KINGWOOD — The West Virginia Farm Bureau and State Fair of West Virginia recently honored a Preston County family with the 2019 Farming Heritage Award.
Fern and Charles Hayes bought their family farm, just outside of Kingwood, in 1964. Today it is still worked by the family.
The couple met at a dance at the Arthurdale Center. Charles had just been discharged from the U.S. Army, where he served in Belgium during World War II. Fern, five years younger, was part of an Arthurdale homestead family. Charles’ family had a farm in Pleasantdale that is still in the family.
Fern’s family raised what it could on the homestead, including keeping a milk cow that her mom walked down the road to each day to milk. After several years of dating, the couple married.
Charles worked as a heavy equipment operator, a profession he followed throughout life.
But when the oldest of their five children, Chuck, was 11, they bought the 203-acre farm on Snyder Loop Road.
“Somebody told Charles about it at work,” recalled Fern Hayes, now 90 years old and still living on the family farm. Charles died in 2006.
When looking for a farm, Fern said, she wanted something close to a good road, so the children wouldn’t have to walk far to the bus stop in the winter.
“That was a pretty big undertaking, to take on a farm this size and make those payments,” son Kimble Hayes said.
Fern and Charles had five children: Chuck, Dave, Kimble, Joy and Dan, along with 10 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
The farm was named White House Cattle and, beginning about 1967, the family always had a showing in the Cow Palace at the Preston County Buckwheat Festival. Kimble Hayes said they won “ribbons and trophies and several champions and grand champions.”
The values they learned on the farm lasted all their lives, the children said.
“I think it’s the involvement with your kids that keeps them grounded. It teaches them responsibility. It’s a very valuable tool, I think, with learning responsibility,” said Joy Hayes Moore.
She remembers being happier riding a pony out to take drinks to those working in the hay field than working in the kitchen. Now she and her Mom can foods side by side.
Hard work was taught by example, not word of mouth. The children recall their father coming home from his work as an equipment operator, eating supper with them, then going out to work on the farm.
Four of the Hayes siblings went to college and one to technical school. Through grants, scholarships, money they earned by selling cattle at the Buckwheat Festival and working part-time jobs, and their parents’ contribution, all graduated debt free.
And, “Being raised on a farm had kind of pointed us in the direction of what we did with our lives,” Kimble Hayes said. He worked nearly 40 years for the USDA; brother Chuck worked for the Maryland Department of Agriculture.
Chuck Hayes has his own farm at Aurora, Wes-Mar Farms, raising Angus cattle. Kimble Hayes and Joy Hayes Moore still work the home place, raising Angus and crossbred cattle.
“In some way everybody’s still somewhat involved,” Kimble said.
The award is given to a family demonstrating a commitment to a rural lifestyle, involvement in the community and serving as a role model to others in the State of West Virginia.
