And we look forward to exploring it.

But first, from rough terrain to strip mines, to floods, farming in eastern Kentucky has always been a tough undertaking.

And that's why agriculture in Breathitt County is quickly becoming a model for the rest of Appalachia.

In and around Jackson, Kentucky, my family's hometown, farming is a community effort, and the movement is growing.

When you think about agriculture in the beautiful mountains of eastern Kentucky, it's hard not to focus on the challenges.

But if you spend some time in Breathitt County, you're going to meet farmers who are turning those challenges into opportunities.

Breathitt County is very mountainous in areas.

Most of the farmland in those areas of the county are reclaimed strip mine, grazing operations is about all that we've got there.

Other areas of the county, the more fertile areas, cropland, are prone to flooding.

Dealing with floods is nothing new for Breathitt County, but the frequency and severity of these events are increasing.

With these challenges, local farmers must find progressive ways to maximize their resources.

Farmers here, [cow mooing] they have to add as much value to their product on their farm as they can.

And we've got some really good examples of that going on with freezer beef sales, with, you know, direct sales at farmers markets or at schools.

That's how farmers can make a living here, is by adding value to their product on their farm.

[people chatting] Eric and Amy Holbrook run a state-of-the-art beef cattle operation on one of those reclaimed strip mines.

They add value by offering direct sales options for their grain-finished beef.

But like most successful businesses, it all starts with having something people want to buy.

Our cattle are born and raised on our farm, so they've never left the farm except to be processed at the end.

We take pride in that because people know what these cows, if they've been given medicine, what they've been fed, that's really important to us.

We feed them until they're finished.

We feed them grain, like I said, three times a day, and they have free choice of hay.

So, it gives them that really good marbling in the meat, which makes them delicious, of course.

Like a lot of Breathitt County farmers, Amy and Eric have full-time jobs off the farm, so they have to leverage technology for their intensive operation.

We have solar feeders that feed our cattle three times a day, so we don't have to go back there and feed the cattle three times a day.

We also harvest rainwater off of the roof of the barn, into cisterns, and then we use a solar pump to pump that into the water for the cattle in the pens.

Across the county, technology also plays a key role at Jeff and Sue Howard's hydroponic vegetable operation.

UK Cooperative Extension Services helped them apply for a grant, and that's how they bought their first high tunnel.

Since then, they've just kept growing.

We can see that there's a potential here to grow stuff that you just can't grow in the garden.

The main deal for growing in something like a high tunnel or something is when you go to a Farmer's Market to sell, you can have something in there before everybody's got the same thing.

It gives you a little advantage.

Not cheating, it just gives you an advantage.

And when you're trying to maximize yields on small pieces of land, you take any advantage you can get.

But our little spot, if we don't make this spot produce something now and then produce again and maybe again in the same year, we're not gonna - we may be wondering what we're gonna have for supper tomorrow.

[chuckles] To keep production moving throughout an expanded growing season, the Howards rely on high tunnels and hydroponics.

You're seeing that tank is full of water with nutrient in it.

You've got a pump, submersible pump in that tank, and it comes up through that black line, and it just runs down through here across the roots of the lettuce and back in the return tube that takes it back to the tank.

It keeps circulating.

All that's missing from the equation now is the consumer.

And that's where the local community and a proactive extension agent come into play.

What's good about here in Breathitt County is there's a lot of local people that want to support agriculture.

You just have to make it easy for them.

You have to give them that access.

So, that's why I work so hard with the farm to school program and with the Farmer's Market here is so that people can have that access to fresh local food.

[people chattering] In addition to the Breathitt County Farmer's Market, Reed has helped grow the local farm-to-school program with Jackson Independent Schools, and that has had a major impact on local agriculture.

I think the impact of the farm-to-school program is so beneficial to local farmers.

They buy any ground beef that we will sell them, which is great because when it comes to beef, you get more ground beef than you do anything else.

You get a small amount of steaks and a huge amount of ground beef.

So, that helps us control the ground beef inventory.

And then we can harvest more beef each month because that ground beef is being moved each month as well.

Jackson City School, they help us extremely.

They are over half of our farm income.

And the good thing about that is that is we know when it goes there, when we pick it, it's sold.

And you know, you take it to the Farmer's Market, you might sell it, and you might end up bringing a lot of it home.

So, it's good to have something that is guaranteed.

The school is key in the fact that they're able to take larger amounts of meat and produce at a time.

Most of the time, when farmers go to a Farmer's Market, you're not going to sell out.

[children chattering] But by working with the school, they are able to take larger quantities.

I mean, they're feeding hundreds of kids a day.

And then the kids are loving the ground beef.

I mean, the flavor and the texture is so different than what they were getting that the school is like, now we can't ever go back [chuckles] to the ground beef we were buying before.

Me and Jeff were just talking the other day that we wish all the schools, even our grandchildren, we wish they had this fresh food because it's more nutritious for you.

The incredible work being done at Jackson City Schools benefits both the kids and the farmers in Breathitt County.

And it's part of a broader community effort that could be a model for the rest of Eastern Kentucky.

The food supply chain can break so easily, and coming to a local farmer, I'm here.

Even if all the trucks break down, they can still come to Highway 30 East and get beef from me.

And they can go to Jeff and get lettuce or berries, and they go to Farmer's Market, and we have lots of other farmers that come there.

But I think just fostering that relationship between the farmers and the community is the best thing that Breathitt County has done.

That is something any community can do.

Just be involved with your farmers because when you don't have farmers, you may not have food, and that's really important.

I wish more communities were doing what Breathitt County is doing.

I think Breathitt County is setting a really good example for all of Eastern Kentucky.

I mean, the topography here isn't what it is in farm country in Central Kentucky, in Western Kentucky, but there's still a lot of agriculture here.

If you've got a community that supports agriculture, the sky's the limit.

You can do anything.

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