When Ryan Hodge stepped outside for the farm tour, the animals came to him. One by one they wandered over for a little attention, and Ryan greeted each of them by name.
Community Farm Alliance’s Sandra Ballew Barnes saw it on one of the hottest days in September, when Ryan and his family welcomed her into their home. Before the tour, they all sat together in the family living room and talked about how the farm got started. Ryan’s partner was quick to say she’s the helper and Ryan is the farmer. By the end of the visit, it was clear Ryan is something more: a true animal whisperer.
We asked Ryan how Community Farm Alliance can best support farmers like him. His answer was practical: show people different ways to farm, connect them with experienced farmers who can walk them through each process, offer hands on help, and bring farmers together through cohorts and events on the farm. In other words, the same kind of community that helped his family get started. Reach out to us at info@cfaky.org to learn more about resources and connections for you and your farm.
It all started with their daughter, who wanted ducks. So the family brought a few home. A community of farmers helped them get going, and from those first ducks the farm kept growing: chickens, including 1,000 meat birds and 500 laying hens, then lambs, and most recently hogs. Ryan worked full time as a carpenter to cover the costs of getting the farm off the ground, and he has built every improvement and upgrade on the place himself. Spend an afternoon with him and you get the sense he can do anything he sets his mind to.
For Ryan, success as a farmer comes down to proper care. He doesn’t believe in shortcuts, and he considers vaccinations essential. Every animal has different needs, and the family learned them through a lot of trial and error. They care for each animal well right up until it is sold or processed, because Ryan believes it matters to know where your food comes from. His favorite part of the work is seeing new life born on the farm.
That care was put to the test last year when the farm flooded. Ryan made sure every single animal made it to higher ground, and his partner told us he carried many of them there himself.
Loss is part of raising animals, and Sandra asked whether it’s hard on him. He said yes. “But I pray daily, and that is how I get through farming daily.” Ryan truly farms by faith.
That faith shows up in how he treats his neighbors, too. Ryan helps whenever someone needs a hand and shares whatever he has. Sandra didn’t leave empty handed either. She drove home with a bag full of Hodge Family Farm goodies.
That’s the work CFA wants to keep growing. If you farm in Kentucky and want other farmers in your corner, reach out to Community Farm Alliance and find out how to get involved.
“It can be hard to look at something and be like, ‘Those pickles are eight dollars. I can get them at the store for three.’ Well, I can tell you I grew those pickles.”
That’s Jann Knappage. Ask her what she wishes people understood about farming and she’ll walk you through a single jar: starting the seeds, watering them, putting them in the ground, harvesting, washing, processing, pickling and finally labeling. All of that is in the price, and all of it happens around a full time job and a young family.
When Jann talks about what helped Fox & Hen grow, others come first. A Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) grant paid for their high tunnels. Grant workshops and support from Grow Appalachia, the Kentucky Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (KCARD), Community Farm Alliance, Kentucky Highlands and other resources. For more information about resources, including financial suppport, reach out to CFA at info@cfaky.org.
Jann and her partner Kevin own and run Fox & Hen Farm on ten acres of mostly hillside in Menifee County. They grow produce and turn much of it into jams, jellies, pickles and herbal salts, which they sell at the Red River Gorge Market and the Menifee County Farmers Market. Jann also serves on the Community Farm Alliance board. Her story says a lot about what it takes to farm in Kentucky today, and about what it means to have a community behind you while you do it.
Most of Fox & Hen’s produce grows in two high tunnels, each about 30 by 70 feet, with another quarter acre planted outside. They don’t use chemicals and follow organic practices, though they aren’t certified. Turmeric and hibiscus grow alongside the vegetables, and fruit trees planted a few years ago are still working their way up to a first harvest. There are animals, too. The pigs will eventually be processed for meat, the chickens keep the family in eggs, and the sheep, Jann laughs, are “more like glorified lawn mowers” for now.
They’ve been at it since 2018, and Jann still isn’t sure she’s earned the word farmer. “Maybe aspiring farmer,” she says. “Even though we’ve been at it for almost eight years, I still feel like a beginning farmer in many ways, but established in other ways.”
That honesty shapes how she thinks about success. Jann and Kevin both work off the farm. They have a small child, and they’ve weathered some wild seasons. The hardest part, she says, is that there’s no clocking out. After a long, hard day at work, the farm still needs you when you get home. So her definition of success is simple: “Just being here is a success.” And on the days the booth is full, with jar after jar of things they grew and made themselves, she’s proud of it.
Food has been at the center of Jann’s life for a long time. She studied nutrition in college and planned to become a dietitian, until time spent working under a dietitian in a hospital showed her that clinical work wasn’t for her. She turned toward community nutrition instead, always with an eye on the bigger food system.
Her first try at growing food came in 2012, during a summer of service when she was her group’s sustainability coordinator. They started seeds in Styrofoam cups, planted an 8 by 8 foot bed, and started far too late. Summer ended before anything was ready to pick. It didn’t matter. During her last year of school she went to work at The Happy Box Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) farm in Troy, Ohio. Her mom had always kept flowers but never a food garden, so learning where food really comes from was new and exciting. “I was like, ‘I’d much rather do this and be outside.’”
That summer of service was also her first taste of Kentucky, and she fell for it. So in 2014, when The David School in Floyd County needed someone to run its garden program, Inch by Inch, she said yes. The David School serves students who weren’t finding success in public school. The garden became a Grow Appalachia site, with two small high tunnels and field plots that added up to just under an acre. Students grew the ingredients for their own hot sauce, made it themselves, and sold it at the Floyd County Farmers Market and at the school.
After two years there, her friend Kathy Curtis, a Community Farm Alliance member who had started that school garden, told her about an opening for CFA’s Eastern Kentucky Farm to Table Coordinator. Jann applied and got the job. “And then they never got rid of me,” she jokes. She has been a member, a staff member and now a board member. “I owe so much of my career, resource connection, and feeling a sense of community to CFA.”
She’s open about the burnout that can come with years of food and farm work. What keeps her going is paying attention to what gives her energy. Farming on top of a full time job is tiring, but it gives her a well rounded view of food. Recently she stepped away from agriculture in her day job, and that change has brought fresh energy to the farm and the market. She loves developing recipes for everything she cans, and she’s taking a community photography class with Erica Chambers so she can learn to photograph food. “Trying to never stay stagnant and also knowing when to say no and what to put your energy into, it’s always changing,” she says. “You have to be willing to fail.”
She has advice for anyone just starting out. For new farmers: there’s no single right way to do anything. “I feel like a lot of times when you’re just starting out you feel like you have to do everything by the book. Well, first off, depending on who you talk to, it’s a different book!”
For new food system advocates, her advice is even shorter. “You gotta show up! You have to be present and people gotta know you, and that’s how you’re gonna have the greatest impact.”
When she isn’t growing, canning or talking about food, Jann is reading. Right now she’s halfway through Burn of the Everflame by Penn Cole, the fourth and final book in the Kindred’s Curse Saga. “It’s an emotional roller coaster,” she says. “It is a wild ride.”
Next time you’re at the Red River Gorge Market or the Menifee County Farmers Market, stop by the Fox & Hen Farm booth and say hello. Pick up a jar of pickles, and now you’ll know everything that went into it.
If you farm in Kentucky and want a community behind you, the way Jann has had for years, reach out to Community Farm Alliance and find out what membership looks like.
Wisps of fog were rising from the rolling hills of Whitley County as nearly 40 farmers, university staff, and technical assistance providers gathered for a late summer field day at GoodThymes Organic Farm, the home of CFA members Cortney Moses and Paul Dengel.
Paul Dengel and Cortney Moses welcomed the group to their farm with a tour of their seed starting area as they shared their journey to farming– from growing up on farm, to owning their first farm, to finding their home at their current farm and Cortney leaving her day job to work full-time on their farm. Along their way, they connected with the resources they needed to grow their farm business, improve their production skills, and find markets which are successful for them.
Paul and Cortney recently completed an irrigation project with funding from the Kentucky Horticulture Council’s on-farm water management program. They installed new drip irrigation system in their high tunnels as well as an overhead watering system in one of their open fields. This has reduced their labor and provided a more consistent and efficient way to get their plants the water they need when they need it.
Healthy soil is at the root of a successful crop. Paul and Cortney demonstrated several of their soil health strategies for the group. Chief among these strategies is cover cropping. Using a mix of grasses and legumes, they use cover crops to add organic matter into the soil. One of their two high tunnels had a mature cover crop so, much to everyone’s delight, Paul demonstrated their flail mower as an efficient way to chop up the cover crop as part of the termination process. From his experience, he noted that it is important to understand when each plant in the cover crop mix will go to seed so that each plant can reach maturity without the plants around it reseeding and potentially creating future weed pressure. The discussion on cover crops was a highlight for many attendees with one person sharing with us later that they went straight “home and added a few cover crops in bare areas. Inspired!”
Below: cover crop with the flail mower in action
Among the many notable aspects of GoodThymes Organic Farm, is the acreage they have planted in pollinator species. Through NRCS’s conservation programs, they created two plots, each bordering their production area, filled with pollinator species. These plots attract the pollinators they need for their crops, improve the health of the soil in which they are planted, and thanks to NRCS, still generate revenue.
As the sun neared its midday peak, the group gathered at Paul and Cortney’s wash and pack area. Thanks to funding from sources such as the County Agricultural Investment Program (CAIP), they have created this space — and will soon be upgrading it — to safely handle their produce from harvest to market.
There’s a special kind of excitement that comes with a CSA share. Are tomatoes in season yet? Will there be more of that delicious kale I got last week? What new recipes can I cook up?
Our friends at Northfork Local Food have been working with Community Farm Alliance since 2018 to help families in eastern Kentucky experience that CSA sort of excitement. Sourcing from small-scale farmers, many of whom are not able to offer their own CSA, the Northfork Farm Shares aggregate local agricultural products.
This past summer’s Northfork Farm Shares contained not only a variety of produce, but also a loaf of sourdough bread. Most shares were purchased by community members, including Hazard employees of Appalachian Regional Healthcare through their company wellness program. However, for many families in the region, the cost of farm fresh food as well as the transportation to get that food poses a barrier. To reach more of these families, Northfork Local Food and CFA developed a unique farm share program serving low-income families in Perry and Knott Counties.
A VISTA packs shares this summer.
Key to the success of this farm share program was strong relationships with community partners who are also interested in addressing both nutrition security and supporting the local farm economy. With funding from Mother of Good Counsel Catholic Church in Hazard and cool storage and packing space provided by Hazard Community & Technical College, the Northfork Farm Shares expanded to reach families through Emmalena Elementary School in Knott County and the Early Steps Program in the Perry County School District. Early Steps staff and the Emmalena Family Resource & Youth Service Center (FRYSC) identified families who could use farm shares and then ensured delivery of the farm shares to those families.
Over the course of this past summer, 44 families, including 85 adults and 106 children, experienced that CSA sort of excitement as noted by one mother who said her “Children were excited to see what vegetables they received each time! They did not always know the names of some of the vegetables, so they were able to learn something new!” Each farm share contained a packet of information on storage and preparation tips for the items in the share as well as recipe ideas. This created a learning opportunity for many of the parents as they tried new ways of preparing familiar foods as well as experimenting with preparing unfamiliar foods.
While many of the families served through this farm share program do not have the space to grow their own garden, Carolyn Sparkman, Emmalena FRYSC Director, shared that participating in the Northfork Farm Share program got several families interested “in just growing a small garden that they could involve their children in.”
left: Meal prepared from CSA share
In addition to teaching children where their food comes from, involving families in cooking new dishes, and inspiring future gardens, the Northfork Farm Shares also met the original goals of improving nutrition security and the local farm economy. The on-farm impact of this program was nearly $6,000 while families receiving the farm shares reported that the food both helped to make ends meet while improving the overall healthiness of their diet. As a grandmother raising her grandson put it, “I can’t always afford vegetables and fruits and when I can you’re never sure if they are really healthy. I look forward to these every other week and I build my meals around them. Thank you for the farm shares.”
Kendra Dixon with the Perry County Early Steps program sees that most families they serve “truly want to eat healthier and just don’t have the resources to do so.”
“Very often these babies visit the farmers market as their first ever official ‘outing.’ Together we smile and cry with joy, because a very genuine, trusting connection between farmer and consumer has been developed over the weeks and weeks of pregnancy and postpartum.”
Chelsea Barbour of High Five Farm wrote those words in a letter to us about what FreshRx for Families means to her farm. Chelsea and her partner Alex grow vegetables in Woodford County, KY. For years they have partnered with FreshRx for Families, through community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes and as a vendor at the Franklin County Farmers Market.
“I get to see firsthand how excited mothers are to try new things, eat healthier, and shop regularly with autonomy and reduced financial strain.”
High Five Farm is a small, diversified vegetable farm now in its seventh year. It sells year round at farmers markets, community foodshare distributions, restaurants and grocery stores. In 2025, the farm made $5,402 in FreshRx for Families sales at the Franklin County Farmers Market, its main market. Chelsea says the program has made a big difference in the farm’s overall market revenue. It also helps them serve neighbors with limited resources while building a stronger local economy.
The relationships last, too. Chelsea watches mothers fall in love with local produce, and they keep coming back to the market, often with the whole family. CFA is proud to support these connections through FreshRx for Families sites across Kentucky, creating income for farmers and feeding local families healthy food.
“This is the kind of programming that creates and sustains genuine community care,” she wrote.
Community Farm Alliance is honored to partner with High Five Farm. Thank you, Chelsea and Alex, for your dedication to FreshRx for Families and to the families you feed.
