About the Elmwood Farm

Elmwood Stock Farm is owned and operated by a multigenerational Kentucky family who has been farming in the region for over six generations. Elmwood's 375-acre location in Scott County of prime Bluegrass farmland is now a diversified operation that includes several types of farming enterprises. Long a producer of Black Angus breeding stock cattle, Elmwood continues to sell breeding bulls to other area farms. Because the cows are bred and raised by the Bell family at Elmwood Stock Farm, the genetics, bloodlines and background of each animal is known and available to any buyer. This experience and integrity was begun many years earlier by Cecil D Bell at Bel-Clair Farm near the old Lemons Mill, also in Scott County. Cecil and his wife, Clara, operated a farmstead typical of many in the 1930s or 1940s, varieties of crops and multiple livestock. Horses, mules, and eventually a tractor pulled equipment through the fields, the dairy cow gave milk for her own calf as well as for the family. Barnyard chickens gave eggs, a little fertilizer, and eventually the Sunday dinner. Hogs, lambs, turkeys and beef steers pastured on grass and clover year-round eventually headed to market in the fall of the year. Production on Elmwood Stock Farm now embraces the experiences of Cecil and Clara within new technologies offered today. Electric fencing helps keep our pastured poultry safe from predators, trickle irrigation conserves water and reduces conditions favorable for disease, and lab testing identifies microbial life in our compost.

Complementing Elmwood's Black Angus cattle herd, a flock of Dorset-Suffolk cross sheep are grazed in a carefully planned rotation to produce spring lambs each season. We have always rotated our crops, used cover crops in the off season, “rested” our fields, and maintained livestock as part of the “mix” in an effort to help build on the high quality land mother nature has blessed central Kentucky with. Over hundreds of years this land has raised healthy bison, fertile sheep and cattle along with exceptional horses . . . it supports healthy people as well. Some say that many of the organic practices we employ today are old fashioned. Our view is that our “old fashioned” practices of diversifying crops and livestock in seasonal rotation, building good soil with compost and cover crops, letting poultry out of the houses onto the pastures, and producing vegetables and fruits in season with the sun and rains are successful!

Today, farm owners, Cecil and Kay Bell reside and farm full-time at Elmwood. Cecil oversees his Black Angus cattle herd, makes hay, and maintains pastures, barns and on-farm construction projects. Cecil's son and his wife, John and Melissa Bell oversee all of the vegetable production, burley tobacco crop, partners in the cattle herd, makes compost, and manages the on-farm labor. John's sister and her husband, Ann and Mac Stone, are more visible at farmers markets. They maintain the organic poultry, sheep flock, farmers markets, and CSA pickups of Elmwood products.

Over the past decade, we have grown and marketed a wide variety of meats, eggs, fruits, vegetables, tobacco, and even compost. Located off of the Paris-Georgetown Road, the family farmers at Elmwood are committed to healthy and wholesome production of superior, high quality fresh farm products. Organic certification ensures that we are following safe and sustainable practices every day of the year. Our livestock are well nurtured and cared for with thought and concern. We use many conservation practices to ensure better soil and water for future generations, and recently Elmwood Stock Farm received a Master Conservationist award from the National Resource and Conservation District of Scott County.