Rankin Powell started working the family farm when he was a boy in Corydon. He hasn’t stopped since. Now 86 years old, Powell says farming is still in his system.
“I go out every day and do a little work,” he said.
Powell and his lifetime of farming was honored Tuesday morning when he was given the Agriculturalist Lifetime Achievement Award at the Henderson Chamber of Commerce’s annual Agriculture Appreciation Breakfast at the Lumberyard Event Center.
Throughout his career, Powell has taken on a number of projects, but it’s his work with no-till farming that set him apart. Last year, he was awarded the Shirley H. Phillips No-Till Award by the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
Powell served in the Army and then the Army Reserves, when at that time he also earned a master of science in agronomy from UK. After that, he began work at the Tennessee Valley Authority and began showing farmers in western Kentucky counties no-till drills.
Powell later worked as the agricultural extension agent in Livingston County for 12 years. He moved back to the family farm when his father was sick and again farmed there, turning their land to no-till. After farming for 20 years, he returned to work as an extension agent, this time in Union County.
Presenter Mike Smith said it’s one of the only instances he can think of when an extension agent left the job, moved into farming, and then went back to work as an extension agent. Powell’s career spanned some 60 years, Smith said.
Powell said for young people starting off in farming careers, “It’s tough,” and they’d do well to work with an older farmer in learning the profession while also getting help to acquire land.
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The keynote speaker at the breakfast was Jim Coleman, an organic farmer who only began farming in 2020 after a long and successful career in corporate America. Like Powell, Coleman returned to family land to farm, though his circumstances were much different.
Coleman told the story of the very beginnings of his family’s farm, Coleman Crest Farm in Lexington, which for the Colemans had a starting point in the 19th century.
His great-grandfather, James Coleman, joined the Union Army’s Fifth Colored Regiment in 1863 and fought till the end of the war, when he returned to the farm where he was born and had previously worked the land as a slave.
Later the owner of the farm sold parcels of it to former slaves and James Coleman was able to take out a $1,200 loan from the Union Benevolent Society to purchase what would become Coleman Crest Farm.
The land stayed with the family through generations. Jim Coleman was raised there, even becoming his father’s farm manager when the younger was 12 years old.
Jim Coleman later went on to Howard University, where he met the love of his life, Cathy. After 37 years of marriage, Cathy died of breast cancer in 2020. Jim Coleman was devastated. He decided to leave New York, where he and Cathy had been living, and return to his family farm. There, he said, he found the land in as much disarray as he was.
“It needed help, and I needed help,” he said.
He started getting the land back in shape and decided he would become an organic farmer. One reason for that choice was because Cathy had always been such a proponent of organic food, he said.
Besides organic farming, Coleman Crest Farms also hosts provides summer mentorships to young people who are interested in agriculture and is an agritourism destination, Jim Coleman said.
He also has partnered with 12 different area food providers, many who supply food to less fortunate.
“We don’t feed the world, but we do feed the community,” Jim Coleman said.
