An Explanation
In the late 1940s, my grandfather Okey Stiles bought about 150 acres of what I now call Limestone Mountain Farm. Here’s what the farm looked like when he bought it.
This shot is taken from where the sheep barn stood, which is just a ways up the first hill of the farm. Although this photo is yellowed with age, you can see across to the hillside thinned by logging, which affected much of West Virginia in the 20th century....that hillside is now back to timber, permanently, and will only be horselogged as long as I have anything to say about it.
Here’s a photo of my Dad when he was young---and a member of the Parsons High School Chapter of the Future Farmers of America. Interestingly enough, in 1975, I became the first female to join that same chapter of the FFA at Parsons High.....
Dad’s dream was always to farm. But the times demanded otherwise from him. He went to university and became a county agent, helping others to farm while he did a bit of farming “on the side” as well. After serving in many counties of West Virginia as an ag agent for the WVU Extension Service, in the 1970s Dad bought the farm from his parents Okey and Laura Melvina. My siblings and I had spent many a wonderful Christmas and summer break time at “the farm,” as it’s referred to by all of the Stileses; when we moved here, in the ‘70s, when I was in high school, we raised cattle, sheep, chickens, hogs, and a garden. Later, Dad put in a few blueberry bushes. The deer population, and larger global market factors, put an end to the idea, held in my Grandad’s time, that one could raise poultry or do strawberries or other fruit or vegetables on a small scale.....
But now, with ecological and economic challenges being made to the type of farming that led to a “cheap food policy” (which, as most of us know, wasn’t cheap, just passing along the costs to the environment or future generations, or those in developing countries) in North America, now, the times, as Bob Dylan sang, “they are a-changin....”
My life changed for the better, too, when I received a Fulbright Fellowship and went to the province of New Brunswick, in Canada, in 1994. I fell in love with Atlantic Canada (which contains the end of the Appalachian mountain chain), and eventually became a Canadian citizen. Along the way, I got a full time tenured job in my fields of history and literature/writing at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College. Yet, I always wanted to farm....
In 2003, I got that opportunity. I bought half the farm from Dad, and my sister Teresa bought the other half. My father, sadly, died in 2005 just as Limestone Mountain Farm was beginning to come to life again—he’d not been able to do much, as all of us kids were all ‘doing our own thing’ as he’d put it, and we kids couldn’t find time to help. That same year, however, I had married and become also business partners with another farmer in the county. It was my hope to gradually put Limestone Mountain Farm back into production, using local help, while farming in Nova Scotia, where I had a full-time job that permitted the kind of salary and retirement that would make things a bit easier on the farm in a few years. But, another reversal... in 2007, my husband and business partner elected to deviate considerably from our business plan and life plans and I was on my own again. 
The old house, the grainary, even the sheep barn are gone now. But I’m now renting Dad’s pole barn and shed from Mom, and have some help, most especially from brother Jim, whose Limestone Engineering (http://limestone-eng.com/) is also based at what we've always just called "the farm." My life allows me the privilege of being in two places, and growing food at both: on the Bay of Fundy, in Nova Scotia; and, here on Limestone Mountain Farm, in West Virginia. At Limestone Mountain, by buying cattle (and sometimes lambs! as here in 2005) in the spring and selling in the fall, I'm bringing to fruition a bit of Dad’s dream and mine.... at Limestone Mountain Farm.
Interested in supporting local agriculture?
There are many ways to do it! The easiest way? Buy local!
Email me for more details, at limestonemtnfarm@gmail.com or phone 304-478-3519 or 902-668-2133. I'm now surveying demand to decide on 2010 enterprises: if you're interested in shares in a dairy cow, beef, lamb, chicken or pastured pork, OR if you have another idea of a crop you'd like to see produced at Limestone Mountain Farm, please email limestonemtnfarm@gmail.com with SURVEY in the subject line, and your input.