rather than focusing on one place, I’ll focus on one industry; one that you see all along the rolling hills of Kentucky, one that started when Daniel Boone, James Harrod, and so many other pioneers began settling the land that would become known as Kentucky. Let’s take a look at the history of farming in Kentucky.
Early Settlers, Early Farmers
I don’t suppose I need to tell you that our settlers were first farmers out of necessity. Daniel Boone, along with many of our earliest settlers, brought seeds and livestock with them down the river or over the Appalachians. They came to Kentucky County knowing they were building settlements. Growing gardens that included fruits and vegetables was a must for survival, and dairy cattle allowed them to process their own milk-based products.
As more settlers traversed the rivers and mountains to Kentucky to claim their land grants after the Revolutionary War, farming became more of a business.
The 1800s and Agriculture
The majority of Kentucky residents were farmers by the 1800s. Agriculture was seen as a way to become wealthy and successful. Livestock had the earliest appeal. There was an ease with livestock – you feed them grass and sell them for profit. It was quite normal to see farmers driving their livestock down undeveloped roads like Main Street in Louisville.
It was agriculture that was largely responsible for the founding and development of Louisville and Lexington. Louisville naturally became a trade center for agricultural products because of its location on the Ohio River. Flatboats, barges, keelboats, and later steamboats carried products such as flour, cured meats, produce, and livestock (including cattle, hogs, mules, sheep, and horses) to the east and south, including Pittsburg and New Orleans. This led to the founding of the Bourbon Stock Yards in Louisville – the oldest livestock facility in America.
The Bourbon Stockyards, which began as the Bourbon House, a hotel for farmers located between Washington Street and Story Avenue in Louisville, was the oldest continuously operating stockyard in the United States. In 1864 a new facility closer to the railroad was built at Main and Johnson Streets. …the yards closed in 1999.
U of L University Libraries
Lexington not only grew as a political base for men like Henry Clay but also as an agricultural region for settlers. It was in this region, which became known as the Bluegrass Region, that settlers found the best soil for farmlands. This led to the founding of the Bluegrass Stock Yards, the building of tobacco marketing facilities, and thousands of acres of land cleared for farming.
Farming Success
The chances of farming success truly depended on where land was claimed, granted, or purchased. Those farmers with land in the Inner Bluegrass region had the best chance of farming success, as this area had richly fertile soils, leading to a very productive agricultural region. Farmers could also find success in the Outer Bluegrass Region and the Pennyrile Plains.
As I stated earlier, agriculture was seen as a road to success and wealth. Unfortunately, this was not actually the case for most Kentucky farmers. By the mid-1800s, most Kentucky farmers were living on 50 acres of land in a small frame or log home. A few were hired as tenant farmers and didn’t own the land at all. Only a small percent of farmers were considered wealthy; owning 100+ acres of land, a large brick or frame house, and a few to several slaves.
Few outbuildings dating before 1800 survive in Kentucky today. A few springhouses from the mid-to-late 1700s still exist. These are usually all that remain of our Revolutionary War Stations that were scattered throughout Central and Eastern Kentucky. You can read about the Stations of Jefferson County in my previous post here.
It is the few successful farmers that made the most impact on Kentucky’s landscape. The log or small frame homes of the lesser-successful farmers have been lost to time. The brick “mansions,” built mostly on the backs of enslaved people, are the ones that still stand today. Other structures on the property usually include rock fences, barns, and a few outbuildings. In the 1800s, you would have seen wealthy farms on the rolling hills of Kentucky that included detached kitchens, slave houses, smoke/heat houses, and springhouses. The mid-to-late 1800s brought specialized farming which led to specialized buildings including dairy barns, corn cribs, ice houses, etc.
I am happy to report that the majority of Kentucky residents did NOT own slaves. The historic homes that still stand today, dating to antebellum times, can mostly be attributed to those enslaved by wealthy farm owners.
Rock Fences in Kentucky
If you are a Kentuckian who has driven down even one backroad in Central Kentucky, you’ve seen a rock fence or two. Rock fences began replacing wooden fences in the 1830s. Irish stonemasons were actually employed to construct the dry-laid rock fences (the most common type found in Kentucky) around fields, pastures, orchards, property lines, and along road frontages.
Stone fences were extremely costly, so middle and upper class farmers were the only ones who could afford to have them built. Rock fences were built to separate the farm’s working spaces in order to give it a finished and orderly appearance. You see, stone fences were a sign of wealth, the more rock fences you had, the more money you had. While the fences were a status symbol, they were permanent (compared to wooden fences that would rot and need to be repaired or even replaced) and therefore a long-term investment. I’d say they were a pretty good investment, considering there are stone fences still standing that are almost 200 years old. Clearly, it wasn’t all about the status symbol.
Mid-1800s Brought Changes
“…wealthy, college-educated gentlemen farmers promoted more rational and efficient methods of both farming and arrangement of farmstead complexes.”
AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC OUTBUILDINGS IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN KENTUCKY, 1800-1865
As noted above, the mid-1800s brought specialized farming to Kentucky. Farmers began to move away from “mom-and-pop operations” to Scientific Agriculture. College-educated “gentlemen farmers” counseled neighbors on improving farming operations. They would lend their prize stock for breeding purposes, and they founded local agricultural societies and fairs. This increased both crop yields and cattle quality.
Gentlemen Farmers built the first expiremental stock, mule, and horse barns in the 1830s and 1840s.
AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC OUTBUILDINGS IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN KENTUCKY, 1800-1865
In addition to Gentlemen Farmers, road construction also helped the farming industry expand. Roads allowed for products to be delivered more easily to regional areas where waterways could then be used for further shipment. Shipping points along the Ohio, Green, Kentucky, and Cumberland Rivers grew larger as farmers could bring their surplus products such as butter, ham, eggs, and/or corn whiskey to be traded or sold for necessities. Farmers in the tobacco and hemp industry shipped their goods great distances from the easily accessible shipping ports, allowing that industry to grow even larger. (It was often the tobacco and hemp farms that had the largest number of enslaved people. Processing hemp was a very dirty, back-breaking job. My guess is that it took more people to do it.)
Finally, the building of railroads enhanced Kentucky’s agricultural success even further.
By 1860, Kentucky had 83,689 farms; ranking #1 in rye, barley, horses, and mules, #2 in hemp, tobacco, corn, wheat, and sheep, #3 in hogs, and #4 in cattle (AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC OUTBUILDINGS IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN KENTUCKY, 1800-1865).
Present-Day Farming in Kentucky
Today, Kentucky’s numbers have dropped considerably. In 2023, only 69,100 farms remained with 12,400,000 acres of farming operations (USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service).
As Kentuckians have moved away from tobacco farming over the years, beef cattle production has taken its place. In 2012, half of all Kentucky farms owned cattle. Other livestock include goats, sheep, hogs, and poultry. Soybeans and corn are the top crops, but hay and wheat are also grown. While still decreasing, tobacco is still grown in Kentucky. Currently, Kentucky has the 2nd largest number of tobacco farms in the country, sandwiched between North Carolina (#1) and Tennessee (#3). Agriculture today contributes $3.2 billion in cash to Kentucky’s economy each year (Kentucky Farm Bureau).
The Berry Center Lends a Hand
“Taken all together, The Berry Center promotes the vital connection between urban centers and the rural communities that surround them by collaborating closely and working actively alongside entities and institutions with complementary goals. We hope that you, too, will join us in this good and vital work.”
The Berry Center
Agriculture today takes technology, business degrees, engineering, and more to make the industry economically powerful. It wasn’t until I stepped into The Berry Center that I began to understand that.
The Berry Center was established in 2011, standing on the works of Wendell Berry, John M. Berry Sr., and John M. Berry Jr. Their vision is of not just a state (Kentucky), but a nation, full of well-tended farms that serve and support healthy local communities. They are accomplishing that through various avenues.
- The speeches, letters, manuscripts, and articles written by Wendell Berry and others are held and studied at The Berry Center Archives.
- The center educates young farmers with “workshops, short courses, and low residency education in low impact forestry, draft animal and livestock management, and agrarian humanities” (The Berry Center).
- Using lessons from the tobacco economy, the center is working to ensure parity prices for farmers. The center is the home of Our Home Place Meat which is a beef program patterned after the tobacco cooperative model. It ensures healthy profits for farmers and keeps money in our local economies.
My Visit and Reflection
As I stated at the beginning of this post, I showed up at The Berry Center expecting something completely different than what I received and I’m glad I did! Until I walked into the center and began a conversation with Michele, The Berry Center’s archivist, I had never thought very deeply about farming.
As a kid, my grandfather had a farm in Shelby County, KY. I grew up visiting my grandparents regularly, but because they were farmers, our visits were often work visits. My entire family – from my parents and my brother to my aunts, uncles, and cousins – showed up when it was time to plant the tobacco crops, cut the tobacco, house the tobacco… you get where I’m going with this, right? We were there a lot and it took a village. Beyond the labor, I never thought more about it. Yes, my grandparents had cattle and sheep, too. They had horses and ponies, peacocks and kittens, and a goat – a really smelly goat. My time on the farm with my grandparents (and every family member I’ve ever known) still holds a very special place in my heart. But, until I spoke with Michele, I had never thought about what it truly meant for my grandparents to actually make a living as farmers.
Michele taught me about the other steps of processing tobacco that I never saw. She taught me about the tobacco cooperative that my grandparents likely have been a part of. There was so much more to farming that I never saw or thought about because I was so young at the time. It was while standing with Michele that I had the ridiculous “Aha!” moment – Kentucky had a farming history! How had I never thought of that before???
Ben then came into the library and introduced himself. He is the Director of Operations at The Berry Center, but more than that Ben is an advocate for Kentucky farmers and Kentucky’s agriculture industry. Speaking with Ben took me from the past to the present. Farmers today approach farming completely differently than those 250 years ago – yes, I know it only makes sense, but I never took the time to think about it. To me, farming was putting the plant in the ground, giving it water, and watching it grow. Harvesting it when it was time, and selling it for a profit. Ben taught me that there is way more to it than that. Today, farmers often receive college degrees; to be successful they must understand business, technology, chemistry, biology, engineering, mechanics, and so much more! Do you know how much phosphorus needs to be in the soil to make something grow? I sure don’t, but our farmers do. Do you know how to run a hay bailer or when to cut it so that it doesn’t mold? I don’t, but our farmers do.
In all seriousness, I walked away from The Berry Center with a newfound appreciation for our farmers. I mean, I always had it. If there is food on the table, thank a farmer, right? This new appreciation was something completely different. The amount of knowledge they must have on a plethora of subjects is simply mind-boggling.
Then, I was reminded that farming is not consistent. One season can be super successful allowing farmers to put food on their own table, while the next season can be completely devastating if there is a drought, or a flood, or an insect infestation. When you are not sure if you will be able to keep the lights on, why would you want to be a farmer? I mean, really? That’s where The Berry Center comes in. They are working in their own community of New Castle, KY (and beyond) to keep the farmers in farming, to keep Kentucky’s agricultural industry going, and not to lose more Kentucky farms to neighborhoods.
After our very long and very informative conversation, Ben showed me the rest of The Berry Center’s campus. The c. 1790 log cabin is currently undergoing restoration. It typically houses their bookstore and gift shop. It is planned for the bookstore to return to this beautiful cabin this Spring. Currently, rotting logs are being replaced, the foundation is being leveled, and the chinking is being redone. I had the opportunity to walk inside the cabin to see the work that had already been completed on the interior walls. Make sure to check out the photos below!
All Photos Courtesy of KHT
The yellow c. 1940s Heritage Building was originally a funeral home with apartments on the second floor. Today, The Berry Center uses it as an event space for educational classes, workshops, and presentations. It is also temporarily the home to the bookstore.
All Photos Courtesy of KHT
The white building (the 1820 Oldham Home) was originally a family home. Today, it houses the center’s offices, library, and archives. Tours are available on Wednesday and Friday from 1:00-4:00 PM.
Wrapping it all up, I’ll say this – sustainable farming. That’s a term I learned while visiting The Berry Center. That’s also a term they firmly believe in. The Berry Center is fully committed to sustainable farming. When farmers know that they can draw a paycheck regularly, then it is more likely that they’ll stay on the land and continue the industry that started this great state of ours so many years ago.
Go ahead, get out and see the farmlands of Kentucky! Until next time…