Laura Freeman at Mt. Folly Farm in Winchester. In August, the farm was awarded a USDA Climate-Smart Commodities Project Grant to promote sustainable farming practices through the Ohio River Valley.
Many people know of Laura Freeman from her brand-name beef products in grocery stores nationwide, but few may know of her 40-plus-year history of promoting healthy food and smart farm management practices.
Let’s begin at the beginning: Raised in Winchester, Freeman graduated from Duke University. Her mom inherited a family farm in Winchester called Mt. Folly that went back generations. The trouble was the farm was losing money. Just as Laura was about to attend graduate school her mother called and said they couldn’t afford to keep losing money and would Laura return to Winchester and manage the farm. “I said ‘Sure, Mom,’ thinking I was coming back to run a little organic garden,” said Freeman in a recent interview. “Boy, was I shocked at what I was facing!”
The early 1980s was a tough time for the farming industry in the United States. There was a drought, low farm prices, and dairy herd buyouts. People drove tractors into Washington D.C. to protest farm conditions, and little Midwest family farms closed by the thousands. Small-town economies were crippled. John Deere laid off thousands of workers. There were many bankruptcies.
Freeman thought of ways to save her own family’s farm. She began reading all the diet advice at the time. Everyone was pushing low-fat foods, it seemed, so she decided to create a low-fat beef product. Cattle would be raised grass-fed and without any antibiotics and growth hormones, an alternative to traditional beef high in cholesterol and fat. “So, in 1984, I started Laura’s Natural Beef,” said Freeman. “We tried to sell it off the farm. We kept the beef in coolers in the dairy barn. Nobody would come to buy it, period. I couldn’t sell one pound!” But she and her family didn’t give up.
“That’s when I changed the name to Laura’s Lean Beef,” she continued. “My brother drew the first label and the first store we got it into was Thompson’s IGA in Winchester. There was no Kroger or Winn Dixie nearby.” Before long, the products went nationwide.
In 2007, Freeman was seriously injured in a horse-riding accident. “That was my life’s turning point. I hit the back of my head right at my spine. I came so close to becoming a quadriplegic. It left me with nagging, chronic full-body pain. I also broke my pelvis and spent time at Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital in Lexington. It took me about five years to recover.”
Freeman sold Laura’s Lean Beef, retired, and moved to Massachusetts. The environment didn’t suit her, and she moved back to Kentucky. Her daughter was by then running the family farm and, in 2015, started raising hemp. “A fellow hemp producer told me about full-spectrum CBD and suggested I try a dose. I did, and it worked,” Freeman said. “My full-body pain from the horseback riding accident disappeared, and my osteoarthritis was much improved. I knew Mt. Folly needed to grow, and so we did.”
Mt. Folly Farm has been in Freeman’s family since the 1830s. It has been an environmental farm since 1982. Recently, Mt. Folly Farm was awarded a Climate-Smart Commodities Project Grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which will assist the farm in sharing its climate-smart farming practices with other operations throughout the Ohio Valley, including in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee. We spoke with Freeman about what might come next.
What are some of the climate-smart initiatives you’ll promote with the USDA grant?
When you properly manage cattle, they become allies in the fight against climate change. We implement things like silvopasture, the use of trees in livestock pastures. Summers are hot in Kentucky. When you see a herd of cattle crowded under two trees in a huge pasture, that’s bad. It’s healthier for them to have more trees and to spread out. Also, prescribed grazing involves rotating cows to different pastures every two to four days to maintain the health and vigor of the plants they eat.
What else helps?
Conservation crop rotation. Most farmers grow like this: soybeans, corn, soybeans, corn. Year after year. We introduce diverse crops into the rotation, like rye and sunflowers. They’re ‘weird’ things to some people, but they improve the soil. Also, reducing tillage and using cover crops. This is an organic practice. We reduce tillage by never, ever plowing — no bare soil. We use a roller-crimper to help plant cover crops, even radishes, Australian winter peas, or grains, to increase the health of the soil over the winter. Biomass left over from a healthy canopy of cover crops suppresses weeds.
What is Mt. Folly Enterprises?
Mt. Folly Enterprises is a system with the farm as the center of it. I funded it, and we built local companies out of the farm. That includes two buildings in Winchester where we started businesses like a liquor company called Regeneration Distilling, a craft farm-to-bottle distillery, and a mail-order company called Laura’s Mercantile, which mostly sells CBD products because hemp is legal and beneficial. Then I hired people who live around and east of Winchester. The companies issue shares of stock. The young people who work hard and make good profits are granted more shares until they eventually own it, and I become a minority owner. It is one way to help build wealth in Eastern Kentucky.
You’re also in the accommodations business, aren’t you?
Yes, we are. We have The Homestead at Mt. Folly Farm, which is on VRBO and Airbnb. The original farm log cabin has been painstakingly renovated and has an old/new feel to it with all the amenities guests expect. This is also a working farm. Guests can hike or bike (two mountain bikes are provided) on the farm’s two-and-a-half-mile road, save their table scraps if they want to feed them to the chickens and goats, or pick fresh vegetables and sunflowers from the garden. Basically, you have the run of the farm.