Agriculture Success Stories

Benji Hudnall and his family raise hogs and farm 1100 acres in the Riverside community of Warren County. His family has been farming the same plot of land for more than 160 years. “This farm has been in the family for generations and we plan on it being in the family for many generations into the future. Like other people invest in the stock market, we invest in our land” says Hudnall. This river bottom land has its challenges however, including frequent flooding in the winter and early spring. Hudnall noticed that each flood event was taking valuable soil and nutrients with it when the water receded.

In 2019, the Hudnalls enrolled 21 acres of the farm in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This requires a 30-foot buffer between the edge of his row crop field and the stream. “My grandfather and father instilled in me the importance of natural resources and soil health,” says Hudnall. The buffer helps to ensure that no chemicals or fertilizer run off into the stream. Hudnall also uses precision agriculture equipment that allows him to shut off the sprayer when he is in the buffer area. “The edges of the field that are shaded by trees aren’t as productive and the large machinery is hard to drive under the limbs. This way I have guaranteed income from a less productive area while protecting the earth.”

In addition to his participation in CRP, Hudnall utilizes cover crops to prevent soil erosion during times of high water. He primarily uses a blend that is heavy with grasses like cereal rye and barley to establish a dense growth of roots to help hold the soil in place during the winter. “I farm on the Green and Barren rivers. When you can see the river every day, and you see how muddy it is after a rain event, it makes you realize how much soil is lost.”

Benji Hudnall was named the Kentucky Pork Producer Association Outstanding Producer and Farm Family of the Year, the Kentucky Young Farmer Association Member of the Year, and received the Warren County Conservation District Master Conservationist Award.

The Hudnalls were named the 2006 Warren County Chamber of Commerce Farm Family of the Year. Read more about the award by clicking here:

To find out more about the Conservation Reserve Program, visit:

Cost

• There is no cost for participation in CRP. The rental income for this farm is $160 per acre per year.

Load reduction per year for CRP and cover cropping

• 6,470 pounds Nitrogen, 2270 pounds Phosphorus, and 1163 tons of sediment.

Whispering Hills Farm

Mike and Tammy Wilson farm 197 acres in central Kentucky including farms in Anderson and Franklin counties. Their property includes a mix of forested land and pasture where they raise 30 beef cattle.

Their farm in Anderson County was purchased from an out-of-state owner who had inherited the property and had left it unattended for more than twenty years. The property was covered in thorns and cedars. The Wilsons spent years reestablishing forages on the pasture, removing invasive species and setting up the farm to raise livestock.

Their Anderson County farm is divided into 14 fields for rotational grazing. Each field varies in size from three to 18 acres, with a water supply in each field. With good weather conditions, Wilson moves the animals every couple of days once the grass has been eaten to about four inches. Fencing was installed to provide a 500-foot buffer to protect waterways and forests. It also provides habitat for wildlife, which they see on the farm every day. Water on his farm is supplied by municipal water using a four-hole waterer that is divided by a fence, so it serves two pastures.

Mike Wilson grew up on a dairy farm in Shelby County and learned rotational grazing while he was young. However, he says that the University of Kentucky courses for Master Grazer and Master Cattlemen helped drive home the message and gave him the initiative to do it on his own farm. Wilson says, “It is common sense to take care of your ground. It is too hard to reestablish once it is destroyed.”

Another benefit he has seen of rotational grazing, the pasture fields don’t often require costly inputs. “With proper management and rotational grazing, you shouldn’t have to buy fertilizer at all.”

While there is a cost to installing fence and waterers, many cost sharing programs are available including Kentucky State Cost Share, the County Ag Investment Program and NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Wilson admits, “I didn’t know about cost share when I started and paid for a lot of things out of pocket.” He has pieced together funding from a variety of sources to establish the system he has today.

Mike and Tammy Wilson are the 2024 winner of the Kentucky Leopold Conservation Award and Mike serves on the Anderson County Conservation District Board.

You can read more about the Wilson family and Whispering Hills Farm here:

Watch the Leopold Conservation Award video here:

He is also featured in a Kentucky Cattlemen’s video, as well as a story from the University of Kentucky available here:

More Links:

 Master Cattlemen 

 State Cost Share 

 County Ag Investment Program 

 Natural Resources Conservation Service 

Cost:

Each program provides reimbursement for practices in different ways. Reimbursement for State Cost Share is 75% of actual cost capped at $20,000. Their cost estimates for these practices are below.

Fence - $3 per linear foot

Waterer - $1600

Pipeline - $2.75 per linear foot

Load reductions per year:

• 377 pounds of Nitrogen, 56 pounds of Phosphorus and 33 tons of sediment per year.

David Dennis

David Dennis grows hay and cattle on 165 acres in Anderson County. David and his wife Kathy purchased the 40 acres in 1994 and have leased other farms over the years for hay production. Dennis has about 30 cow-calf pairs on his farm where he practices rotational grazing. He hired Eric Phillips as a teenager to help on the farm and now, 20 years later, they work together in a partnership.

When Dennis started farming this land, it was set up as a few large pastures. With the technical assistance of University of Kentucky Ag Extension Agent Tommy Yankey and Natural Resources Conservation Service staff, he learned there were better ways to manage the natural resources and get financial assistance to install practices. Over time, Dennis has divided the farm into nine smaller pastures, installed waterers for each pasture and a heavy use area for winter feeding. He also installed a stream crossing and a fence around his pond. He uses a grazing stick to determine when to move livestock on to the next pasture. Dennis believes rotational grazing “saves a lot of wear and tear on the pastures and cuts down on the hay that I have to have for winter feeding.”

The layout of the pastures has also made it easier to move cattle between fields and to bring them in to work them up. “I am better about giving vaccinations and breeding than I was before,” says Dennis, saying he doesn’t worry about running out of grass in the summer and, if weather is good, he can stockpile grass in some fields for late fall/early winter feeding.

Dennis also farms from a specially adapted John Deere 4020 tractor since a car accident left him paralyzed in 1986. He credits University of Kentucky AgrAbility with help in connecting him with Anderson County Community and Technical College faculty. The staff and students were able to modify his tractor and design a lift that allows him to cut hay and feed the cattle on his own.

David Dennis was selected as Anderson County Master Conservationist in 2019 and received the Distinguished Service Award by the Anderson County Chamber of Commerce in 2018. He serves as the administrator of the County Ag Investment Program for Anderson and Woodford counties.

You can read more about David Dennis here:

For more information about State Cost Share, visit the link below, or your local Conservation District office:

For more information about the County Ag Investment Program and other Agricultural Development Funds, click here:

For more information about funding through the Natural Resources Conservation Service, visit:

For more information about AgrAbility, click here:

Cost:

• Each program provides reimbursement for practices in different ways. Reimbursement for State Cost Share is 75% of actual cost capped at $20,000. Their cost estimates for these practices are below.

• Fence - $3 per linear foot

• Waterer - $1600

• Pipeline - $2.75 per linear foot

• Heavy Use Area – Winter Feeding structure - $17,500

• Stream Crossing - $6.30 per square foot

Load reductions per year:

• 195 pounds of Nitrogen, 18 pounds of Phosphorus, and 8 tons of sediment.

Sidebottom Dairy

Sidebottom Dairy in Greensburg, Kentucky is owned by Stacy Sidebottom. His father Jim started the business, and Stacy joined him upon graduation from high school. Today, they farm about 800 acres and milk 250 dairy cows. They also raise corn for silage and feed, soybeans, wheat and hay. All of their crop land is cover-cropped with wheat.

The Sidebottoms house their dairy cattle in a free-stall pack barn with sawdust bedding. They made the decision to confine the cattle to keep them cleaner, healthier and run a larger number of animals on a smaller number of acres than they could if they were pasture based. The bedding is turned every day which allows the waste to be absorbed. This creates a composted product that is removed twice a year and applied to fields. “Managing the manure dry means I can haul it further away than I can with liquid manure from the lagoon,” says Sidebottom. The dry manure compost is stored in a covered stack pad until they are ready to land apply.

Some manure and milkhouse waste is managed as a liquid through a lagoon system. They use this to fertilize the closer fields through flexible hose on the back of a tractor. The Sidebottoms used to use a less flexible hose with a gun that shot the manure into the field. He says the new hose setup allows them to get into corners and avoid spraying areas that shouldn’t be fertilized. It does have a little more soil compaction from the tractor, but Sidebottom feels the more targeted application is “better for the soil and better for the crops. It is a wonderful thing.”

Sidebottom is a member of the Green County Soil and Water Conservation District and Green County Farm Bureau.

You can read more about the Sidebottom Farm below:

For more information about Compost Bedded Pack Barns, this by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and the Environment:

For more information about NRCS practices in Kentucky, visit:

For more information about Kentucky State Cost Share, visit the following, or your local conservation district:

For more information about Kentucky Agricultural Development Funds visit:

Cost:

• Building a compost bedded pack barn can cost $500-$2000 per cow. Currently, a composted bedded pack barn is not an available practice through Kentucky NRCS EQIP but may be eligible for cost share under Kentucky Agricultural Development Funds.

• A manure stack pad is available through EQIP or state cost share at $8-$12 per square foot.

Load reductions per year:

• 15,856 pounds of Nitrogen and 3,585 pounds of Phosphorus per year.

Duckworth Farm

Michael Duckworth grew up farming with his parents, Harold and Mary Jane Duckworth, in Harrison County, Kentucky. His family had 500 acres where they grew tobacco, Simmental cattle and experimented with new practices. “Dad was innovative in a lot of ways and worked on feeding trials and breeding work. Cutting edge stuff for the 1980s,” says Duckworth. Michael and his wife Debbie purchased a farm in Woodford County in 2012 and have been working to develop agrotourism on their property and install best management practices to protect the watershed they live in.

Although they don’t own cattle, the Duckworths work with a neighbor to pasture 25 cows on their 45-acre farm every year. They have divided the farm into nine paddocks with a water source where they practice rotational grazing from May until January. Then the cattle are sold to keep from having mud issues that degrade the pasture during the muddiest part of the winter.

Duckworth has used a combination of funding to establish these paddocks. They have participated in the NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program, Environmental Quality Incentive Program and an Elkhorn Creek Resource Conservation Partnership Program grant. He says, “It sure has helped us do things faster than I would have been able to do without the funding. We try to do the best we can.” Through these programs they added pollinator plantings and native grasses to the farm.

Duckworth Farm also has a field with more than 2000 Canaan fir Christmas trees that they sell in November and December. They chose to plant their trees further apart than many other farms do to help with weed control and make harvesting easier. They also built a wedding barn and host many events throughout the year.

Michael hopes the grandkids will jump in when they are older. “It is special to watch kids play on a farm and in the pond with tadpoles. I wish every kid had that experience.”

Mike Duckworth serves as chair of the Woodford County Soil and Water Conservation District and is a Certified Crop Advisor.

Click Below to read more about the Duckworth farm:

For more information on the Conservation Stewardship Program:

For more information about EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program):

For more information about Regional Conservation Partnership Program grants:

Cost

• Each program provides reimbursement for practices in different ways. Reimbursement for State Cost Share is 75% of actual cost capped at $20,000. Their cost estimates for these practices are below.

• Fence - $3 per linear foot

• Waterer - $1600

• Pipeline - $2.75 per linear foot

Load reductions per year for rotational grazing

• 154 pounds of Nitrogen, and 7 pounds of Phosphorus.

Craig Callahan

In Owsley County, the Callahan Family have been farming for four generations. Like many Kentucky farms, they raised tobacco for many years but shifted to focus on cattle after the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement occurred. Today, they raise 350 cow-calf pairs of cattle and cut hay on 2500 acres that include river bottom, forest and high ground where coal mining occurred. Craig Callahan says farming on an old mine is always challenging but is an underutilized resource because the land takes so much time to build back fertile soil and quality pasture.

The core section of the farm is about 1800 acres with the South Fork Kentucky River running through the middle. This prime bottomland provides great pastureland, but in the winter can become muddy. After historic flooding in 2021 and 2022, the family has had to rebuild and is taking the opportunity to change some things about the way they operate. They have moved fences further from the river and have installed fence line feeders to feed their animals out of the floodplain. Craig Callahan says, "We have found that tractors generate as much mud as the cattle do in the winter.” The fence line feeder also allows them to feed from an alley, so they don’t have to move the tractor into the field with the cattle. That saves them from needing an extra person to open and close gates while trying to keep the cattle in. “Not having to put the tractor in with the cattle is great,” says Callahan.

Callahan credits Doug Wilson with the Kentucky Division of Conservation and the State Cost Share program for their assistance in installing these practices. “Without cost share we couldn’t possibly do it. It may seem expensive from the outside, but when you consider it saves 20-30 percent of your hay and the decrease in mud, it is one of the greatest practices.” They have also been able to build the feeder to hold three days worth of hay, so they are spending less time on the tractor each day feeding animals. Callahan says that is particularly helpful during the short winter days.

To find out more about fence line feeders:

For more information about Kentucky State Cost Share, visit the link below, or contact your local conservation district.

Cost

• Fenceline feeder installation $1,300 to $4,100. Callahan says he prefers concrete as the surround although it costs more to install.

• State Cost Share based on 75 percent of actual cost of installation of approved practice.

Load reductions per year

• 3792 pounds of Nitrogen, 172 pounds of Phosphorus per year and 0.11 tons of sediment.

Morrison Poultry Farm

Deena Morrison bought her 40-acre farm in Hickman County when she was a new college graduate. She grew up on a farm nearby and her dad encouraged her to buy the property when he saw it come up for sale. She started by raising row crops in rotation.

A few years later, she married her husband Tim. Together, they built their first four chicken houses in the fall of 1999 and later expanded to add another two houses in 2004. Today, they raise 21,000 birds per house and go from chick to a 7.5-pound adult in about 54 days. That is about 750,000 chickens per year from their farm! They also continue to raise about 18 acres of corn and soybeans in rotation.

The Morrisons are passionate about caring for their birds and the environment. They have always practiced no-till farming, so the land hasn’t been tilled in more than the 25 years. They also soil sample on a gridded pattern and use their chicken waste as fertilizer. They have installed grassed waterways and a pond to capture field runoff before it reaches the Bayou du Chien River nearby. Deena says, “There is an endangered Relict Darter there and we are very careful we don’t have runoff that would endanger that animal.” Tim adds, “It is easier to maintain the farm with the grassed waterways.”

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Conservation Stewardship Program helped with the design and installation of the grassed waterways on their farm. They recently reworked some of the drainage and drilled more rye and fescue to slow down the water as it is in the waterway. They have also installed rock around the chicken houses to lessen the erosion from the force of water coming of the roofs. Deena says the weather has been a challenge in the past few years with frequent large rain events. “When we see a problem pop up, we try and fix it as soon as possible. If you don’t fix it quick, you have a gully.”

The Morrisons have also installed solar panels on their farm to help offset the energy cost of heating and cooling the chicken houses. The panels even contain trackers to follow the sun through the day. Although the panels are connected directly to the local utility, they generate the equivalent of what two of their chicken houses use in a day.

The Morrisons have won the Kentucky Poultry Federation Family Farm Environmental Excellence Award three times. They won a prestigious “Golden Feather” award from Tyson in 2018 and were honored at the national level in 2016 and 2018 with the Family Farm Environmental Excellence Award, given by the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association. 

For more information about the Morrison Poultry Farm:

Read here about their solar panel installation:

For more information about the NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program:

The County Ag Investment Program also has funding available at a 50 percent cost share rate up to $10,000 for energy efficiency programs. Click below to find out about that program:

Cost

• Each program provides reimbursement for practices in different ways.
• Reimbursement for State Cost Share is 75 percent of actual cost, capped at $20,000. Their cost estimates for these practices are below. 

• Grassed waterway with rock structures - $1981/acre

• Minimum annual payment for participation in the CSP program is $4000/year

Load reductions per year

• 107 pounds of Nitrogen, 34 pounds of Phosphorus per year and 16 tons of sediment.