Story of Gilbert Keys – Hog Farmer Extraordinaire
Gilbert Key, Owner Key Packing Company
Gilbert, a young 71, is a common sense, get-er done person. He began his employment as a big rig truck driver. “I would be gone five days at a time,” said Gilbert. I was married, raising kids and gone too much. One day a friend told me about a farm for sale that was nearby. “I didn’t have two quarters but I got a loan from the bank for $200,000 and I bought the farm”, he said.
His main income from the farm was a chicken coop. “I had eight pigs and I liked raising them. They were easier than chickens. So I switched to just hogs.”
Storefront
Today Gilbert owns his farm — all 74 acres buildings and equipment. At first you might think that he just got into farming and pigs at the right time but you would be wrong. No, he continued to drive his truck, raise pigs, raise his family and in his spare time he sold ice cream at local festivals in North Carolina and surrounding states.
Lemonade not lemons
You could say that Gilbert was sold lemonade but got a bunch of lemons. Gilbert is a sharing man. Over the last 3 years he has been visited by many. College professors, other hog farmers and want-a-be worm farmers. His entry into this worming business was a disaster. “I bought into this whole concept. The promises were great. I would make lots of money selling worm castings and worms.
Part of his deal was to let the worms multiply (studies show that red worms reproduce at a rate of 10 per week if all conditions are right). Then the company that set him up with my initial worm stock would buy them back from his first harvest of worms. Seemed like a good deal to Gilbert since I would have 10 or 100 times more worms by then.
“I paid $65,000 for the initial stock of worms ($16 per pound) and they would buy back the same number of worms for $45,000. So, their expertise and my initial stock of worms would only cost me $20,000.
I spent $250,000 on a shed, plumbing, tanks and other equipment. I wanted to be assured that I could get some of my money back and it seemed reasonable. They were going to buy my castings too. It seemed like a win-win. So, the deal was done.
Start Up Problems
There were many problems with the construction of the windrows. Many things did not work as planned and I had to improvise a lot. I am not bitter, just disappointed. Gilbert is not one to bad mouth anyone so he named no names but the one person he remained in good standing was Tom Christenberry. Tom has been in worms a long time and appears to me, based up my own independent research, to be one of the good guys and very experienced with all facets of the worm farm. Tom has been an invited guest to many a worm symposium at North Carolina State University and others. But, finally the worms were in place and the show began.
Open House
Visitors galore, they came from North Carolina State University as well as Ohio State. You would think I had discovered gold. According to the guys that sold me on this, that is exactly what I had done. Only it turned out that they struck my gold.
Inventor
But, Gilbert is not one to dwell on mistakes. He is a lemonade guy. He became the worm expert and is now on track with his crop of worms and castings. He was told by a professor of agriculture that the best he would do is to remove 50 percent of the water from the manure, he got to nearly 80 percent.
He has designed his own worm harvester machine as this is still one thing that can take a lot of labor.
Lessons for others
I admire people who are not afraid to admit a mistake. But, lets face it, he had nothing to gain from revealing these facts and experiences. His motivation seems to be that he does not want others to make the same mistakes. Maybe the reason he is so accommodating and open can be found in this story he likes to tell.
He was at one of those festivals and saw a man making ice cream right there. “He was selling it faster than they could scoop it up,” he laughed. “I went behind the booth and saw the owner running the homebuilt ice cream machine and I asked him a lot of questions. He was very open and forthcoming with his sales and profit numbers and from what I was seeing out front he was not overstating the earning potential. So then I asked him if he would make me one and he said yes for $2,500. I said fine. Two years later (a longer story) I finally got my machine and my wife and I hit the road on weekends to sell ice cream at festivals. During one five day festival we grossed $27,000. I was getting little sleep. Keep in mind that I was still driving the truck during the week, farming pigs and now selling ice cream on weekends. I did this for 12 years. We would normally make $3-4,000 a day. Life was good but I had enough.” he said. Gilbert had another younger man begin to watch him at one festival. He liked him and told him that you bring me $50,000 and I will see you my business, my bookings and I will go with you to get you started. SOLD!
Mitchel Key - Dad's right hand man and butcher.
The Tour
The more you talk with Gilbert the more you realize this man wears a cape with the letter “S” on it. Michell, one of his boys is working the farm with Dad. He is the butcher. Yep, somewhere along the way Gilbert got tired of dealing with butchers so he built his own state-of-the-art slaughter house. He butchers pigs, cows and sometimes deer. “See that office? That is where the FDA inspector is. I had to build him an office. He is here every day. All of our meats are USDA inspected. We vacuum pack each steak. 95% of the air is removed and this meat will last 5-7 years in your freezer. And it will taste better than store bought “fresh” meat because we age all of our meats 24 days. A store kills Monday and chops it Tuesday. The blood is still in the meat. But that is why they do it. The steaks weight 20 percent more.”, he said.
Finding Gilbert
While doing some research on the internet, (Gilbert is not a computer user, so don’t bother to try to email him) I found an article written in 2006 about a big worm farm installation. I had been looking for someone local to visit and learn about worm farming and his story was very interesting. I wondered why there were no follow-up articles. Maybe he was not in business or his worm farm fizzled out. Well, I found his home phone and gave him a call.
Sometimes phone calls to people you don’t know can be anxiety-inducing, Gilbert was immediately friendly. He is a christian, loving and sharing person. He is proud of his accomplishments and quick to tell you his failures too. We spoke for awhile and we planned my visit for when they do their next worm harvest, though we did not know when that may be.
I woke up the next day and thought, I am going to North Carolina. I called, but Gilbert was already at the farm. I took a chance, packed my camera and drove 4 hours. It turned out to be a good day.
Worm House is 400 feet long and full of worms in windrows
The Worm Shed
We began the trip at the worm shed. It is a big shed 400 feet long. As you can see in the photo, it has windrows to contain the worms. I am first going to tell you about the farm and later tell you what he would do different the next time. Each windrow is 4 foot wide. On each side of the windrow are dirt ledges used for the tractor wheels.
They have worms in all windrows and stagger their harvesting. They occasionally till the soils with the gardening till to keep the soil from getting too compacted. They feed the worms using a standard spreader and tractor, but the axels have been extended from 6 feet to 8 feet to match the windrow widths.
Installed piping make watering fast
Feeding the Worms
I watched them feed and it took about 30 minutes for the entire shed. Next, Mitchel turned on the water sprays. They put out a mist. They only stay on a minute. They wait to see if it needs more and repeat the process. Worms hate drowning.
As soon as the feed was on top you could feel the heat in the soil and see the whiffes of fog on top as the hot moist air condensed in the more cooler shed air. If you put too much food down you can kill the little guys with this heat. If it is hot the worms will go to the sides or down to escape the heat.
The feed looks like breakfast cereal. Ok, maybe not.
You can see whole grains that evidently did not digest or were just dropped on the floor. It is moist but not sloppy thanks to a special process of Gilbert’s own discovery.
Manure is falling from separator.
Preparing the manure
Separators are not uncommon in the farm business but this one will remove as much as 80 percent of the water content. And that, my friend, is why you can use hog waste for feeding worms. Any more water would cause a lot of problems for the worms and for the feeder. These feeders are designed to feed dry fertilizers, not wet manures.
Now I don’t now how unique this is. I can only say, this is the first and only hog/worm combination farm I have seen and according to Gilbert, he does not know of another.
The flow of manure
Here are the basics of the feeding operation.
The pig houses are sprayed down. The pigs never touch dirt so there is no dirt in the flush. Just food and manure. The flush is guided via gravity to a collection tank where it sits until it is either pumped out for separating or overflows into the lagoon.
Collection tanks (three of them) hold manure until needed.
Once it hits the lagoon it stays there. 
The lagoons are large. They are designed to hold lots of waste water. If you have to pump it out the cost is as much as $100,000 and you need to hire HASMAT- type people to do it.
When they need worm food, they start a pump that takes waste and pumps it to this huge tank. In fact there are three of them in case they want a lot of food.
Water is pumped to the top of this separator. Gravity and high pressure rollers return the water to the lagoon.
Then that tank is pumped to the separator where, with the help of gravity and 2,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, most of the water is removed and the remaining solids dump into a spreader waiting below.
Pretty slick. All the free food you can ever need to raise about 5 billion worms.
I wish to thank Gilbert, Mitchel and the whole Keys family for the wonderful day. Gilbert recommended the sirloin, I had it tonight. It was just as you said Gilbert. GREAT!
Here are the benefits of using worms for waste management on a hog farm:
Less stress on the environment, reduced particulate going into the lagoon, the lagoon lasts longer, the entire operation has no offensive odors and you are recycling something that is harmful to the environment and returning it to the environment with a huge mineral and fertilizer benefit. Where brown turns into green, you will most likely find a worm.
Contact: Barry for more information at 888-462-7844
If you ask Gilbert if he would make you one, he will. But this time he will not be selling the “trailer” because it would be priceless.
Barry Rickert
CEO
Nature’s Own Organics
Cumberland, VA
888-462-7844
