“They came out of Virginia and stopped here . . . It was good land.”
Jeff Brother, 80, owns a cattle farm on Prewitt Pike in Mt. Sterling. He inherited the land from his mother, who inherited it from her parents.
Jeff began farming when he was 12, when his grandmother told him that his uncle needed help on his farm. He loaded hay bales and, on horseback, checked, counted and moved cattle. He was sometimes paid in hay. “I liked it,” Jeff says. “Getting out and doing something is better than sitting in class, listening to somebody.”
Because Jeff knew he wanted to farm in Kentucky, he earned a degree in Animal Science at University of Kentucky. After graduation, he joined the Army’s Transportation Corps. That work gave him experience in dealing with different kinds of people. “I don’t care what you’re doing, if you can deal with people, that’s half the battle,” Jeff says. He returned to Mt. Sterling to farm his family’s land with his uncle. When his uncle died, he took over farm operations.
As a farmer, Jeff has learned that no two days are the same. “Everything is IF,” he says. “Everything revolves around the weather.”
Earlier, Jeff had opportunities to join his father in banking in Mt. Sterling, where his father served as a bank president. “I wanted no part of it,” Jeff says. “I had seen the pressures he had been under, pressures for things he couldn’t do anything about.” In contrast, Jeff says, in farming you have some control. “You could at least think you were doing something about it.”
Jeff’s children have begun moving back into the area. In 2002, his eldest daughter, Laura Lee, bought the farm down the road. His youngest daughter, Janie-Rice, and her husband bought a 60-acre farm and a house less than a mile from her parents that was built by another relative. And so the Prewitt tradition continues.
