April 2013 | Section A
FAMILY FARMS
“Born too soon” At 85, Hancock County farmer Kenny Phares has seen it all By Robin Winzenread Fritz | photos by tom russo
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aving lived, farmed and raised a family in northwestern Hancock County for the past 85 years, Kenny Phares has experienced a great many changes in the Hoosier heartland firsthand. “Tractors were first coming into play when I was a boy,” says Kenny, while sitting at the dining room table with his son and farming partner, Jeff Phares. “I’ve seen it change from manual to automation to high tech. I’ve seen farming go from a way of life to big business.” But while the times and technology have changed, one thing has remained fairly constant in his life. It’s a 74-year-old dairy barn, and it stands just north of the home he has shared with Wilma, his wife of 59 years, since the 1970s. Kenny grew up near that barn and the farm he now calls home, not far from the small community of Mohawk. As a child in the 1930s, he watched huckster wagons bring produce to area families. When cash was short, people could barter and trade. “You could trade eggs for groceries right in front of the house in the 1930s,” Kenny says. The nearby barn was built by the Milky Way Guernsey Farm in 1939 and 1940 specifically as a dairy operation. At the time, the large block barn included 18 milking stanchions and a pump house. After its completion, the son of the family who owned the dairy was drafted into World War II, providing Kenny with an opportunity. For the next three years, from age 15 to 17, he helped out in the dairy barn. “My wages were $15 a week,” he says. “At that time there were three groceries in Mohawk, and we sold them fresh raw milk that
TOP: Kenny Phares stands by the first tractor he bought, a 1953 McCormack Farmall purchased for $4,500. MIDDLE: Jeff Phares and his father, Kenny, inside their office. Bottom: Jeff, right, along with his son-in-law, Jeff Addison, closes the front of the storage barn on the Phares farm moments after receiving a shipment of feed corn.
was bottled by hand in that barn. Probably a third of each quart was cream. “I never dreamed I would ever own it,” says Kenny about the barn that his brother, Gerald, eventually bought. The brothers later swapped properties, and Kenny became the owner of the barn. “I certainly never dreamed it while I worked there.” So unique is the block barn that a family friend stumbled upon a watercolor painting of it by a local artist in nearby Greenfield and purchased it for the family as a gift. It now hangs proudly in the dining room of Kenny and Wilma’s home, a beautiful reminder of a special piece of Indiana’s agricultural history. Kenny’s father died at the age of 43, an event that propelled Kenny and his brother into a life of farming. As the oldest of four, Kenny took charge of his mother’s property. “But, really,” adds son, Jeff, “he and his brother, they started with next to nothing.” Kenny rented his first farm in 1948, but his plans were put on hold when he was drafted into the Korean War in 1950. Fortunately for Kenny, neighbor Elbert Griffith promised to help farm the land during his two-year absence. “He told me, you’ll have something to come back to,” see phares on page a2