Concerns
Frog Holler Farm has been successful in very many ways, but there are still areas of concern. Most of these have to do with pressures of social isolation. When the farm was started in 1972 it was in conjunction with Indian Summer Restaurant, which was not only a business partnership of Ken and three others but also a less formal community of many dozen employees and friends. It was natural then to envision the farm as a community similar to and working with the restaurant. There are many reasons that this did not happen but the result was that Frog Holler became Ken’s, then Ken and Cathy’s, then the King family’s enterprise. Over the years many friends, part-time workers, apprentices, fellow musicians and poets have made significant contributions to all the activities at the farm. From the outside Frog Holler appears thriving, creative and happy, and it is, for the most part. The concern, typically, is felt inside. The range of interaction sometimes feels compressed by many pressures of farming, home-schooling and homesteading routines, the interactions themselves filtered by protective layers of cultural and social practicalities. However much this may be problematic, it seems to have evolved by necessity. Whether or not it will change is up to the King’s, and to others, and, as always, something probably beyond anyone’s understanding.