Prologue
(sound of a tractor engine running)
Ariel Lavery: Hey Austin!
Austin Carter: Hey Ariel, what’s up? What are we hearing here?
Ariel Lavery: Well, this was me struggling into a big tractor back in February, carrying all my recording equipment.
Austin Carter: (laughs)
Ariel Lavery: This is nice. I didn’t know they came with a little sidekick seat.
Austin Carter: Haha, hard to imagine you struggling, I’d imagine you trying to turn it into a workout or something.
Ariel Lavery: Well, this farmer made it look so easy! And he’s 71! This tractor was, like 20 feet tall!
Hoppy Henton: Make sure it’s shut. (door shutting)
Austin Carter: So who is this farmer?
Ariel Lavery: His name is Hoppy. Hoppy Henton.
Austin Carter: Hoppy? Where’d he get a name like that?
Ariel Lavery: Oh I’m gonna tell you all about that in a bit. Let me just say his name is fitting, as he seems to have endless energy. He’s accomplished a lot in his life. He served on the USDA during Clinton, he’s consulted with different farming groups on a number of issues. And he was a force, on the board of his insurance agency, the Kentucky Farm Bureau.
Hoppy Henton: There are a lot of sort of environmental regulations the Farm Bureau, just in general, doesn't like anyone telling 'em how to farm.
Ariel Lavery: But when it comes to his work with the Kentucky Farm Bureau, he’s always been kind of at odds with them.
Austin Carter: Well, who isn’t at odds with their insurance agency?
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) Right, well unlike most of us just buying insurance who never read through the policy booklets we get in the mail, he does! He has this deep, familial connection to this insurance agency.
Hoppy Henton: They are a fabulous insurance company. I have Farm Bureau Insurance today.
Austin Carter: That’s a ringing endorsement. Sounds like he’d advertise for them for free.
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) Yeah, right? But wait ‘til you hear what he says with his very next breath.
Hoppy Henton: And, um, this policy book, and the policies have always caused me great angst about what they’re trying to do.
Austin Carter: He’s talking about the Farm Bureau’s policies?
Ariel Lavery: Yeah. He doesn’t agree with a lot of their policies, which left me wondering how he fits in at all.
Hoppy Henton: And I find myself quite on the outside of most of my colleagues.
Ariel Lavery: But he’s had a huge impression on his community as kind of a rebel.
Nathaniel Henton: Ya know, he always has his hands and his thoughts in something.
David Beck: He’s known to be a character. Hoppy is a gentleman that always asks the questions that sometimes people won’t ask, but need to ask.
Mark Haney: He always likes to push the envelope, and sometimes Hoppy is viewed almost as a lightning rod.
Hoppy Henton: And the issue that’s on our plate today, which is a big issue in the Fairness Ordinances, is an issue that we as citizens should be involved in. It’s a good idea. But it doesn’t suit the Farm Bureau.
Austin Carter: Ohhhhh (realizing). So the Farm Bureau is not adapting to the Fairness Ordinances in Kentucky?
Ariel Lavery: No, they are pretty contradictory to it. And some things have happened that have really hurt Hoppy.
Hoppy Henton: How can my farm organization do something like that?
(theme music starts)
Ariel Lavery: From WKMS and PRX, this is the Middle of Everywhere.
Austin Carter: Big stories from the small places we call home. I’m Austin Carter.
Ariel Lavery: And I’m Ariel Lavery. And today, Hoppy’s Heartache.
Scene 1: What Makes Hoppy Tick?
Ariel Lavery: So, the first time I spoke with Hoppy was over the phone.
Austin Carter: Did you ask him about his name?
Ariel Lavery: Oh yeah. (laughs) I did. So his full name is Hampton Harris Henton.
Hoppy Henton: So all last names are thrown together.
Austin Carter: (laughs) Wow, how regal!
Ariel Lavery: His older cousin had an opinion about his string of names.
Hoppy Henton: And he did not think there was any way you could make a nickname out of any of those names. And I was sittin there watching television apparently, one day, so I was told. And he decided my name should be Hoppy from Hopalong Cassidy on TV.
Ariel Lavery: So anyways, I thought I might just have a short conversation with him to just kinda warm him up to me and get the gist of his story, but he jumped right into the crux of the issue, totally impassioned, and we ended up talking for almost an hour.
Hoppy Henton: I’ve been trying to say for years, let’s get rid of all this extraneous matter that has nothing to do with the Farm Bureau’s real reason for existing.
Ariel Lavery: So, just so people know, the Kentucky Farm Bureau is huge. They cover over 450,000 people statewide. And they insure farms, cars, and homes across Kentucky. So it’s not just farmers! And this “extraneous matter” Hoppy is talking about is written in their policy book.
Hoppy Henton: They include a whole bunch of issues, but most notably, issues on right-to-life, on issues of marriage equality, on issues of gender neutral bathrooms and all sorts of things. And on page 94 of the policy book: we support capital punishment… And I go, “Why? What’s that got to do with anything about our lives in rural America?” We have that we think “under God” should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance. I didn’t know they were trying to take it out, but by God, it’s in the book.
Ariel Lavery: Another really interesting and important bit of information he told me was about how available this book is in the first place.
Austin Carter: What do you mean?
Ariel Lavery: Well, he told me a couple times to go to our local Farm Bureau office.
Hoppy Henton: Tell ‘em you’re thinking about insuring your car. And say “What do I have to do?” They’ll give you a rate, tell you what the rate is. You’ll find the rate to be quite competitive and good. And you say, “Well, do you have a policy book?” They’ll say “Yes, we do have a policy book.” And you’ll say “Can I have a copy of it to see if I want to be a member of this organization?” And see what they say...
Austin Carter: What did they say?
Ariel Lavery: Well, I didn’t go.
Austin Carter: Aw, bummer!
Ariel Lavery: I know! I tried to do it legit and call as a WKMS podcast producer. So it sort of ruined the surprise. But basically he told me no one will find a policy book in any local office.
Austin Carter: That seems weird. Why?
Ariel Lavery: Well, hang tight, I’m going to tell you more about that later.
(thoughtful music begins)
But first just a little history. All these policies really kinda came to light in the public eye back in 2005 when the Farm Bureau fired unitarian minister Todd Eckloff. At the time he was working for the Farm Bureau, filming stories about agriculture in rural Kentucky. But he had demonstrated his support of gay marriage by refusing to marry anyone after the state passed an amendment banning same sex marriage. He would only marry if the state repealed the amendment. The Farm Bureau’s vice president at the time wrote a letter saying their policy prohibited employees from taking high profile positions on public issues.
Hoppy Henton: But most recently, they have added some wording in the book that’s quite disturbing in terms of equality. The institution of marriage should only be recognised as a legal union between a man and a woman, even after the Supreme Court rules. Why would you keep that in there? The law of the land has changed. There’s a “We oppose state-supported agencies providing benefits for domestic partners,” “domestic” being in parentheses as if there was something evil about that.
Austin Carter: I can see his interpretation of these policies. And I can hear how invested he is in this. But he’s a full-time farmer, right? He’s not out there writing policy all day.
Ariel Lavery: Nope, full-time farmer. And, yes, also fully invested in seeing change in the Farm Bureau’s policies. So, I of course, wanted to meet this man, see his daily operation, and just find out what makes him tick. And tick so loudly...
(thoughtful music fades)
Scene 2: Coming of Age in the 60s
Ariel Lavery: Not being a Kentucky native, I hadn’t spent any time in the center of the state where horse country spans the map, sprinkled with bourbon distilleries. It’s the Kentucky everyone thinks of when they think of Kentucky.
(gentle twangy banjo music starts)
But after exiting the Bluegrass Parkway and driving through the charming town of Versailles, I watched the landscape open up into the lines of fences surrounding vast pastureland. Rolling hills had extravagant stables perched on top. (horses nickering) This is horse country.
Ariel Lavery: But I noticed, driving into Hoppy’s farm, it was a break in the wealthy pastoral landscape. His early 1800s house was sandwiched by a pond on one side (geese coming in) and a small house on the other.
We first toured the property in his Subaru, which was filled with various equipment rattling around over the uneven terrain, which presented a bit of a noisy environment for audio recording.
(gentle twangy banjo music fades)
Hoppy Henton: That’s a cemetery.
Ariel Lavery: Oh really? Ok.
Hoppy Henton: There was an old church that sat here for years, and that’s the cemetery that hangs behind the church.
Ariel Lavery: Hoppy’s family has been farming this land for nine generations, with his son now preparing to take over the business.
Hoppy Henton: I’m the holdout. I’m a remnant of the past. I’m the last remaining traditional farmer in the area.
Ariel Lavery: He told me he was the holdout from a time when this area wasn’t covered with expensive horse barns, a time when the land was still largely covered with family farms. And this as I would come to understand, is consistent with how he lives his life, being the holdout, staunch in his beliefs. His son Nathanial puts it this way.
Nathaniel Henton: What Dad has always been good at is forming his beliefs and sticking by ‘em. He is always trying to fight the good fight, I guess you could say.
Ariel Lavery: So I was wondering, when did he learn what was a cause worth fighting for? When did he form these core beliefs?
Hoppy Henton: Well, that is a remarkably good question.
Ariel Lavery: Hoppy was born into a conservative family, though not a particularly political one.
Hoppy Henton: And we grew up sort of encapsulated in rural America.
(thoughtful country twang music begins)
Ariel Lavery: But as Hoppy got older he started living through changing times.
Hoppy Henton: When I was in the fifth grade, here in Woodford County in elementary school, I remember to this day Mrs. Fishbeck, our teacher, coming into the room the first day of class and rearranging where we sat in the class. And she created some vacant chairs all through the class, and then she said, “We’ve got some new students coming in today and we’re going to be really nice to them, and we’re not going to do anything.” And it was the first time Black students ever came into Versailles Elementary School.
Ariel Lavery: Fast forward a few years: Hoppy’s entrance into the world at large.
(upbeat music begins)
Hoppy Henton: I went to college in the late 60s, and the Vietnam War and the political activity of that period of time changed me forever.
I go to school when King was killed and Kennedy was killed and the war was going on and everybody was being drafted and the things we heard on the TV turned out not to be true. And I think it was a seminal moment.
(pause and music swell)
Hoppy Henton: Wherever you walk into your life, it just sorta sets your tone, at least for me.
Scene 3: Hoppy Becomes a Leader
Austin Carter: Ok, so we’ve got Hoppy, fresh outta college, newly liberalized farm boy. When did he start getting involved with policy discussion stuff?
Ariel Lavery: Well, okay, so he went home after college and started farming full time. But he was really activated, and couldn't just sit on a tractor all day. He told me about this agricultural leadership program he was in at the University of Kentucky. He was part of the first class of students in this program.
Hoppy Henton: And we came out of that class thinking that we had been trained to be leaders. We probably weren’t, but we thought we were.
And so we came out of the class and in the class on our last day were asked the question, now what are you going to do? The University has invested money and you’ve invested time, what are you gonna do with these skills. So I was kinda energized to, well, let’s see what I can do here.
Ariel Lavery: Hoppy’s answer was to get involved with his local Farm Bureau, the insurance agency we were talking about earlier.
Austin Carter: Right. It’s all coming together now!
Hoppy Henton: And so I decided to run.
Ariel Lavery: Hoppy gained his place on the Woodford County Board of the Farm Bureau and was eventually elected as the president.
Hoppy Henton: Which we basically dealt with the trivial things of having a picnic once a year and having a meeting once a month and eating the mandatory roast beef.
Austin Carter: So I’m starting a band now called “Mandatory Roast Beef”, by the way.
(both laugh)
Ariel Lavery: I can’t wait to hear you perform!
So anyways, Hoppy being Hoppy, he started looking beyond the county board to figure out where the Farm Bureau policies came from.
Hoppy Henton: I noticed that most of the power base for Farm Bureau came out of what was called the state board.
Ariel Lavery: So the Farm Bureau has always claimed to have been a grassroots organization, with all their policies and representatives being decided by members. But here’s where the structure of the Farm Bureau gets a little confusing, kinda like our own democratic system in the U.S. As Hoppy explained it to me, each district gets two or three delegates, which are elected by a caucus from each county. And just like the American electorate system, each county gets a certain number of delegates based on the population.
Hoppy: I ran against a guy that had been in place for maybe 25 years. I did it the old fashioned way. I talked to everybody. I went to every county meeting. I went to every farmer I could talk to. I did like the Iowa politics, I went door to door.
I’m not really sure how I pulled that off, okay? (laughs)
Ariel Lavery: He told them he was now this leader.
Hoppy Henton: For some reason or another they believed that.
Austin Carter: So he won, he was elected, right?
(Gentle music begins)
Ariel Lavery: Yup, and this democratic process is something Hoppy is super proud of. It’s one of things he kept saying over and over, that he saw democracy at work here. So now he was in a place where he could go to the state board and start influencing the kind of policy that was being voted in.
And we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back we’ll hear about a big win for Hoppy, that didn’t last long. And how that made him reconsider the whole structure of the Farm Bureau.
(Gentle music swells then fades out)
Scene 4: A Short-lived Victory
Ariel Lavery: Okay, so when we left off Hoppy had just been elected as district director, right?
Austin Carter: Right.
Ariel Lavery: So, once he was on the state board, he started really delving into the policy book for the Farm Bureau.
Hoppy Henton: That’s where I got involved in sort of looking at the book from sorta the inside.
Ariel Lavery: Austin, do you remember when Hoppy told me to go to our local office and ask for a policy book?
Austin Carter: I do. I was curious about it and you didn’t go.
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) So the reason he told me to do that was because he knew they wouldn't have one on hand.
Austin Carter: Yeah! Why was that?
Hoppy Henton: They don’t want you to see this. Because they know that if you saw what they stand for you would go, I don’t want to be a member of this thing.
Austin Carter: Oh, wow!
Ariel Lavery: The ACLU and the Fairness campaign were calling this book, and still call it, the “secret policy book”. I think the Fairness Campaign came up with that term first.
Austin Carter: Really? Hmm. Okay, wait, I think we need to explain what the Fairness Campaign is.
Ariel Lavery: Oh, you’re right, we do.
Austin Carter: So the Fairness Campaign has been active in Kentucky now for a couple of decades. They have been a central force in helping to pass fair treatment ordinances for LGBTQ and other groups.
Ariel Lavery: Right, so anyway, the “secret policy book.”: There are a couple reasons, Hoppy has explained to me, that this book being “secret” is a problem. So, the Farm Bureau claims to be this grassroots organization, right?
Austin Carter: Yeah...
Ariel Lavery: When Hoppy started asking why they had policies on social issues in the book, he was told that these policies come directly from the members.
Hoppy Henton: All these policies bubble up out of the counties, bubble up out of the grassroots, and they get approved by the membership. And so who are we at the state level to say that our grassroots are wrong?
And so it’s logical to say that it’s in the book because our members wanted it there.
Ariel Lavery: The problem with making this claim is that there are different levels of membership in the organization. People who are just buying car insurance or homeowners insurance are called associate members. Farmers who buy this insurance are on a different level of membership.
(mysterious music begins)
Hoppy Henton: ...And they’re called regular members. That’s the only people who write this book. That’s the only people who can be on the board, regular members. And regular means that you earn 50% of your income from farming. 90% of the membership of Farm Bureau, are not farmers.
Austin Carter: Okay, so I can see where that might be a little problematic. So the policies for the majority are made by a pretty extreme minority. But I’m still not quite getting the gravity of bad policies.
Ariel Lavery: Well, he’s got other bad history with them too. Something happened one year at the annual convention, where the state board discusses policy.
Hoppy Henton: It’s quite fascinating how much effort they spend at their annual meeting with elected delegates from each county who actually can help write this book.
Ariel Lavery: So all these delegates get together and start reading through the policy book.
(mysterious music swells and fades)
(Chattering of many people)
Hoppy Henton: During one of the conventions I stood up, on the floor, and I looked at the book and I said “You know we have a policy in here that we oppose raising the minimum wage. Well, the minimum wage doesn’t apply to farmers. We’re exempt from minimum wage rules. Why do we have a policy on this?” Surprisingly I won the argument and the delegates in the meeting voted to strike that from our book. They didn’t say raise the minimum wage; they just took out the words, “We oppose it.” I think I'm making some progress here.
Austin Carter: Hey, that’s pretty great!
Ariel Lavery: Yeah, but wait.
Hoppy Henton: The very next day, on Saturday, there’s a moment to reconsider, and somebody stood up next to me and said, “We move to put it back in there.” And overwhelmingly they voted to put that wording back in, and it’s in there today!
So I went to talk to Paul who made the motion to go the other direction. He said, “Well, the Chamber of Commerce in Louisville heard about this, and they put pressure on the State Farm Bureau of leadership because they want a low minimum wage. And they want to be able to say the Farm Bureau is one of their allies.” So it’s not grassroots.
Austin Carter: Well, I can see why Hoppy thinks there’s such a problem here.
Ariel Lavery: Yes, this is sort of at the center of this controversy for Hoppy and why the ACLU and the Fairness Campaign are invested.
But Hoppy kept at it. He quit the board for a time to join the USDA during the Clinton administration, but after that was all wrapped up he was back on the county board, pushing for these policy resolutions just as hard.
Hoppy Henton: I got into this argument one day and I said, “We should, as a county, go in and oppose these policies.” Not turn them around, just extract them from the book. And the county board said we don’t want to wrestle that issue. We don’t want to antagonize the state organization. And so they voted not to address these issues.
(disheartening music begins)
And not only did they vote not to support my policies for the first time in forever, they voted not to send me as a delegate.
And when I asked “Why you did that,” the vice president, Executive Vice President of Farm Bureau Mr. David Beck said “We don’t want him coming any more. “
Ariel Lavery: I asked David if he remembered this.
David Beck: No, I don’t remember that. I know that they choose delegates to represent them and his delegates in his county might decide they need someone else to represent them. So I imagine the committee in his home county of Woodford probably chose people that may have been more aligned with their thinking.
Ariel Lavery: Do you think you were the only one bringing this to the table?
Hoppy Henton: No, no! But I was the only one blatantly bringing it to the table. You knew it was coming. You knew it was coming. And when I wanted our county to pass county resolutions to this level, they said no. We don’t want anybody pointing this out.
Austin Carter: So it gets back to the democratic process, however flawed.
Ariel Lavery: Yes, a democratic process that is a bit skewed because the majority of members don’t have a vote. But it’s also telling about the process when someone like Hoppy, who is so invested, can, at the same time, have this unforgiveable experience with it.
Austin Carter: Yeah, I mean, he was ousted by his friends, and his farm organization. That’s heartbreaking.
(disheartening music swells then fades)
Scene 5: Enter the Fairness Campaign
Ariel Lavery: After this rejection, Hoppy has been a bit less involved in trying to reform the policy book. Of course he continued going around espousing the need for reform, but didn’t do it from any place of power. That is, until he learned about the Fairness Campaign.
Hoppy Henton: I actually called Chris on the phone to talk to him about the Farm Bureau.
Ariel Lavery: Chris Hartmen is the executive director of the Fairness Campaign.
Chris Hartman: I was at the fairgrounds and the person on the other line said, “Hi, this is Hoppy Henton and I’m a Farm Bureau member and I don’t like what they’re doing at all, and I want to help, I want to talk to you.” Here’s the first Kentucky Farm Bureau member who has reached out to me claiming to have some inside knowledge of the workings of the Kentucky Farm Bureau.
Ariel Lavery: The Fairness Campaign has been really critical of the Farm Bureau for a while. Something that Chris started doing back in 2015 was attending the annual ham breakfasts that the Farm Bureau puts on.
Austin Carter: Are these the ham breakfasts at the State Fair where people buy a ham for a couple million dollars, or something?
Ariel Lavery: Yes!
Scene 6: The Ham Breakfast
(mischievous music begins)
Hoppy Henton: Then they have, at the state fair, every year, this has been going on for fifty years, they have what’s called the ham breakfast. It’s one of the big events of the entire year of Farm Bureau. And they do in fact have a ham! All the money goes to charities everywhere. So whoever buys it actually makes a donation to charities.
On the stage it’s become popular to have senators and representatives, and governors. The president of the Farm Bureau will say I have Senator Wendel Ford, or I have Senator Mitch McConnell. Governor Bevins is here. And so they all sit on the front stage. But always the governor and the senior senator, always get to say, “I’m so glad you’re here today, this is a wonderful event.” They say something. And when McConnell gets up, it’s usually a lot more blatantly Republican, but it’s a political event. Now anybody can come. Gatewood Galbraith ran as the pro-marijuana candidate. He always came. It is an overt political event.
So it made sense, I thought, in a political event, for an organization that has political views, looks like a pretty good idea to go.
Ariel Lavery: So, like Hoppy said, the Fairness Campaign, being a political organization has also decided to attend these breakfasts.
Hoppy Henton: You can buy a ticket. I can buy a ticket. The tickets are open to the public.
Ariel Lavery: The first year Chris attended, in 2015, he was arrested.
Hoppy Henton: I think in one time, they had some signs they were carrying. And one could argue that they disrupted the meeting. There may have been a time when they stood up and said something out loud during the speech. I don’t recall that they did, but again, from my standpoint, that’s what democracies are about.
Ariel Lavery: Every year since the first one they attended, nothing has happened to them.
Chris Harman: So last year, in 2019, I woke up at 4:30 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. and really just didn't think much about the day except the responsibilities that I had that day and the work that I had to do.
Ariel Lavery: Chris and his group started the day outside the breakfast, handing out flyers. Then as the breakfast was getting started, they decided to go in for a photo op.
Chris Harman: You know, trying to have Freda, our puppet, go to the breakfast.
Austin Carter: Wait, puppet? They had a puppet?
Ariel Lavery: Oh yeah, they have this giant puppet. It’s like 10 feet tall and they call her Freda Fairness. She’s the antithesis of the Freddy Farm Bureau mascot that’s staked out at the Kentucky State Fair every year.
Austin Carter: So I didn’t even know that the Farm Bureau even had a mascot, but he’s basically this anglo looking farmer kinda dude who’s wears overalls and sits on hay bales, right?
Ariel Lavery: Right.
Austin Carter: So what does Freda look like?
Ariel Lavery: Well, she’s got pretty dark skin, large head and hands, a very short haircut. She’s dressed in a quilted shirt, with overalls that end in a skirt. Her gender and racial identity are very mixed. And she’s mobile. Whenever she goes out, she’s interacting with people, holding signs, giving hugs, and posing for pictures.
So anyway, Chris, Freda, and crew continued on toward the breakfast hall.
Chris Harman: As we started to approach the ticket stanchion, it was clear that things were different this go around.
Ariel Lavery: By Chris’s account, the state troopers started gathering around the entrance to the hall.
Chris Harman: You know, preparing to block the entrance, have some sort of an altercation.
Ariel Lavery: The troopers refused to let them come in.
Chris Harman: I said “Oh, come on. The puppet, Freda wants some ham!” We chanted twice, I only remember doing it twice, “Freda wants ham! Freda wants ham!” And I was clear, I wanted to be intentional about not disrupting the actual breakfast event. Because that was what got us arrested in 2015.
Ariel Lavery: Despite this, things escalated quickly. The doors to the hall were closed and so maybe the concern was that the group would disrupt the event already underway. Chris claimed he and Freda had their tickets and should have been given entry. But after going back and forth with the troopers...
Chris Harman: He put his hands on me and he pushed them back. And I was shocked. And that was the moment when he said “You’re under arrest.”
Ariel Lavery: The Courier Journal posted a video of Chris’s encounter with the police.
(audio of Chris arguing with police)
This time that trooper in front of me gave the order, and the guys behind me didn’t really do much. So I laid down. I think that’s when some of our protestors who were in the space began chanting “Shame!” You know, “Shame, shame!”
(audio of protestors chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” angrily)
Austin Carter: Wow, that is intense, it’s like Game of Thrones.
Ariel Lavery: (laughs) Yeah. The incident was reported on television and newspapers like the Courier Journal. There were TV crews and cameras everywhere. So, that’s how Hoppy initially heard about it.
Hoppy Henton: How can my, my farm organization do something like that?
Scene 7: The Farm Bureau President Weighs In
(thoughtful western music begins)
Ariel Lavery: So after talking with Chris, I sent his account of the breakfast arrest to Hoppy.
Hoppy Henton: Well, since I’ve heard the dialogue he gave you, the in depth dialogue of what happened at the Farm Bureau breakfast, I did call him and he called me back.
Ariel Lavery: Hoppy wanted to know if the state troopers were ready for them, had been given instructions to look for Chris’ group.
Hoppy Henton: He wasn’t really sure how to answer that. I don’t think he really knew.
Ariel Lavery: If they knew that the state troopers were doing that on their behalf does that pain you?
Hoppy Henton: Oh God yes…yes…yes, the fact that they did it pains me.
(thoughtful western music fades)
Ariel Lavery: I did ask Farm Bureau President Mark Haney if he knew the troopers were prepped in any way or had plans to arrest someone that day. And he didn’t seem to know anything about that.
Mark Haney: I don’t think… They weren’t prepped by any means from anybody from Farm Bureau to make any kind of a decision on…
Austin Carter: Wait, so you talked to the President of Farm Bureau about this?
Ariel Lavery: Yeah!
Austin Carter: Well, how did you get ahold of him?
Ariel Lavery: I just called him up.
Austin Carter: (interrupting) How’d you get his number?
Ariel Lavery: Oh, I got it from Hoppy. He sent it to me.
Hoppy Henton: I can talk to the president of the Farm Bureau by phone or by text, and he always responds to me. So, on a personal level we’re quite friendly.
Austin Carter: Ok, this keeps getting weirder... But if you talked with the president, did you ask him about everything else Hoppy told you about.
Ariel Lavery: Oh yeah.
Austin Carter: Well, what did he say?
Ariel Lavery: He kind of said what the Farm Bureau has been saying to all news media.
Mark Haney: Our policy is truly grassroots driven.
Ariel Lavery: I asked if the Chamber of Commerce had influence over policy, like Hoppy claimed.
Mark Haney: (big sigh) Well… no, I don’t... you know, we don’t...we are a member of the state Chamber of Commerce. And many of us are members of county and city Chambers of Commerce and they have a policy exercised just like we do.
Ariel Lavery: He said, often policy gets voted for without everyone really noticing sometimes because, like Hoppy said, they have to get through the entire book in one day, and it’s a slog.
Mark Haney: And I remember that happening on that minimum wage. It just kinda slid through and everybody was just kinda sitting there in a daze because they had been plowing through the work on some of those monotonous type issues.
Ariel Lavery: We also talked about the different membership levels and why associate members can’t serve in offices, which has to do with their investment in agricultural issues. But ultimately it all still kinda boiled down to what the Farm Bureau is.
(inspirational music begins)
Mark Haney: All the things that go to build a rural community our folks take a position on, take a stand on. We are, by nature, a conservative organization.
Austin Carter: So I guess that just kinda means that Hoppy is left out.
Ariel Lavery: Yeah.
Austin Carter: So how does he stay friends even with this divisive history between them?
Conclusion
Ariel Lavery: Well, I think this is revealing of something about Hoppy, and maybe about his experience of history. He’s capable of having an intense debate with someone about his core beliefs and not coming out of it hating them, or unwilling to work with them. When his son Nathanial and I got to talking about this he had some really revelatory stuff to say about his dad and how the times have affected him, and all of us.
Nathaniel Henton: It’s kind of interesting to think about, to think out loud to you now, you know going from my grandparent’s time, to my parents’ time, now to my time and what will be my children’s time with this political environment that we’re in and...
Ariel Lavery: He thinks maybe the political environment is different now. It affects people's relationships differently.
Nathaniel Henton: Because when did that become everything? And people become less than their party affiliate?
Austin Carter: I can totally see what he’s saying. I’ve talked to so many family members and friends about how polarized everything seems nowadays, and it’s polarized to the point of destruction.
Ariel Lavery: Hmm... I mean, I’m glad that our country is facing so many issues that have been under the rug, but it is sad that it has caused so much division in the country between neighbors, between friends, between families. And here’s this perfect example of a guy who’s able to keep his friendships and respect for the people he disagrees with. The importance of holding onto his deep connection to the Farm Bureau, and the friends he’s made there trumps his feelings about their views.
Hoppy Henton: It’s hard in our little world we live in of agriculture in Kentucky. My affection, allegiance, appreciation of the organization is profound!
(music swells and fades)
Nathaniel Henton: But again if he’s been doing that for 40 years and nothing’s changed. Who can continue on, you know, fighting it, fighting a system that is broken?
Austin Carter: Yeah, who can? What’s he doing now? If his Farm Bureau efforts haven’t gone anywhere, is he resigned to just tending his farm?
Ariel Lavery: Funny, I asked him the same thing while we were on the tractor.
(ambient tractor sound)
Hoppy Henton: Oh, I tell everybody this is my last year on anything, okay? And they just laugh at me. It’s interesting...
Ariel Lavery: And then he told me about something else he’s involved with, this tobacco policy thing that he was excited to see go down.
Hoppy Henton: ...on this little commodity. And how people are going to tear each other’s teeth out and there’s going to be all sorts of policy issues…
Ariel Lavery: So he’s still getting his kicks in on policy-making somewhere, still having an effect. And the rest of the time, he’s just out there alone, riding his tractor.
(peaceful country music begins)
Nathaniel Henton: But he loves that. He will go get on a tractor, five or six o’clock in the evening, and then just mow, listen to the radio and just mow. That’s like his… he loves doing that.
Credits
This episode of Middle of Everywhere was produced by me Ariel Lavery with editorial help from my co-host, Austin Carter. Our editor is Naomi Starobin. Our theme music was composed and recorded by Time on the String sound studio in Paducah, Kentucky. Other scoring was from APM music. Marketing and sponsorship support comes from Dixie Lynn. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at middleofeverywherepod and Twitter at ruralstories. And if you want to hear about exciting updates or get alerted about new episodes, sign up for our newsletter at middleofeverywherepod.org. Middle of Everywhere is a production of WKMS and PRX with from support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.