Earning a Living from the Land, and Water

Winchester, Kentucky

Amongst the gently rolling hills of Winchester, Kentucky, just 15 miles outside of Lexington, is the 556 acre Avalon Farm, with beef cattle in the pasture, a greenhouse set aside for raising quail, twenty acres devoted to vegetable crops, and about twenty acres planted in tobacco. Facing a steep mortgage payment, owners Shiela and Joe McCord Jr. are exploring all available options to mitigate revenue losses from their once lucrative tobacco crop. Refusing to give in, they set sail into aquaculture in 1997 — their latest diversification effort — now raising tilapia whitefish and freshwater shrimp, or prawn, in six half-acre ponds added to the farm.

Six generations have farmed Avalon Farm, but the rapid transformation of tobacco as a viable crop has left many family farms struggling to make ends meet, Avalon Farm included. Added to this marketplace reality is the jumbo mortgage the farm is saddled with, not having inherited the farm, but instead purchasing it from Joe’s father and an aunt. Because of the proximity to Lexington, land prices — for agriculture or new houses — have made owning the farm more costly.

“All along, we’ve raised pure breed beef cattle and a commercial herd,” reflects Shiela. “Our beef is now sold direct from the farm for our customers’ freezers and used as breeding stock, with the remaining cattle sold to stockyards.” Avalon Farm now raises about 100 head of registered Polled Herefords and maintains about 75 head of commercial cattle.

Tobacco farming started with the first generation of McCords around 1862. “In the late 1980s and early 1990s, we used to sell about six hundred acres worth of tobacco plants from our four greenhouses,” shares Shiela. “Now we’re fortunate to sell tobacco plants for a hundred acres.”

So in 1989, Joe and Shiela started looking for new products to grow or raise in their four, 30-foot by 150-foot greenhouses, and other possible uses for their land. That year, they launched a vegetable production business, growing seedlings and transplants in their greenhouse and selling through a farm stand along the road. A few years later in another greenhouse, they began raising quail for both food and for live-sale to hunters in the region who wanted to stock their lands with wild game or to train their dogs. Finally in 1997, with a $40,000 state grant, they transformed another greenhouse into a prawn and fish nursery.

Today, Avalon Farm still garners about 45 percent of its $100,000 annual gross income from tobacco sales. But it’s their diversification that has allowed them to hold onto the farm, with 15 percent of their income coming from beef, 15 percent from prawns, 10 percent from tilapia fish, 15 percent from vegetables and the remainder a small but growing percent from quail sales. The vast majority of their fish, prawn, vegetable and quail sales are made directly to customers, commanding full retail prices. However, Avalon Farm also wholesales their vegetables, fish and prawns to upscale restaurants and sell their cattle live-weight to buyers at the auction houses.

“We sell a ton of vegetables,” admits Shiela, reflecting on the importance of their direct-marketed vegetable crops to their viability as a farm. “I’ve got quite a customer base built up over the years, many traveling back and forth to Lexington.” Their 900 square foot fresh vegetable farm stand converted from a horse barn and situated on busy U.S. Highway 60 brings about a million customers by their farmstand and farm every week. “There’s a world of traffic going by,” admits Shiela. “The road is never still.” Besides the bustling farmstand, Shiela packs up a pick-up truck of vegetables and frozen prawns and fish packed on ice to sell at the Winchester Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the summer.

It’s what’s harvested from the water, not the land, that has earned Avalon Farm accolades and a steady stream of new customers and curiosity seekers. After receiving a $2,600 grant from the state for each of the six half-acre freshwater ponds, Joe and Shiela were suddenly among the leaders in aquaculture in their state. “We diversified into aquaculture, thanks to the work at the Kentucky State University in Frankfort that demonstrated aquaculture’s viability here in Kentucky,” says Shiela.

Each of the six half-acre ponds used to raise prawns includes an aerator which creates the oxygen needed by the crustaceans. “The prawns go to our ponds from the nursery when they’re about a half inch long and the water is warm enough for them in June,” explains Shiela. By September, the high-in-demand prawns are harvested, yielding about 500 pounds of prawns per pond.

Avalon Farm’s tilapia whitefish, raised in individual cages in all six ponds, are lifted out when they’re a mature two pound to two-and-a-half pound fish beginning in August of each year. Tilapia are among the more disease-resistant fish, tolerate crowding, and have lower water quality needs. About 300 pounds of fish are produced each year from three ponds. “We sell the fish whole, gutted and scaled, or filleted and de-boned,” says Shiela. “But our most popular way is ready to go into the skillet.”

Avalon Farm’s cleaned tilapia whitefish fetches about $7 per pound, versus the local supermarket’s price of $4 per pound. Their prawns sell for $10 per pound fresh or $16 per pound frozen tails, quite a bit more than supermarket prices. “But our fish and prawns are fresh and local,” says Shiela. “Our customers can watch it harvested. When you shop at the supermarket, do they know where it’s coming from? With us, you know what you’re getting.”

In 2004, Avalon Farm added an USDA-certified commercial kitchen to be able to process the shrimp and fish, abandoning the less efficient mobile processing unit that they had used previously. “We now clean, de-bone and freeze our fish and de-head, wash and freeze our shrimp on site,” explains Shiela. Avalon Farm sells its products under the McCords Farm label. To expand their aquaculture business even further, Joe and Shiela hope to be able to freeze shrimp individually through a process called “individual quick freeze,” or IQF. But the cost of the equipment means this value-added enhancement is still a ways off.

“Joe grows everything and I sell it,” says Shiela. “We work closely together. Always have.” Additional help to tend to their vegetable fields, cattle and aquaculture ponds comes from one part-time employee, mostly in the busy summer months. Their two sons, Andrew and Joe III, help on the farm when they can. Andrew owns a third of Avalon Farm as well as leasing about 1,500 acres from others to farm; he recently purchased the land and the lease of the golf course across the street.

“Now with our son owning the golf course across the street, we might be able to sell our fish, prawns, beef and vegetables there if he’s able to get a restaurant up and running,” Shiela adds, reflecting Avalon Farm’s never-ending search for new ways to diversify and provide revenues to keep the farming operations profitable.