We recently connected with Ashley Kuhler and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ashley thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of entrepreneurship is the kind of crazy stuff we have to deal with as business owners. Sometimes it’s crazy positive sometimes it’s crazy negative, but crazy experiences unite entrepreneurs regardless of industry. Can you share a crazy story with our readers?

Chicken posting got quiet around here after Chris Kuhler was injured during our first butcher day. Mostly a pride thing and we didn’t know how we’d keep moving forward. We had moments of “is this a sign”, “Now we can’t finish”, and “Nothing has been easy”. When things keep stacking up, it is easy to stay focused, but hard to believe you are following a calling. I am posting graphic images, so skip if you can’t take blood and injuries—just sayin’!
We were ambitious with our first flock because we ordered more chickens to start raising taking us into November for butchering. Chicken can take the cooler weather, but for us, we needed to wrap up soon after the frost to save our grass. Once the frost comes/ground freezes, your grass doesn’t grow back the same, so if we had chickens still pecking at our grass as we moved them daily, we’d be looking at a 50/50 chance of our grass bouncing back. We were on schedule and the flock grew nicely, so we made babysitter plans and scheduled our hot date to butcher our first flock the weekend of Halloween.

We rose early and set up our station (pic in post). Everything was organized, neat, and clean, and we talked through our process over and over to make sure we’d be butchering as humanely and sanitary as possible. We parked our vehicles around us so the neighbors wouldn’t have a “show”, and then prayed over our flock, our actions, and our calling. We were having a great time with butchering and really got the system down. We were going to wrap up butchering 25 chickens by 3pm. We finished 8 and planned to do 10 before we took a lunch break, and I could take a break to pump and feed PJ without having raw chicken all over me. For every chicken Chris would cut, I would remind him to check his hand placement and we’d say “God Bless”, but this time I didn’t, and right after the cut of the 9th chicken, Chris grabbed his hand tightly and said, “I cut myself”.

He remained calm and I started freaking out, and for anyone who knows us, this is quite the opposite of how we usually are! I ran into the garage and all I could think to grab was a dirty glove I found on the bench, even though we had clean paper towels hanging in our butcher station (lol). I grabbed my wallet and keys and hollered at Amy Ritz Kuhler that Chris cut himself and we were going to the emergency room. We only live 20 minutes away from the ER, but it was the longest ride of me checking in on Mr. Fainty Pants every 5 seconds while his fingers began cramping from holding pressure. We got to the ER and you’d think Chris only had a paper cut…they even asked him to sign something even though his hands weren’t free, but whatever.

We’ll spare you the details, but as soon as he removed the glove for the nurse all she said was “Let’s put that back on there”. 11 stitches later, we were sent home with pain meds, wraps, and orders to do no dishes or change dirty diapers for two weeks. He had to visit a hand surgeon to make sure he would have feeling in his hand again since he experienced numbness before the stitches. When we got home, Chris’s Grandpa (Bob Ritz) and I finished the chickens we started, but we still had 15 chickens + 25 other birds from our ambitious second flock that would be ready in a matter of weeks. We had no idea how we’d move forward. We thought we were going to have to pay for a processor which was not the best option because we’d lose money. I mean, we have invested a lot in this, and doing it on such a small scale, it will take years for us to “get paid”, so the last thing we need is to haul chicken off to get butchered. I also didn’t have it in me to butcher the chickens. I texted other women farmers asking for advice on how they bring themselves to do it, but for some reason, I couldn’t buck up and do it. Chris ended up double-gloving and wearing a metal glove putting pressure on his injury to finish.

Who are we to decide we are going to raise pasture-raised chickens and butcher them for our family and others? We wrestled with this as we were trying to understand if we were doing this for ourselves or if God was guiding us to His purpose. When we pray that we want to do this if He wants us to do this…then something like this happens, does that mean we shouldn’t do it? Then we heard a sermon at Crosslink Community Church that reminded us of trials. This is our trial/setback. We are learning lessons to make us stronger which draws us closer to God. And it did. I was juggling a lot on my own since Chris couldn’t do much at all with the animals, house, and baby. He had his own “come to Jesus” moments, and I had a reckoning of an attitude adjustment. We really had to work to heal and the time it took to heal led us to a better product. We had more precision, time to order a few more tools we wished we had for butchering, and our chickens that grew more over the healing period had reached an average weight of at least 5 lbs.

The weird thing about this lesson is that it wasn’t in material or tangible things. Our knife was sharp (obviously), we were not rushing, and we may have been inexperienced but we did more than watch a YouTube video to prepare. We are 20-something-year-olds who had an accident and had to pivot to finish what we started. As we continue to brand Shady Hill, we know we need to have prayer at the center of our values because we know we will have trials. We will have trials as God prepares us for His plan. We are just following our passion, praying, listening, and learning.

When you buy Shady Hill products. You are buying passion and a great product. Don’t worry, Chris’s hospital bill will not affect the price per lb; that is our running joke right now.

Ashley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are the Kuhlers. Shady Hill Homestead in New Market, VA, was born out of passion and grit. We were tired of waiting for the perfect moment to start farming and providing good food for our family, so we took our one acre and got to work. We keep a huge garden to preserve produce, terrace walls full of flowers, and pasture-raised nonGMO chicken on our property. Down the road a few miles we grow more beautiful flowers. Shady Hill comes from the steep hill our house sits on that is covered in shade trees

We don’t have a lot to work with, but that is not what matters. We are working hard as first-generation farmers to nourish our bodies with good food, regenerate our land, and connect people to their food supply. One day we believe our community support and dedication will allow us to grow our homestead in the future to feed and connect with even more families.

Getting started is not easy. Sure there’s funding available and people constantly cheering for us as we are one of the underdogs of the agriculture industry but it’s not a streamlined process to become a farmer when you have nothing.
No land.
No equipment.
No capital.
No “experience”.
No network.
But you have all the passion, drive, and dreams.

We have both studied agriculture and work in agriculture. Chris even works in ag finance but we could never get a stinkin loan to buy a farm or rent property because we’ve never worked on a farm. After a lot of praying, having a baby, and one of us quitting our 9-5, we finally decided we were done waiting on the government to tell us when we can be farmers and provide for our family.

In the past, Ashley worked in marketing for a large organic chicken company; this has aided us in selling directly to consumers and sharing our story. We offer workshops and resources to people for flowers, wreaths, canning, and homestead living, so you can slowly learn areas in your life where you want to be more self-reliant. We aren’t perfect farmers, but we are authentic people who believe that if there is a will, there is a way.

What sets us apart: we are real people feeding you whole foods. How many times have you read a food label wondering what the heck it means? Exactly. We have one ingredient in our chicken: chicken. Flowers are just flowers, no chemicals. Preserving whole foods is just food, water, and salt. We should not be settling or assuming our favorite brands are telling us the whole story. Let’s connect to our farmers and know the food we feed ourselves and family.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

When you are a first-generation farmer, you need to work a job. We have no substantial land or capital. We have no farm experience to claim for low-interest rate government loans because we worked careers to earn a living. Entry to farming is slim and low. That is why there are so many programs out there encouraging young farmers to start. The average age of the American farmer is over 58 years old and it continues to climb.

So we found ourselves where a lot of first-geners find themselves: raising meat chickens. We live on 1 acre and pasture-raising chickens takes minimal land and resources. We had enough funds from savings to purchase the materials we needed to raise, butcher, and sell chickens. My husband’s grandfather who believes in our passion, gifted us and “investment” that allowed us to grow cut flowers and have more room for failure across the board.

We have changed prices throughout our season as we realized inputs we missed accounting for. We plan to keep growing our business if we can find the land to do so. When you start small in farming like us, you don’t make enough profit to quit a 9-5; the way prices are going (Farmers get less than .16/$1 spent by a consumer), we need to get bigger or go home. We are getting savvy so in a year or so, we will qualify for the loans we need to scale out business.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I was so tired. Up until 1 AM, breastfeeding a baby, cutting flowers from the field with my car headlights shining the way, and spending 8-hour days butchering chickens. Some Saturdays, we ended up owing our local farmers market money from the crowd that did not show up. We pushed through the season with an argumentative state of marriage with one of us wanting to quit, knowing we needed each other. We were forced to slow down, at a time we had no time to slow down and think, so we could re-evaluate our “why”. If it is all for our family, then why is farming at the expense of our family?

Looking at year 2, we reevaluated our sales plans. Cutting out markets and expanding the parts of our business that were super successful while being strategic on sales, so we were “hoping” to make sales at a market. I’m not saying losing hope is why we are still here, but it kind of is. We needed to be strategic and know where and who we were selling to, not hoping we’d sell flowers, chicken, or wreaths. We are capitalizing on this time now gaining experience, so we can have a better future farming for our family.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.shadyhillva.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shadyhillva?igsh=cWZmOW5vMTNyNXlk&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/18Vx4Z7n7i/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-yanego-kuhler-894022152?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Image Credits

We have the right to all of our photos, but we’ll shout out Brianna McKee Photography out of Winchester, VA.