About Us

In October of 2016, my wife and I closed on a piece of land in Roane County West Virginia. We purchased the property and old farm house knowing it would take a lot of work and a number of years before we could put anything on it but we also could see the potential of what it could be some day. It was deeded at 122 acres more or less from a survey performed in the late 1800’s. The wonderful family we bought it from had homesteaded it back in the early 1900’s and the lovely lady that was raised in the home was still tending to cutting the grass around the old house in her 70’s as it belonged to her father and he had passed away. I made several trips to walk the property, but it was slow going as it was very overgrown. All the pasture land other than the small fields around the house had been let go many years ago and have been overtaken by trees and brush. There was no fence standing other than some sections of very old fence post and some small fragments of rusted wire on the ground here and there.

The old house was built in 1902 and had many issues, but I felt it was worth saving. We have no plans to live in it at this time, but its perfect to stay in a day or two when working on restoring the farm or tending to the cattle. This has been an ongoing project from day one, but its worth it.

The house sits at the end of a two track dirt road and you have to drive in and out of the creek at times to get to it. Granted, you have to want to go there to get there, but its great when you get there. No one around for a mile, no air traffic, no road noise, no anything but nature and the farm; Well except for the Raven but that’s another story.

We set in on cleaning up fields with a tractor and brush hog, rented a bulldozer for a few weeks, and an excavator a couple of times just to get a few of the easier places cleaned up so we could get some animals on the place. We set in to building fence, and building fence and building fence and……..you get the picture.

We bought our first Dexter Cattle in the Spring of 2019 from another lovely family, the Harvey Family from Oklahoma and they brought them to us. Rick Harvey of Circle H Farms has been very helpful in getting me started with my Dexter cows and always takes my calls and emails when I have a question or need some advice. I’ve had a good experience so far dealing with other Dexter Cattle Breeders and for the most part they seem to have a good community working together.

In the fall of 2019, I bought my bull from yet another lovely lady from Kentucky, thank you Kim Newswanger ( Songwood Haven Farm). We are very happy with NewHope Thomas Jefferson. He is a Registered Dexter Bull, Red in color, Homozygous Polled and weighs about 1,000 lbs. He is easy to work with and handle.

We added 4 Purebred American Aberdeen Cows to the herd to crossbreed to our Dexter Bull as an experiment in 2021 and have been pleasantly surprised with the resulting calves and their confirmation and growth rate. We liked the results of this cross so much we purchased a Fullblood American Aberdeen Bull to breed our Dexter Cows to, furthering our experiment with crossbreeding these two breeds. 2023 will provide us an opportunity to work with our local processor to evaluate carcass traits with Pure genetics from both breeds as well as our crossbreed genetics. We will evaluate yield and quality, marbling and tenderness as well as taste. We will continue to work towards an optimal animal that keeps easy in a grass-based system and provides an enjoyable eating experience. Temperament will always be part of our evaluation as well.