Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kelsey Keener. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kelsey, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
In regards to Agriculture and food production the industry standard has become a race to produce as much as possible for as little money as possible. This has resulted in the degradation of our planets soils, the pollution of our waterways and air, the devastating loss of plant, fungi, animal and insect biodiversity, as well as the horrific treatment of animals and farm workers alike. Modern agriculture is also a significant contributor to the Climate Crisis. On the customer side of things we are provided with an abundance of cheap food which as it turns out is often lacking in nutrients, contains harmful chemicals, microplastics and synthetic additives that are causing all kinds of chronic mental and physical illness.
Sequatchie Cove Farm is a leader in a relatively new industry of Regenerative Farming that works to produce food in a way that heals the land, promotes healthy ecosystems including wildlife habitat, clean water and air and sinking carbon out of the atmosphere into the soil. The food that farms like ours produce is free from harsh chemicals and bioproducts and is much more nutrient dense, providing healthy food for our family and our community. I strongly believe that this model of agriculture can feed communities around the world and help heal our suffering planet.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am the second generation to farm full time at Sequatchie Cove Farm. After growing up on the farm and graduating high school, I left the farm to study sustainable ag in Santa Cruz California for a year where I met all kinds of passionate amazing people from around the world. This experience began to open up my eyes to the greater movement that was happening around the world to produce healthy food in a more equitable and sustainable manner. After my apprenticeship in California I moved back to TN started an Organic farm on an Island located in the TN river just outside Chattanooga. This is where my future wife Ashley and I got together and lived in a tent with no power or running water for three years (now that is a bonding experience). I always planned on moving back to the home farm so after 4 years away Ashley and I moved back to my families farm and built a a house and started our own family. The first 5 years was a real struggle for us financially. Building a house and taking on debt and starting a family really woke me up to the financial reality that farming is a tough business to become successful in. Our farm already had a very well established brand and supportive community because of my parents hard work the previous 15 years starting the farm from scratch and sticking to the core values of sustainability, healthy food and building community. Now I realized it was time for me to figure out how to take our business to the next level and become not only Environmentally sustainable but also financially sustainable for generations to come.
Sequatchie Cove Farm has always been highly diversified (think pasture raised pork, chicken, eggs, grass fed beef and lamb, Organic fruits, mushrooms and veggies, a creamery milking cows and making cheese, as well as on farm workshops, farm to table dinners and farm tours) and leading the way as far as the most sustainable methods of production but nothing we were doing was highly profitable, we did just enough of each thing to have some for our family and some extra to sell but it wasn’t super efficient. Then I discovered the Pastured Poultry Community and attended my first APPPA (American Pastured Poultry Producers Association) Conference. This opened up a whole new world to me of highly motivated and specialized farmers focusing on Regenerative Pasture Poultry Production many of them on a scale that was very impressive to me. That’s when I decided to focus the majority of my efforts on growing our pasture raised Organic Egg operation into something that was a real business. Around this time we had a steady flock of 500 or so laying hens. Fast forward 5 years to today where we have 5,000 laying hens and a business that is growing about as fast as we can handle! This year I am speaking at the APPPA conference where I first got my inspiration…what a cool full circle experience!
Today we still are producing a variety of Regeneratively grown meats produce and veggies as well as hosting on farm workshops and farm to table dinners but our core business has become the Pasture Raised Eggs. I am super proud of our accomplishments and the team we have built here on the farm and am so exited to say that as we have grown we have not compromised on any of our core values! In fact as we have scaled, I have been able to focus more and more on every detail of how we produce our eggs and raise our animals to ensure that we are creating a model that is not only sustainable environmentally and financially as well as giving our animals an amazing happy healthy life living outdoors on pasture 365 days out of the year but also this model can be replicated over and and over again by other farmers who want to farm in this way. This is how one day our methods of producing food could potentially one day replace the current main stream systems of agriculture that are causing so much devastation around the world. We plan to continue to grow our business model here in TN and also educate other folks interested through our social media such as Instagram and YouTube and well as speaking at farm conferences and hosting workshops here on the farm.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media has been an amazing tool for our farm( mostly Instagram and Facebook although recently we have been branching out). I hear about people making tons of money from social media and that really has not been my experience but we have benefited in many other ways other than direct monetization. Marketing is all about story telling and showing your customer base that you are the real deal, not just another highly funded corporation hiding behind a screen of fake ads. But the world has become a busy and hectic place where most folks dont have the time to slow down and read an article like this one. That is where we have used social media to create little snippets of information and share some of the day to day what we are doing and why it matters. And for years it felt like nobody was listening but over time our audience grew and it grew and now its hard to even keep up with how many folks are paying attention to our tiny little farm in TN. I hate it when people try to oversell their product online to me and its my goal not to do that ourselves…I just share our story and hope that some of our fans online will choose to purchase our products when they are able to and so farm that seems to be working out pretty well for us.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I couldn’t possible count the times that I wanted nothing more than to just quit and give up the mountain of responsibilities…there is so much pressure when you are running a business and even when you are surrounded by people being a business owner can be a lonely place at times. If I dint believe 100% in what I was doing and that I am making the world a better place and creating a better life for my family and the creatures and land that I care for, I would never be able to keep going. I have also formed a support group of entrepreneurial friends that meet up once a month and just share stories and support each other…even though we are in completely different industries it helps to hear that so many people share similar struggles and fret over similar problems and just being there to listen and give advice when needed has been so valuable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sequatchiecovefarm.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sequatchiecovefarm/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sequatchiecove/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SequatchieCoveFarm
