A Visit to Rough Draft
story by Donna Hecker and photography by Talitha Schroeder
We’ve been to urban farms, tucked into an empty downtown lot or sprawling behind an apartment complex. We’ve been to traditional family farms, with former tobacco bases diversified into fields of sweet corn, or event barns, or blooming backdrops for photo shoots. But we’d never been to a place like Rough Draft Farmstead, a few acres sandwiched between neighboring houses in a small rural hamlet, bordered by railroad tracks and punctuated by the piercing whistles of passing trains.
The sun hadn’t risen very high in the sky when we pulled into the gravel drive beside a shaded farmhouse. Just beyond the house was an open-air market shed with a self-serve counter at one end and a three-comp sink at the other. That’s where we found Hannah Crabtree, who tends Rough Draft Farmstead with her husband Jesse Frost and their two young sons.
Hannah and Jesse both got their start working in food and, in Jesse’s case, wine. They met as interns at Bugtussle Farm, way down near the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Bugtussle Farm describes itself as a “little slice of paradise” where inspiration springs from the principles of organic agriculture, permaculture, and biodiversity.
Drawing on that experience, Jesse and Hannah have worked those same principles into their own little slice of paradise, and into a book written by Jesse – The Living Soil Handbook: The No-till Grower’s Guide to Ecological Market Gardening.
They practice no-till farming – growing certified-organic vegetables, nurturing natural habitat, and creating living pathways in which grasses generate a constant flow of photosynthesis and help nourish the soil. It’s helter-skelter in a good way, a jumble of flowers and vegetables, umber earth and emerald lettuces still moist with morning dew.
We really cherish the native pollinators and flowering hedges. Our farm is wild; it’s always wild. We want a lot of wild flowers, a lot of wildlife, and wild habitat because that enables us to farm without chemicals.
But this year has seen the start of a shift. A longtime employee facing health challenges was unable to return to work. So Jesse and Hannah have scaled back on production and markets, and are considering a different path forward. Jesse ruefully admitted that his back isn’t what it used to be and he’s rethinking both what and how he plants.
You know, as you get older your farm has to get older with you. I remember somebody saying that you need to set up your farm like you're in your sixties, even if you're twenty, because that's where you’ll be eventually. I can't farm like I'm twenty anymore.
Their sons are a bit young to do much farming but the older one is quite adept at planting seeds in exchange for Legos. He sits there and puts every seed in the pot and he's good to go and he's like, how many Legos do I get? Fair deal.
So what’s next for Jesse and Hannah?
We're in those conversations right now. Definitely thinking about fruit and orchards. We shrank our farm quite a lot this year. We went from doing about an acre and a half – well, about an acre in production – to not even a quarter of that now.
The wine lover in Jesse is intrigued by the possibilities of cider and perry. He’s already planted some pear trees and may add apple trees too.
I could see a place for pears and perry. Pear seems to be the one fruit tree that doesn't get a lot of attention. And fresh apple ciders would be cool to have, also hot cider during the winter. That could be a good market item. Our kids eat so many apples, it would probably save us some money.
Now that those kids are getting older, Hannah says they’re rethinking their priorities.
We wanted to have neighbors and be more involved in the community than when we started off homesteading and it was just the two of us.
These days Hannah and Jesse have just a few clients for their produce – some restaurants, including several of our Holly Hill locations, a local food hub in Frankfort, their sons’ school – but we love their story of looking after the land and themselves at the same time. We applaud their commitment to community. And we look forward to their next chapter. We hope to be a part of it.
Related Content
An Urban Eden
Hidden behind a barricade of bushes to the east and an apartment complex to the west is a two-acre urban farm in downtown Lexington, tended by a miniature United Nations Assembly of farmers.
Seedleaf Community Farm is a real-life experiment in land use, community development, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and the possibility of making dreams come true.
© 2024, Holly Hill Inn/Ilex Summit, LLC and its affiliates, All Rights Reserved