Calving season is hard work.  It doesn’t have set hours, it doesn’t care about the weather, and sometimes the cows can just be plain mean about it. So, if a task is so cumbersome, why make it last forever?  At Eden Shale Farm we have worked hard to condense our calving season to make it as short as possible.  If you look back to 2014, our first calving season at the farm lasted 105 days and we only had 32% of the calves born in the first 45 days of the calving season. It was a long, tough season and I wondered why we decided to calve in the spring.   2015 was our first AI ..read more

There is an unsung hero in the agriculture world. A hero that we all rely on, but that does not get the credit they deserve. That hero is the farm store.  They come in many different shapes and sizes and most every small farming community has one. As an oasis of commerce, they serve as a vital hub of booth supplies and knowledge for local producers. Owen County is blessed to have an excellent Southern States Coop.  Located on 7 acres at the north end of Owenton sits “our” farm store.  This Southern States location was established in 1949 and has been continually serving its cu ..read more

There are 33 buildings on the property at Eden Shale. Most of these buildings remain functional and provide a service to the operation of the farm.  However, there were some of these structures that had been abandoned and no longer remained safe to have around. You may recall in an article from last spring that we had a lot of wind damage from an 80+ mph wind event in March. That event is what prompted a discussion with the folks at UK to see what could be done about the damage from the storm.  Following that wind event, we had several different groups of UK personnel visit the far ..read more

​There are many ways to measure success depending on what you value. The production data is always important to measure if you want to measure progress. Profitability is a must if you consider your farm a business and not a hobby. Additionally at Eden Shale we measure another metric that most farms do not, visitors. 2023 has been another busy year with lots of interests in the workings of Eden Shale. We have hosted more tours and field days this year than we ever have since KBN took over the farm in 2013. In the years leading up to COVID we were conducting roughly 30-35 tours a year. Each ye ..read more

We weaned our calves on September 26th, which was about three weeks later than we had been previously weaning. However, this was when the sign was right to do the weaning. Does the sign have any bearing at all on how things go? It depends on who you ask and their most recent experience, but I think there is something to it and we always check the sign before setting the date for weaning or castrating. A big part of the excitement of weaning this year was getting to use our new chute for a full days work. We had ran the calves through it, and treated some pinkeye in the cows, but this was the ..read more

ONLINE REGISTRATION CALL OFFICE ..read more

“If you’re not breaking stuff, you’re not working hard enough.”  We have all heard this saying at some point, or at least mumbled it as you worked on a broke piece of equipment. I learned to farm with old farm equipment so I know how important it is that you not be hard on the equipment. But it turns out that if the equipment is old enough, it will eventually break. Our fall hay season presented this very struggle.  The disc mower broke a set of belts about half way through mowing.  For sure it was after 5:00 pm but luckily I had purchased a new set incase this problem ever aro ..read more

Register Online for the Eden Shale Open House  Online Registration Call to Register ..read more

..read more

When done correctly, there are some things on the farm that will last a long, long time. That is my hope with our recent project of replacing the chute at the main cattle working facility. If you have been to a tour at Eden Shale, then you more than likely walked past our old chute and alley system. The barn that houses it was built in the mid 1960’s and was used to manage a bull test operation at that time. The “Bull Barn” as we call it, was built to hold 110 bulls in confinement. As part of the bull test project, each bull was walked through the working facility every two weeks to collect a ..read more