Lazy Eight Stock Farm

Lazy Eight Stock Farm is a 420 acre Certified Organic farm located on the banks of the Paint Lick Creek in Madison and Garrard counties. The farm family consists of Carla and Lothar Baumann and their son, Bryce, his wife Anna, and their children, Jack and Molly. Carla’s great-uncles started farming the land in 1947. In 1979 Lothar, a high school teacher and woodworker, and Carla, a public health nurse, raised their first crop of sweet corn to sell at the Berea Farmers Market. Bryce — today the first full-time farmer in the family in four generations —  raised his first crops of sweet corn, tomatoes and strawberries as a middle schooler. The farm continued to operate traditionally for many years with cattle and tobacco, even as Bryce was learning how to raise produce, livestock and eggs without synthetic inputs. The last crop of tobacco was raised in 1997 and in 2011, we sold our last group of conventional feeder calves. In 2012, we joined the USDA Certified Organic Program. Our love of the land and the work, and our desire to farm in a way that is aligned with our values, led us to Community Supported Agriculture. We began our CSA in 2012, and it has become the lifeblood of the farm. We manage our land in a way that promotes biological diversity above ground and below ground by growing a diversity of crops, creating riparian areas for wildlife and insects, developing pollinator habitats, and sometimes sacrificing production for the benefit of all. We believe that maintaining a balanced farm ecosystem is the best way to insure the crops we harvest provide the best food for our customers. Farms use a lot of energy, and we are committed to decreasing our impact. In 2019 we installed enough solar panels to offset all of our energy needs on the farm. All of the energy used for heating our plant-starting greenhouse is grown on the farm. All of the dead fall trees on the farm are cut into firewood, which we burn in our hydronic biomass heater. Our greenhouse floor has water pipe running through 100 tons of stone inside an insulated jacket. This large mass is heated to 75 degrees, which provides wonderful even heat to our young plants during the coldest months of the year. It takes a village to keep the farm running! Our team is built around a core of full-time year-round farmers (Bryce, Lothar, Carla, Susan Schmied, Cait McClanahan), and a team of seasonal farmers make it possible to do the heavy lifting of gardening during the summer months. We feel very fortunate to be able to participate in the H2A Guest Worker program. Farming is unique, in that the work load increases dramatically during the growing season, and this program allows people to travel safely to and from their home country each year to fill these seasonal positions. We are so grateful for the contributions of Joel, Adilene, Claribel, Jaime, and Sergio and the sacrifices they have made to be away from their families while working on the farm! Lothar is the farm encyclopedia when it comes to heirloom vegetables, woodworking, farm habitat, and most any kind of history. A natural storyteller, he has an amazing memory for details, particularly of his Virginia childhood. Bryce grew up hearing his dad’s old farmer stories – stories of working on the farm of a Mennonite family in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. As a teen, he worked in the orchard there, scrambled around the ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains picking blueberries, and got into the usual amount of mischief that comes from being the oldest of three brothers. Lothar (a self-professed Luddite) is in his element when he’s lost in the tomato vines or strawberry patch on the farm, or hunting for arrowheads with Jack and Molly. Carla’s daydreams oftentimes get her into a pickle when she bites off more than she can chew. Always a list-maker, she takes much pleasure in marking things off the list! The list for this year is much like the list from last year and includes reading with her book club, planting lot