12 minute read
Making it natural
Kelly and Jonathan's home (aka Urban Farm & Forage)
Where apples generally fall close to the tree, hens have curtains hanging on their nesting boxes and healthy food is a natural first medicine
Story and photos by David Moore
Just a handful of minutes from the bustle of downtown Cullman, on a peacefully open stretch of Lessman Street, Kelly and Jonathan Hayes’ apples do not fall far from the trees in their orchard. That’s both fact and metaphor.
Their two and half-acre yard is home to not only the updated farm-style house they built in 2004, but also to Kelly’s organic kitchen gardens; several bee hives; three Amishbuilt outbuildings housing two dwarf Nigerian dairy goats, 20 heritage chickens and her shop; and, at the far back of their yard, a metal barn for Jonathan’s mowers, other equipment and family of four kayaks.
But the apples came first – before the chickens, before the eggs, before even the house.
Daughter of Gene and Sherry Crutchfield, Kelly played as a little girl in the field where they now live.
“This was all farmland and backed up to my parents’ house. Dad was a principal. Mom was a second grade teacher at West Elementary – and so am I,” Kelly laughs. “I’m starting to see a pattern here!”
Also falling in the apple pattern of the education tree, her sister, Kristi Jackson, teaches at East Elementary.
In Jonathan’s family, apples tend to fall in pastoral patterns. His father, Pastor Emeritus Edwin Hayes, preached 30 years at Cullman First Baptist. Jonathan’s brother, Jody, pastors in Fort Worth, Texas. His sister Julie’s husband, Steve Brown, pastors at West Point First Baptist. For a while, Jonathan was interim youth pastor at Cullman First – but his apple actually landed closer to Kelly’s.
“I felt led to teach and coach,” says Jonathan, who holds basketball records as coach of the Cullman Lady Bearcats.
Kelly was led to nutrition as much as she and Jonathan were led to teach. Their healthy, organic lifestyle today is reflected in their home, which they named Urban Farm and Forage.
“I was into organic before organic was cool, before organic was a household word,” Kelly says. “I remember vividly in the seventh grade reading my first book on nutrition. I was always interested in sustainable living, and nutrition has always been a big drive in the food part of that.
“If we take care of our bodies in the right way, we feel it’s a preventative measure,” she adds. “We’re not against antibiotics and doctors. We’re not antimedicine, but I always say kitchen medicine should be the first medicine.”
Jonathan hunts, and they sometimes have turkey and deer. Every once in a while, Kelly will eat a burger, but they and half of their two kids are vegetarian at heart, primarily eating fruits and vegetables they grow organically.
Asa, 16, fell right into the tofu mold.
“He was always a fabulous eater,” Kelly says. “I used to take him out to the garden in his stroller. He would wiggle himself out and pick whole peppers and eat them like apples.”
Their 11-year-old daughter’s apple rolled a bit from the tree.
“Evy,” Mom laughs, “eats veggies by force.’
“I’m like the movie ‘Elf,’” Evy says. “I like candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup.”
It was early in Jonathan and Kelly’s courtship that she first cooked for him – tofu tacos.
“She was vegetarian and I couldn’t even spell that,” says Jonathan, apparently an easy convert. “Whew! Amazing cook. She always tried new things. Some of it was a success – most of it.
“She wanted to be in control of her health,” he continues. “That’s one of things that drew me to her – she knew how she wanted to take care of herself and her family with food, making our soap,
Featuring hickory cabinets and birch floors, the Hayes’ house has just under 3,000 square feet, with 2.5 baths and four bedrooms, including one upstairs (overlooking the gardens) that Kelly uses for yoga. A sitting room, left, off the master bedroom serves as a music room with Kelly’s cello and mandolin. She claims that decorating isn’t really her thing and credits Kitty Warren at Village Furniture for much of that.
deodorants ... It’s been a process.”
Early in their marriage, Kelly took her first wild stab at making soap.
“She nearly blew up the kitchen,” Jonathan says. You’re supposed to add lye to your liquid, but she did it backward, creating a caustic volcano.
“I get an idea in my head, and sometimes I leap before I think,” Kelly says. “How I didn’t get hurt is beyond me. I guess God was watching out. There were angels in the kitchen.”
Aspiring to be self-sustainable, Kelly considers herself a farmer.
“I always say chickens were my gateway drug to farming,” she laughs. “Once I got my chickens, there was no looking back.”
Their goats provide milk primarily for making soap and lotion, but also for drinking and cheese. They grow medicinal herbs and flowers for her soaps and lotions. Ditto with the beeswax from their apiaries, which also provide honey. They make more than a ton of organic compost annually.
As a side note, Jonathan points out, Kelly not only earned master gardener status through the Cullman County Extension, but is in her third of the fiveyear master beekeeper program.
Depending on the season, and not counting the time Jonathan, Asa and Evy contribute, Kelly figures she spends some 20 hours a week farming – therapy, she calls it. Jonathan thinks it’s closer to 30 – goats and chickens before school; working until dark afterward.
“If I spend 30 hours, I need to learn to relax,” she laughs.
“That is relaxing for you,” he says. “That’s part of that driven personality you have. It’s a love. A passion.”
So is her teaching. After graduating from Athens State University in 1999 with a degree in elementary education, she taught a year at West Elementary in Cullman, where they lived during college.
Afterward, they moved to Homewood, and Kelly attended UAB for two years, diving in deep to earn a master’s degree in nutrition sciences.
Meanwhile, Jonathan – with a degree in physical education from Athens in 2000 – taught PE and coached at Pizitz Middle, part of Vestavia Hills City Schools. He ended up doing that for five years, and after UAB Kelly taught four years at Vestavia East Elementary.
Unlike her old home in Cullman that adjoined open fields, their small backyard in Homewood butted up to five different residential lots.
“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Kelly says. “We loved the area, but it was too crowded.”
They spent several years looking for property in and around Jefferson County until her parents called to say the farmland behind their old house was for sale. The Hayeses bought 10 acres in 2002, subdivided it between six families, planted apple trees and, because their house sold quickly, moved in with her parents in 2003. They started their new house in ’04 and moved the next year to their urban farm.
Kelly taught first grade at Cullman East Elementary until 2005, when Asa was born. She took off until 2015 – during which time Evy was born in 2010 – starting back at West Elementary.
“I’m a primary teacher at heart,” Kelly says. “There is a calling for that. I like the innocence of that age. It’s exciting to see the light bulbs come on. Everything is new and exciting. It takes a lot of energy to teach the little ones, and it has a lot of rewards.”
“She,” Jonathan beams, “is awesome. She’s Superwoman.”
Kelly’s equally proud of her husband’s now 22-year career.
At Pizitz, Jonathan taught girls PE for grades six-eight and coached football, basketball, cross country and track. At Cullman East, he coached football, boys JV basketball and girls golf and taught second- through sixth-grade PE.
In 2008, he went to Cullman High where he’s taught since. He spent six seasons at the helm of the girls varsity basketball team, taking the Lady Bearcats to the playoffs five consecutive times and tallied several 20-plus winning seasons.
“He still holds the record for the most wins in a season in Cullman High, boys or girls,” Kelly says. The girls that season went 28-7 before losing an overtime squeaker in the regional finals to the eventual state champ.
“We had some good teams,” Jonathan says. “I was very fortunate to also have a good administration and great parents. It set us up for success.”
He stepped down from basketball after the 2015 season, primarily because he
Urban Farm & Forage is a reflection of the Hayes’ lifestyle, but it’s also a delight. It’s a wonderfully unique home, from their French-style potager kitchen gardens for growing vegetables, herbs and flowers, to their dwarf Nigerian milk goats to – yes, really – curtains on the nesting boxes for their Heritage chickens and Kelly’s shop for making soap, tinctures and other natural wares. Garden and shed photos by Kelly Hayes.
was needed elsewhere. Martha, his now deceased mother, had terminal cancer. Meanwhile, his father suffered a scary concussion.
“With the blessing of Kelly and my family, I stepped back into basketball this year at the middle school level,” Jonathan says. “I love it. I missed it a lot.”
His seventh and eighth grade teams posted a combined 39-4 record this past year.
Who would have known that Kelly and Jonathan’s proverbial apples would fall so closely together, much less fall from the common tree of education?
Spending his early years in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, Jonathan had been in fourth grade when his family moved to Cullman in 1982 and dad became pastor at First Baptist. It took some years for Jonathan to shake his beach attachment.
He was three years ahead of her at Cullman High. They knew each other only in passing.
After graduating in 1992 and attending Wallace State Community College a year, he moved in with his sister back in New Smyrna for a year, dividing his time between beach bumming and beach-related jobs.
Then he studied church recreation two years at Samford University. By then, Kelly had graduated Cullman and, with no clear career direction, enrolled at Samford.
“For a week, I thought I would be nurse,” she laughs. “Then I discovered that involved blood.”
Kelly and Jonathan saw each other on campus, but they still weren’t seeing apples to apples.
Evy, above, cuddles her pet rabbit, Rascal; Asa works on his interesting hobby of blacksmithing. Photos by Kelly Hayes.
“I didn’t think she’d have anything to do with me. She was out of my league,” he says. So he returned to New Smyrna.
After another year at the beach, Jonathan returned to Cullman where, he says, his parents had been “good sports” about his lack of direction. He worked at Cullman Park and Rec and served as the interim youth pastor position at First Baptist when he and Kelly finally started dating in June 1997.
By now, they were eyeing teaching professions. Soon also eyeing a longterm relationship, they figured they could save a lot of money by finishing their education degrees at Athens State University, and enrolled after dating a few months.
Their life together includes a love of the outdoors. Beyond their labors at Urban Farm and Forage, they and the kids love to get outside and play. The equipment barn also stores their four kayaks. The outdoors, they contend, is another key to being healthy.
So it is that Kelly is the faculty sponsor of the outdoor classroom at West Elementary.
“My biggest drive is nutrition,” she says, “but I am extremely passionate about the outdoor classroom, teaching kids to grow their own food, to reconnect with nature. The trend of kids never going outside anymore is very alarming. It’s not easy to fight against iPads and iPhones.
“If I can do anything to reconnect children with nature and get them to turn off their devices,” Kelly adds, “I will feel I have done something worthwhile.”
“It’s a passion with me, too,” Jonathan says.
During periods of virtual and hybrid classes due to Covid, his “homework” assignment for his PE students has been to document at least 30 minutes a day outside doing practically anything that’s legal.
“Get a friend, go to the park, walk the dog, go fishing,” he says. “I don’t care what you do. Be outside – without your phone.”
During this conversation, Evy comes inside from the backyard. Where does she think her apple might fall? What might she want to be someday?
“In the second grade,” she says, “I wanted to be boxer, until someone told me I’d get hit and bleed. Then I wanted to be a vet, but I’d have to watch animals die.
“Now,” she continues, “I am leaning toward being a sixth grade teacher and opening a karate dojo after school.”
Her parents laugh.
“Evy milks goats sometimes,” Kelly says. “She helped build the fence around garden. She is not afraid of hard work.
“She takes after Mom a little bit,” Mom adds. “That apple – another apple – is close to the tree.”
