The following is the oral history of 2010 July Living Treasure Sonny English. The history was recorded and transcribed by Nancy Theiss, PhD. The Living Treasure Program is a joint endeavor of the Oldham Era and Oldham County History Center.

I was born Aug 13, 1934 in Prospect, KY. Herbert T. English and Edith Pearson English were my parents. Our family farm is on old Covered Bridge Rd., Hwy. 329. My grandfather bought the farm in 1895, he lived here and my father and mother lived here and now my wife and I live here. All of our children grew-up here.

My grandfather was a lawyer and a teacher. He and grandmother had a little college in Franklin, Kentucky. He got a job teaching in Carrollton, Ky. and came up the river on a steamboat and walked across to Glenarm and caught a train and went on up to Carrolton. And on that trip he walked down the old pike and passed this farm and said he would sure like to buy it someday. The farm was 298 acres. It was a livestock farm, cows and hogs. After that it produced crops including orchard grass and Oldham County was the orchard grass capital of the world.

I enjoyed being and growing up on the farm. When I was 10 years old I wanted to go work with my dad. He taught me how to drive a team of horses, because that is what we used instead of a tractor. I think most boys back then, wanted to work on the farm with their dads. We started growing orchard grass at that time.

We seeded orchard grass into the fall grain, winter wheat fields. We sowed orchard grass and clover- it was the second year before we could harvest seed. So I cut orchard grass with a binder and a team and shocked orchard grass and did it all, I suppose.

We had an orchard grass festival that was in Crestwood. Everybody liked to show their grass- it was a fair-like affect for the children, and beauty contest. That was one of the first places that I first noticed Pat (Sonny’s wife). She was in the contest. The orchard grass festival included a competition, they tested the seed, to see how much weed was in it, and they weighed it to get a test weight on it- the best seed won at the festival. We harvested the seed the 10th of June. If you got if off the 10th of June, it was a wonderful crop because you got 2 crops in the same year, you could cut the orchard grass off and thrash that and sell the seed and then later on it came up and made an undergrowth hay, which was a decent hay to feed cattle. Two crops in one year! You cut orchard grass, shocked it, picked up the shocks later on. Dr. Hagan and I bought a threshing machine together. It got to be a big problem to get a threshing machine- there was a man, it was his business would come around to thresh but he was too busy. When Oregon started getting into the orchard grass production, it eventually hurt Oldham County. Finally, wheat, corn, soybeans, all came in and you had to start doing things on more of a volume business.

I went to Crestwood grade and high school. I graduated the last year of Crestwood High School that was in 1953. The next year LaGrange and Crestwood combined to make Oldham County High School. We shopped in Louisville mainly and LaGrange some. My mother always did her grocery shopping mainly in St. Mathews area. Of course, she being in the Pearson family, she went downtown and shopped 4th Street. She was born around Broadway, her family owned the Pearson Funeral Home.

I didn’t get into trouble much back then, because what ever happened in school, you bought it home. Whatever you did, got home before you did. We would get a spanking from the principal or get slapped [on the hand] by the teacher. Some of my teachers were Mrs. Montfort, Etta Klingenfus who was my second grade teacher, wonderful person, and Mary Ruth Guthals and John Trapp was my first principal. Walter Cundiff was my second principal.

I rode horses when I was kid. I had a pony named “Billy” and a five gaited black horse named “Midnight”. I rode a lot on the farm and I when I got my gaited horse, my Dad liked to ride him too. I rode would ride “Midnight” down to my grandmothers who lived at Glenarm and I would ride that horse to see her. I liked to spend time with her and stay up there, and then ride him home. The road, Hwy. 329, was just a narrow, gravel road back then. It didn’t go all the way to Crestwood. It went to Brownsboro and then over to Glenarm Road and then you went to Crestwood from Glenarm.

As a child, I went to Harrods Creek Baptist Church and then went to Crestwood Christian Church. We had a small pond by the house and I would fish and then we fished Harrod’s Creek. There is good fishing down there.

Our senior prom we had at Sleepy Hollow, in the big dining room. I was a member of the FFA and editor of the annual. I loved and played basketball, baseball and track. Al Layer was my first basketball coach and William Bell was my last basketball coach. For dates we went out to eat and went to parties- someone was always having a party- bonfires, play games, always eat. A lot of the parties were at John Mosers, the Kleins and a lot were at the Pott’s. We went to LaGrange to see movies at the D. W. Griffith theatre and we would go to Louisville and the Vogue in St. Mathews. I started dating Pat when I was a senior in high school.

I grew-up hunting. We used to quail hunt, rabbit hunt, squirrel hunt, even geese. I used to go on a hunting trip with a friend of mine to Tennessee to hunt quail. I think they put deer in Oldham County around 20 years ago and I deer hunted on the farm. We had bird dogs for quail and beagles for rabbits. I had two really good beagle hounds and we would get four or five people in the morning and hunt to Harrods Creek- it took about half a day. We also hunted around Thanksgiving. We would dress the rabbit and soak it in salt water. My mother would fry it first and then finish it by baking it in the oven. We ate everything, same way with fishing. We normally fished Harrods Creek, we caught bass, bluegill and catfish and there was a little fish called a rock bass- they were really good, the size of your hand. Harrods Creek used to be known as one of the best fishing creeks in the state.

I thought I was going into the service but I didn’t have to, but at that time they weren’t taking farmhands, and then Pat and I were married and they weren’t taking married men and then they started taking married men but not married men with one child and we had a child!

I started farming fulltime after graduation in 1953. We got married in 1955. Agriculture back then was good here. It was mainly livestock at that time and we raised Angus beef cattle, we had 30 beef cows. We raised hogs. We started the hog operation in the 60s. We raised some of our own feeder pigs and we bought a lot. When we started confinement feeding, I was feeding 260 on the floor as they got to be 220-225 lbs. we hauled them to the stockyards but most generally to Fischer Packing Co. By the way, my father sold the first hog to Henry Fischer that he butchered and sold that started the business. Back then, during my father’s time, they “drove” them [herded them] to town. They walked the pigs in. They would walk in 15 or 20. Dad used to tell me that three men would walk them in. They would go down River Road and Dad said they had to be careful when they got in the city limits because it was grown up with bushes and trees and things and if the pigs got into the undergrowth, someone might take them. I imagine Dad would use an old walking cane that I would imagine he used to help herd them in. Later on, we hauled in our trucks.

We raised our meat. We butchered our hogs here and had a smokehouse and would smoke the hams. You start out with a green ham, which is a fresh ham. They had shelves out in the smokehouse and you would salt the hams down [cover them with salt] for several weeks and then dust the salt off and wash them down. My dad had some sort of a big oak barrel and made some sort of a brine and they would put them in there and then they would take them out to dry and then hang them in the smokehouse and smoke them for close to a month.

Our first water came from the cistern. A cistern is a hole in the ground that is bricked up and plastered and rainwater comes off the gutters from the house and goes into the cistern. I know my father would always let the “roof wash off” when it started to rain before he would let the water run in the cistern. And we also had a spring on the farm and if it was a dry season, he would get the spring water. We put a pump in later on, to pump the water up from the spring. We had our own watering system that would supply the barns and house from the spring. We got city water about 20-21 years ago, right before we built the golf course.

We had our wedding at Crestwood Christian Church and went to Mammoth Cave for our honeymoon. We lived with my parents in this house for a couple of years- we renovated a small tenant house, and moved over there for a while. We had three children, Melanie, Lee and Melissa. Our kids were in 4-H and church activities, a lot. The extension service, Chester Brown, was the agent then.

Farming changed over the years. When I first started farming, hay was a cash crop whereas small grain and corn are now. Hay was important back then for the horse farms in Oldham County, alfalfa, alfalfa and timothy, alfalfa and orchard grass, orchard grass and clover. The dairymen still wanted to use straight alfalfa hay back then but not anymore. We would get 3 or 4 cuttings of alfalfa each year, two cuttings from timothy and clover back then, we produced about 15,000 bales. We cut and baled our own hay and had the equipment to do it. My father and I early on, bought some equipment together and then later on I bought some of my own. I hired one man to help and our neighbors would help. Back then we had good neighbors, we worked together all the time, like Joe Nay and John Swinney, who weren’t close neighbors but we worked together all the time. Dr. Hagan bought the farm next door and Mr. Howard Bramblett managed that farm and Howard and I worked together all the time. When my son, Lee, got old enough, he worked on the farm. Joe McWilliams and I would work together- he would come over and help me bale hay. It was fun, good relationship with neighbors.

Twenty-one years ago, my son and I were plowing about 1500 acres, I had machinery and he had machinery and we were working all the time. We were looking at alternatives. One was fish farming and we looked at that but decided against it pretty quick. Jim McWilliams had already built a golf course, Sleepy Hollow. And Lee asked us what we thought about pursuing the idea of a golf course and Pat and I thought it was a good idea. The National Golf Foundation came to Louisville and did a feasibility study and said they liked the idea and a couple of years we drove around and looked at golf courses, studied it. Lee, my son was very interested in it. Todd Smith became our green superintendent and is still our green superintendent and Tommy Rabbeth is our pro and he has been with us, he was in college at the time, and he is still with us. They both have been with us since year one. This golf course is 165 acres, you can do it smaller than that but we didn’t want to. Steve Smyers out of Florida, was the golf course architect, and asked us where we wanted to put the golf course and we said anywhere you want to and he said “You mean I can put it anywhere I want to?” I said as long as you don’t run houses through it, we want a little land around it. Nevel Meades Estate is closer to the golf course and Nevel Meades Views is around it. I am not a golfer but I enjoy the people and I enjoy talking to people.

We have 28 employees and that includes Tommy Rabbith’s crew at the clubhouse and the grounds crew and that is Todd Smith’s crew. It’s a privately owned daily fee course with memberships.

As a farmer I have always been a member of Farm Bureau and always a member of the Louisville Area Farm Analysis Group. We kept books and studied what was making money and what wasn’t. We studied other farms to see what other farms were doing in other areas and should we be copying them or not.

When my children were growing up we always had a boat and we went to Lake Cumberland and spent a lot of time on the Lake. We have six grandchildren. When they were little, they would come out and ride the farm machinery and combines. I still raise 50 acres of soybeans around the golf course.

I think my biggest accomplishment is being married to Pat and raising our family. My greatest mentor was my Dad and my mother, and Pat’s family, her parents and Joe Nay.

I always have a fear for my grandchildren when they go out onto the highway because there is much more traffic and drug usage. We didn’t have that problem growing up. I have always been involved in church. We were involved at the beginning of River Valley Christian Church on Hwy. 42. Church is important because when we came into this world, all you have to do is look at this world and see that we didn’t have a lot to do with it. I believe in prayer and in the Lord and I don’t know what I would do without Him. I have been a board member, a deacon and an elder. I was on the landscape committee and I am not on it anymore but I still enjoy going over there and mowing the grass. It is an important part of my life.