The Ponderosa Lodge Farm

The Ponderosa Lodge Farm is scenically situated in the mountains above West Virginia’s New River Gorge, a great spot for hiking, rock climbing, and river rafting. In July, I drove the winding road up to the farm to meet with owner Ken Toney and take a tour of the farm. When I arrive, Ken generously takes a break from his work in the lodge’s kitchen to show me around.

A whole bin of apples sits on the counter along with two fresh-from-the-oven pies and the dough for a loaf of olive bread. The apples are too sour and tough for eating out of hand, says Ken, but just fine for cooking. Ken tells me, “I’ve always loved cooking ... that might be the downside of farming; I can’t just spend all day in the kitchen.” Ken grows most of the food his family eats, and he tells me they will be trying out the ‘100-foot diet challenge’ next year, to see if they can raise, grow, hunt, or gather nearly everything they eat. Ken also offers bread baking, pickling, and canning classes for interested guests.

The Lodge

The three-story Ponderosa Lodge sleeps up to 32 guests in 10 bedrooms, each with a private bath. Ken and his wife Jorene have set up the lodge as a private destination for family reunions, weddings, and church or business retreats. Ken points out that the New River Gorge is a fairly central point for folks who live east of the Mississippi, so it works well as a meeting point for even far-flung families.

The lodge was originally built in 1969 as a zoo; it later became a roadside motor lodge and restaurant. Wall mounts of bear, deer, and cougar that once lived at the zoo still decorate the walls of the Great Room, which is just inside of the lodge’s front entrance. The Great Room also features a big stone fireplace, lots of comfortable seating, and a huge wagon wheel chandelier.

Ken and Jorene bought the property in 2005, and they quickly jumped into renovating the lodge and clearing land where they could raise vegetables and animals. They’ve had to clear lots of pine trees, which they’ve put to good use, either milling the lumber to use for building or using the wood for heating the lodge come winter. Opening up the forest has also allowed Ken to install solar hot water and electric panels, and he plans to install more.

Most of the renovations required for the lodge were fortunately cosmetic. Ken and Jorene replaced the lodge’s flooring, for instance, using recycled hardwood flooring from a local roller skating rink. They also renovated the kitchen completely, updating appliances and making it open and bright. Guests who would like to cook during their stay may rent the kitchen as a separate rental from the lodge. Ken also offers catered lunches or dinners, featuring a seasonal menu of food that’s raised right on the farm or bought locally.

Ken and Jorene were looking only to buy a cabin for themselves when they found the listing for Ponderosa Lodge. Even though it was much bigger than what they had envisioned, they fell in love with the property and decided to buy it. As Ken tells me, “I’m really not a city person... I’ve always wanted to farm,” so it suited him to leave his job at the Naval Research Lab to move full-time to West Virginia. Jorene still works as an attorney, spending week days working in Falls Church, a suburb of DC. Since Ken and Jorene’s son Liam was born in 2008, he has become an integral part of the welcome crew at the lodge. Liam loves to help with the animals, and Ken has modified some of the animal feeders so that Liam can help out more. Says Ken, “Liam learned what animals say before we started teaching him that. He doesn’t say ‘baah’ for goat, he says ‘waaah,’ since that’s what our goats really sound like.” Guest kids (as well as adults) love touring the farm and feeding the animals, too.

The Farm

Ken and Jorene have been farming at Ponderosa Lodge for three years now, and Ken tells me that it just keeps getting better. The shallow topsoil and steep topography are challenging for growing vegetables, which is one of the major reasons they decided to get animals. Raising poultry and livestock provides not only meat but also manure, allowing Ken to improve the soil fertility and grow lush vegetables on even his marginal land.

Ken shows me his chard, with its ruby red stem and vibrant green leaves, and he says, “This is my favorite vegetable of the year. It’s just a powerhouse of nutrients. I can put it on a pizza, chop it up and put it in an omelet, and Liam eats it ... he loves it.” The vegetables Ken grows are heirloom varieties, and he enjoys picking out unusual seeds when he plans his garden in the winter. Ken also experiments with companion planting and intercropping -- he plants a Three Sisters Garden of corn, beans, and squash, a traditional planting combination used by American Indians. Jorene has also planted beautiful perennial gardens around the lodge.

The Animals

Says Ken, “We have 16 acres here, which seems like a lot, but I’m already starting to feel the crunch.” There are nine acres with permanent fence, where six goats, a steer, and seven pigs live. Ken also keeps around six ducks, a handful of rabbits, 16 turkeys, and 80 layer and broiler chickens inside of portable electric fencing that he can easily move around as the poultry need new grass to graze.

Ken says he follows the model of farming practiced by Joel Salatin at his Polyface Farm, which is pasture based, “beyond organic,” and diverse.

Ken talks cheerfully to the animals as we walk around feeding everyone. When one of the goats nudges Ken’s hand eagerly to get to the grain he’s holding, he calls out, “Hello, Gus! You’re gettin’ strong! Hey! That was my finger, you!” Ken tells me that the goats are wonderful with Liam. He says, “I can give this bucket to Liam, and they’ll just follow him, or they’ll be right in front leading the way. We might actually have trouble butchering them. We’re in here with them every day, and that tames them up some.” Like the Salatins at Polyface Farm, Ken also butchers his own meats. Every year, he buys animals in the spring and butchers them in the fall. He keep only the hens and breeder rabbits through the winter, since keeping the others wouldn’t make economic sense. Ken is also planning to build a smokehouse this fall.

Ken chooses varieties of animals that are adapted to being on pasture. His broiler chickens are Freedom Rangers, an old French breed. Ken tells me, “Chickens are so much healthier on pasture. And the Freedom Rangers are more suited for foraging than the most commonly raised broilers, Cornish Cross. Freedom Rangers are ready to be butchered after 11 weeks, as opposed to 8 weeks for the standard Cornish Cross. I’ve just been so pleased with them. The common breeds have been manipulated so much for the big industrial farms that they’re not good at surviving; they are not very healthy.”

In addition to feeding their family and guests with the food they raise on the farm, Ken and Jorene also have a small CSA program that feeds 15-20 people, mostly Jorene’s co-workers and their friends. The CSA basket includes eggs, vegetables, turkeys, and pork, plus strawberries and juneberries in season.

If you go:

The Ponderosa Lodge is open year round, and is available for group retreats, weddings, and special events. Rates for the whole lodge (sleeps 32) are $795, Jan 1-April 30. From May 1 to Dec 31, rates are $845 for up to 22 guests, and $895 for 23-32 guests. All 10 rooms have private baths. The kitchen is available as an additional rental; catered meals and cooking classes are also available.

www.theponderosalodge.com

Ken Toney and Jorene Soto
Phone: (304) 438-7113
Toll Free: (877) 246-9972
Email: ponderosalodge@gmail.com
P.O. Box 186, Lookout, WV 25868

*Ken and Jorene also write a neat blog for anyone interested in gardening, cooking, or raising animals: http://ourmountainfarm.blogspot.com/. Ken’s food pics will make your mouth water.

**Piglet photo courtesy Ken Toney

Smithfield Farm

First, I want to say a bit about historic preservation and farm stays, then I will profile Smithfield Farm/ Smith Meadows Meats in Clarke County near Berryville, VA. I’ve decided to break my write up from Smithfield into two parts. It’s an incredible place, and I think two posts will better do it justice.

Old barns and farmhouses are expensive to maintain, and their owners unfortunately but understandably let the buildings deteriorate when the economics of restoration don’t add up. Hosting guests on the farm is one way that some farmers are able to restore and preserve historic buildings on their properties. Smithfield Farm, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2001, is a remarkable example of historic preservation made economically viable through an on-farm bed and breakfast. Armstrong Farms, which I profiled early January, is another example of wonderful historic preservation made possible through agritourism.

Smithfield Farm

Smithfield Farm has belonged to the Smith family for eight generations – in 2016, the family will celebrate 200 years of continuous ownership. Throughout most of this time, the property has stayed a working farm. While the bed and breakfast goes by the farm’s traditional name of Smithfield, the grass-fed meat and egg farm operation is called Smith Meadows to differentiate it from Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer and processor. This distinction is well deserved – contrasting sharply with most large-scale meat producers, Smithfield Farm raises animals on plenty of fresh pasture, strives to treat their animals humanely, and practices rotational grazing and natural pasture management.

By the 1980s, when innkeeper Ruth Smith Pritchard inherited the farm, the Smithfield manor house had been sitting vacant for nearly 40 years. Though Ruth’s father, Robert R. Smith, had been ill, he protected the house by keeping the roof on and the windows closed. When Ruth was 8 years old, she announced to her family: “One day Smithfield will be mine!” It turned out that Ruth was right though nobody knew it then; they assumed the farm would go to Ruth’s brother. He, however, did not want to take over the farm or restore the house, and the monumental task fell upon Ruth. The house was in bad repair, but Ruth, who was then working in real estate, made up her mind to restore it and open a bed and breakfast. And she desperately wanted to return the land to a profitable working farm.

Throughout the farm’s long history, it had traditionally been passed to the firstborn son in each subsequent generation, following the law of primogeniture. But the women of Smithfield Farm have really been responsible for holding onto the farm in its most difficult times. As one story goes, Ruth’s great-great-grandfather, Edward Jacquelin Smith, suffered from a mysterious mental illness that was diagnosed as “melancholia.”  He cosigned a note for a friend, and neither of them was able to repay the debt. As a result, Edward fled to Missouri, which at that time acted as the gateway to the western frontier. In Edward’s absence, his wife Elizabeth Bush Smith decided to plant 500 acres of wheat, an important crop in Virginia during that era. The wheat was exported to Europe, and with the money from the sales, she paid off her husband’s debt and kept the farm. When Edward was told that his debt had been paid, he came back to Smithfield, where he lived to be over 90 years old. Elizabeth, unfortunately, died only a few years after paying down the debt.

Ruth’s father Robert Smith was a conventional farmer who originally grew hay, grain, corn, and other row crops, some of which were used to feed his cattle. A local senator and farmer encouraged friends and neighbors, including Robert, to plant apples throughout the area, resulting in thousands of acres of orchards. Over time, Robert transitioned 350 of Smithfield’s acres into apples. Now, Smithfield mostly grows grass for animal pasture, though 40 acres of apples still remain.

During the area’s apple boom, the farm was doing well, hiring up to 16 orchard workers. But the apple business was unreliable. As Robert would say, “Apples are good one out of three years.” Because of the weather, he said, “you make good money one year, and you lose it the other two.”

Before World War II, many local people were employed working the orchards. During the war, with a shortage of young men, German POWs were enlisted as orchard workers. When the servicemen came home from the war, however, they wanted something different. Ruth says that change helped to signal the demise of apples, and most of the orchards in the area have since gone over to housing.

When Ruth took over the farm in the 1980s, she decided that she wanted to get away from apples because of the chemicals treatments required. And she didn’t have the equipment for row crops. Having to rely on her neighbors for their machinery meant that her crops were last to be put in the ground and the last to be harvested. After trying row crops for two years and losing money each year, she decided that she couldn’t do it anymore, especially without any control over her prices.

Still, Ruth was determined to hold on to the farm. Searching for possibilities, she started going to sustainable agriculture seminars and reading about alternatives to conventional farming. In 1990, before Joel Salatin and Polyface Farms became famous via the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the film Food, Inc., Ruth and her late husband Ed Pritchard heard Joel preach his “grass farming” gospel at a conference. Ruth describes his talk as a turning point. He said, “You can do this! You can raise your animals on pasture and sell direct to the customer! You don’t need to take sale barn prices!” With that, Ruth was inspired to try out a new way of farming. She and Ed invited Joel to come look at their farm to see if his way of farming might be tenable on their land. His prognosis was that they had it even easier than he did.

To be continued…