Home Grown & Brewed
story by Donna Hecker & photography by Talitha Schroeder
What happens when a homesteading couple goes in with like-minded friends to buy a bucolic piece of Robertson County, and eventually sends their son off to college with Dad’s homebrew kit; where he pursues a philosophy major before heading back to the ridgetop to make beer for a living?
What happens is a magical place called Turtleback Ridge Farm and Brewery, a rolling panorama of meadows, trees and creeks. Where tap lines loop among maples in the spring, and summer berries ripen on the bush, and the branches of fruit trees hang low in the fall. Where gooseberries become chutney and fuzzy chartreuse spruce tips are brewed into beer.
It’s a life close to the earth, just how Keegan McGee likes it. His parents still live in the farmhouse next door to the taproom, and he and his wife just bought neighboring land at the turnoff from Mt. Pleasant Rd. which they plan to rehabilitate for a place of their own.
Keegan’s family and their friends long ago resisted pressure to log the land, or till it up for row crops. Instead they planted still more trees, and a vegetable garden, and learned to boil maple sap down for syrup. Today you can stand on the ridge and look in every direction and see nothing but jade green, riotous red, or the pious brown of tree trunks – like righteous rows of rigid elders – depending on the season.
Turtleback Ridge plays easy with those seasons and hibernates in the dead of winter. The rest of the year is spent celebrating Nature’s gifts, usually in liquid form. Even the yeasts that culture the contents of Keegan’s basement barrels were coaxed out of the air. Yeasts that now live in the staves of those barrels and work their time-lapse alchemy on Keegan’s farmhouse beer and cider.
The farm and brewery have cultivated a community of sorts – a welcome respite from the polished stainless chill of industrial-scale commercial breweries. We showed up for Maple Fest last spring (hey, if you’ve got all-wheel drive, could you park up here?) and followed a little boy down the muddy gravel drive. Kitted out with a knapsack, canteen, bush hat and boots, he was ready for adventure. Later in the day, we saw him at the bonfire, feeding sticks to keep it going.
Visitors like that little boy are free to wander the ridges, even camp overnight if they want to. It’s that friendly, laid-back, everybody’s welcome vibe that keeps folks coming back. And the reason Turtleback Ridge will celebrate its fourth anniversary soon. Our Holly Hill staff farmer David Wagoner, who’s just about thirty minutes away, is a regular.
David has known Keegan’s family for years and keeps going back to watch his progress, and for the beer, too. The saisons, and the pale ales, and the special farmhouse brews, like Keegan’s Cellar Illuminations Blackberry Farmhouse Ale, debuting at the anniversary party. To David, Turtleback Ridge is a neighborhood gathering place. Where bird walks, old-time jams, and dark sky parties are all part of the package.
Holly Hill will be part of the package too, come June 1 (2024), when our Culinary Director and Executive Chef Tyler McNabb ventures north to serve Kentucky farm-fresh fare at Turtleback Ridge’s 4th Anniversary Party. Chef Tyler’s still working up his menu but it’s guaranteed to be hyper-local and may even include a few ingredients from Turtleback Ridge itself.
So come on out and raise a glass to Keegan and his family and their stewardship of the land. It’s Kentucky’s birthday, too, so celebrate the work that Turtleback Ridge has put into sustaining this few hundred acres of the Commonwealth. And, while you’re there, savor a plate of homegrown goodness. As Chef Tyler would say, “Bone Apple Teeth!”
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