Kentucky by Heart: Sweet clover became a savior, not a scourge, for bees and Pendleton County farmers

By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist

Years ago, I remember reading something about my mother’s native Pendleton County that spoke of “clover” as a significant part of the county’s heritage.

Recently, I did a little more research; my connection to the area’s history is strong, mostly because Mom and her twin sister were raised in Butler’s noted Fryer House, which today houses the Pendleton County Historical & Genealogical Society.

I found an absolute gem awaiting me on my Internet search–a digitalized article from an early 1900s periodical called The Country Gentleman: A Journal for the Farm, the Garden, and the Fireside. The article’s title, which spoke of Falmouth and Pendleton County and how sweet clover ignited an economic boom, was: “In the County that is All Hills: A Region of Barren Slopes has become the Land of Milk and Honey.”

It was dated Nov. 4, 1916. That caused me to grin, since I had never thought of the area as being any more than a place of kin connections and nice, humble people.

Tammy Horn Potter, Kentucky State Apiarist (Kentucky Agriculture Department Photo)

But there it was, written by a Merriwether E. Bacon. After leading his story by comparing Pendleton to Rome’s “The City of Seven Hills,” he called the area the “county that is all hills,” but one that became famous for another reason. Bacon explained that 20 years ago (doing the math brings that to the late 1800s), the land had become impoverished because of overgrowing corn, wheat, and tobacco on its hillsides, a fact which “allowed the loosened earth to be washed away, (and) that the farmers could not make a living.”

Bacon said the situation caused almost county-wide bankruptcy of farmers, and estimated (without citing further evidence) that one-third of the Pendleton County’s people moved away. He described it as an “exodus” and characterized it like this: “Thousands moved away; hundreds of farms were abandoned; many were sold for taxes and bid in by the Commonwealth, the only bidder.”

But then a dramatic change for the better happened, initiated by “an old man named Bagby, a lover of bees,” said Bacon. Bagby came into the county hoping to raise his bees, but found no optimal way for his buzzing friends to gather their honey. Consequently, he scattered some sweet clover seeds along the roadsides, which soon migrated further to the hillsides and made great clover patches.

That soon brought on pushback from the local landowners, who considered the sweet clover to be a noxious weed and a nuisance. In fact, Bacon said the clover was often burned and even used to settle disputes among neighbors by purposefully sewing it into their fields for revenge.

So, for years, the sweet clover grew in fields untouched—and unwanted. The citizens knew little of what they actually had right under their noses.

At some point, someone decided to cultivate a clover-laden field and did a planting in the spot. Though Bacon didn’t mention the crop planted, the result was “so astonishing that the news spread rapidly and other fields were burned off and cultivated,” he wrote. It became, instead of a scourge, a savior for many in Pendleton County.

Some 50,000 acres were now growing the sweet clover, along with 10,000 in alfalfa and 60,000 in mixed grasses and clover. It spawned a large cattle raising operation in Pendleton, bringing $600,000 annually to farmers, along with an increase in the raising of poultry, hogs, and bees.

Pendleton County farmland on Catawba Road (Photo from landandfarm.com)

Farmers gained money for their pockets in an amazing departure from previously simply scraping by—or getting out of farming altogether. Bacon characterized the new-found wealth of the county by describing increased bank deposits there. The two banks in the county 15 years earlier had deposits of about $300,000. That grew, with four banks in 1916, to over $1.1 million.

With more well-placed optimism, the banks began to expand the amount and number of loans made, with Pendleton’s land now prime security.

There were three creameries which produced more than enough for the locals, with much of the cream marketed to Cincinnati or other places. There were still some small patches of tobacco raised, and Bacon claimed that because of the soil-building aspects of the sweet clover, production increased from 700 pounds per acre to 1,600 to 2,500.

Bacon seems to have gotten smitten by the eloquence muse when he buzzed about the honey production:

There are upward of 6,000 colonies of honey bees, all handled in the most approved manner, and these yield approximately 500,000 pounds of honey a year. From May 1 to December 31, 1915, 134,227 pounds of honey were shipped from Falmouth alone…Nowhere is there clearer, purer or more delightfully flavored honey than that made by the bees from the sweet-clover blossoms of Pendleton County.

Regrettably, the sustainability of the clover boom was limited. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics I found for as recently as 2012, Pendleton County has gone a different direction from the glorious sweet clover days of the period when Mr. Bacon wrote the article.