Like most couples, Ben and Charis Walker discussed their plans for the future while they were dating.

On their third date, when Ben took Charis to visit his family’s farm in the hills of southern Ohio, she told him she could see herself living there — which was a bit of a surprise, since she had told him on their second date that she never wanted to move away from North Carolina. They did remain in North Carolina for a few years after they were married in 2007, but after Ben finished his Air Force career, they made the move to Ohio. The North Carolina Tarheel and the self-described, West Virginia-born hillbilly now run Tarheelbilly Farm near Willow Wood in Lawrence County.

Both Ben and Charis grew up with roots in farming, but neither of them originally considered farming as a career.

Charis grew up in North Carolina, spending time with her maternal grandparents, who ran a small farm to provide food for the family. She saw farming more as a way of living than as a career, and she went looking for broader horizons. In college, she majored in Russian language and then went on to earn a couple of graduate degrees. She traveled and lived in several other states before settling back in North Carolina. During her time away, she grew to appreciate the food her family grew and prepared, she recalls. “I started considering how important the traditions of food were.”

Ben’s grandparents on both sides farmed and his parents started their own farm in Ohio when he was a teenager. They raised tobacco, corn, cattle and produce, as well as harvesting timber and processing the wood in their own sawmill. After high school, Ben left the farm to join the Air Force so he could see the world. In his 20-year military career he did that, traveling to 29 countries. “Some were enjoyable, and some weren’t,” he remembers.

While he was in the service, he continued to return home and help his dad on the farm, especially after his father lost an arm in a corn-picker accident in 2000. His dad offered him a piece of ground to make a home when he finished his military career — but even then, Ben says, farming wasn’t in his plans: “I had zero interest in agriculture.”

Change of thought

That started to change after Ben met and married Charis. During their first three years of marriage he spent 18 months in Afghanistan, and after each deployment he’d come home to more livestock. The first time it was chickens, the second time it was goats and the third time it was a milk cow. Charis was packing as much food production as she could into their half-acre homestead.

When the Walkers moved to their 50-acre Ohio farm four years ago, they each began working on their own agricultural pursuits. “He has his strengths and vision, and I have my strengths and vision,” Charis explains. “They’re complementary.”

Charis takes care of the farm’s sheep, goats and cattle, as well as their garden. She previously worked for three years as a welder, and she now uses her welding skills to build and repair equipment on the farm.

Ben focuses his efforts on the farm’s apiary, building beehives and harvesting honey. He has also tapped 600 maple trees and strung tubing to collect sap for making maple syrup.

The farm’s diversity lets the Walkers spread out their workload, as well as their income streams, Ben notes. “We don’t want all our eggs in one basket.”

Multipurpose sheep

Charis manages her sheep flock to produce wool and meat, as well as breeding stock. She originally chose the Tunis breed after seeing a picture in a book of sheep breeds. “When I saw them, I just knew,” she says. She built her 20-ewe flock with sheep from four flocks in three states, selecting for more-traditional, old-style characteristics rather than show-ring qualities. The breed is well adapted to forage and thrive on pasture, she points out. As a heritage breed, the Tunis sheep also give her a marketing niche, she adds. People who are committed to protecting endangered livestock breeds are interested in her breeding stock.

Charis shears her own sheep, and when she markets the fleece or the yarn made from the wool, she describes the animal the fiber came from. “Every skein of yarn has a face,” she says. Customers like knowing how the animals are raised and learning more about the animals and the farm, she explains. “If that connection is lost, my fiber isn’t any different than anyone else’s.”

Along with their sheep, the Walkers raise a few Galloway beef cattle. They are another heritage breed, chosen for their ability to thrive on hillside pastureland. “We try to match our animals to our property,” Charis explains. They have a few milk goats and also some free-range chickens.

Southern Ohio syrup

Even though southern Ohio is not known as a hub of maple syrup production, Ben says the area has great potential. He has tapped 600 trees, and extended tubing and pipe to carry the sap to his processing building. He uses a repurposed 800-gallon, stainless steel milk tank for storage and has assembled an efficient system for processing the sap. This was the second year he used reverse osmosis to remove most of the water from the sap before sending it to the evaporator. His wood-burning evaporator is set up with a secondary combustion system that makes use of about 92% of the British thermal units (Btu) in the wood he burns, as opposed to 50% without secondary combustion.

The Walkers market their farm products directly to consumers through personal connections and social media markets. Most years, they also sell their fiber, goat-milk soap, produce and other farm products at a farmers market in nearby Ashland, Ky., but they were not able to this year due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Tarheelbilly Farm uses organic production practices, although the Walkers have not pursued organic certification. Their location in Ohio’s southernmost county is in an economically depressed part of Appalachia, so they try to keep their prices affordable. Organic certification would add to their production, costs and labeling products as organic is not a marketing advantage in their area, Ben explains. “People get sticker shock.”

Although friends and family members have suggested they might be able to charge more if they took their products elsewhere, part of the Walkers’ purpose for the farm is to provide good food to people around them, Charis says. “We’re not trying to feed the world. We’re trying to provide really good food to people in our community.”

Keck writes from Raymond, Ohio.