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Honor goes to Journey Farm

The Manchester Rotary Club’s 2023 Farmer of the Year award was presented to Lewis and Trudy Guthrie of Journey Farm. The pair received their award during a recent Rotary Club meeting and spoke about their journey into raising grass-fed beef in retirement.

“We are so blessed to be in this county,” Trudy Lewis said. “We came here in 2013 from Marietta Georgia, a little bitty lot in the downtown in the old section and thought, oh this will be fun, we are going to farm for retirement.”

The pair purchased an initial 152-acres in the Normandy area and began working with former AG Extension Agent Steve Harris to get their beef operation up and running.

“The good news is we didn’t really have any bad habits,” Lewis said. “We didn’t have any habits because we didn’t know anything so we would try anything.”

Lewis said the pair had fun trying different things as they worked to educate themselves about raising freezer beef.

“We rotationally graze,” she said. “Our paddocks were very rocky we are pretty much hilltop right off Normandy, and that farm had not been used except for hay in 20-30 years.”

While they have enjoyed their experiences for the most part, Lewis said they had to learn to deal with the chiggers and ticks.

“We get up close and personal with those, but we have kind of learned to manage those,” she said. “That is our only negative about springtime.”

Utilizing a Wagyu bull and Angus moms, the pair welcomes about 20 calves each year.

“They are born and bred, and we keep them for two years and we sell halves and wholes to individuals only and we do fall harvesting,” Lewis said. “We learned that we didn’t want to harvest frozen beef in the middle of summer and it is unpredictable in March so September, October and November are our harvest dates.”

“We only harvest 15, that is about all he and I can handle,” Lewis added. “We were doing more and we realized okay we are over our capacity and we need at least four acres of grass per animals.”

Lewis said she and her husband are very appreciative to be recognized by the Rotary Club with the Farmer of the Year distinction and feel very fortunate to be able to farm as a lifestyle choice and have nothing but respect for those farming to feed their families.