Our family farm is small but we work hard to provide the most natural organic hay possible.
We don’t have close relationships with the supply farmers; we ARE the farmers. We are at least 4th generation farmers and 3rd generation on our family farm in central Kentucky. We don’t have warehouses; we have hay barns on our farm. We have 50 acres of hay in 4 fields all adjacent to each other; 2 of the fields within a stone’s throw of our house. Our hay is a mixture of 100% organic orchard grass, endophyte-free Kora fescue and red and white clover. This is a healthy mixture of natural fiber and protein. There’s no need to manually/ unnaturally mix grasses/legumes. There are no additives, preservatives, pesticides or GMO products.
We’ve been supplying healthy organic hay to horse and livestock farms for a couple of years. We produce small square bales of hay – dimensions are 36”x16”x14” and store them in our hay barns. These bales range from 45lb to 60lb and average about 50lb, depending on how much clover happens to be in that bale. Sometimes when pressed for time (rain clouds) we will “farm out” round baling to a local farmer. These bales range in size depending on the round baler from 4x5 ft to 5x6 ft that can weigh as much as 1500lb.
We are now beginning to supply small pet owners with hay. We ship directly from our barns to your pet with the mission of the least amount of processing as possible. We separate the “flakes” (1-2” slices) that together form the small square bale of hay. We place these flakes of hay into the simple plain kraft corrugated box. We don’t chop up, mix, add to or alter it. We hand pack each box that goes out so we see and smell it before shipping it. All of this to make your little pet happy with lots of natural variation. Each box will have varying amounts of the types of grasses and legumes (clover) depending on the field topography and soil types that we are blessed with in Kentucky. This is exactly what your pet would see, smell and consume in the wild.
We are relatively new to the organic world, about 5 years into it counting our transition time and became certified organic June, 2019. We are certified organic by the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and approved to use the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) Certified Organic seal. We are in the USDA Organic Integrity Database (https://organic.ams.usda.gov/integrity/ ). Our farm is also certified by the Real Organic Project which was started by farmers to protect the meaning of organic. Real Organic remains exactly what organic was always intended to be. (https://www.realorganicproject.org/).
We are still learning about organic hay and rebuilding our soil after decades of conventional corn/soybean production. Growing and harvesting hay in Kentucky isn’t easy, especially utilizing organic practices. The rainy weather in the spring and typical dry weather in late summer can be very challenging. We don’t irrigate our fields, so if we go weeks and months with very little rain, then productivity is significantly affected. Our organic certified grass and clover seed and organic inputs/ fertilizers (chicken litter, gypsum, etc.) are all expensive and not easy to find close by our farm. But we think it’s worth it to build up the soil to sustain productivity for many decades and to provide very healthy hay for your small pets (and for horses, cattle, sheep).
The Farming Family
My name is Keith and I grew up on this farm in central Kentucky. It was a dairy farm, so life was great with plenty of work to do every day. My dad, Philip, was a very hard worker and forward thinker/innovator. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy the twice daily milking schedule and neither did my siblings, so dad sold the cows many years ago. After college at the University of Kentucky (BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering) I spent many years working in manufacturing in quality and continuous improvement. The past 5 years have been focused on restarting our family farm by transitioning about half of it over to organic hay. My wife, Megan and my son, Jon both work hard to help make this happen. We enjoy the challenges and the benefits of farm life and developing a sustainable organic farm operation that feeds healthy hay to your small pets and to larger animals too!
Our family farm is small but we work hard to provide the most natural organic hay possible.
