A large white pickup truck slowly heads down a windy gravel road in Bath County. On the side of the pickup are three large black letters- CCF. Below the letters it spells out Cripple Creek Farms.
Welcome to the farms owned by Bobby Kemmer and his family. He is smiling and looks content.
What you can’t see is that the 35-year-old farmer steering the truck is sitting in a wheelchair, and his journey to this part of life has been filled with trauma, determination, and hope. His 145-acre farm is his piece of paradise.
“There's absolutely nothing like it. I don't think I would trade it for anything in the world. Sometimes it's hard to, you know, just slow down and just sit back and kind of take it in and just appreciate nature and just life in general, honestly.”
Bobby’s life changed in an instant on March 13, 2008. Back then, he had a passion for racing motocross and fixing dirt bikes.
“I just knew that I wanted to be affiliated with motorcycle racing in any shape, form, or fashion that I could be.”
That dream was literally crushed while he was practicing at a track in Montgomery County. Something went wrong on a jump that Bobby says he had done many times with no problem. He says he was ejected from his bike and landed hard on the ground.
“I had what they call an axial load injury, and it's from the top, kind of straight down, just a straight down compression. So, my third, fourth, fifth, and sixth vertebrae sustained damage, and more or less just blew apart.”
Gone were his dreams of racing. He was paralyzed from the chin down.
Initially, Bobby says doctors told him he would never breathe again on his own, and never have the use of his legs and arms. He proved them wrong.
“I wound up being on the ventilator for about a month and a half or so, and then was slowly able to wean myself off of that. Movement began really, really slowly. I'd say, two months in, I could, like, lift my left arm up a little bit and kind of push it. Had basically no movement of my right arm. And just kind of over the years, you kind of will feel something, maybe move that you couldn't before.”
17 years later, he has some movement in his shoulders and arms. “Like my left arm, I can't tell the difference between hot and cold water, but I can tell you the difference between a pin prick and a Q-tip touch. My right arm, I don't have any feeling past my elbow, except for my thumb and pinky finger. So, it's just, it's really weird how it, how it kind of works.”
Bobby didn’t let his physical challenges stop him from pursuing another passion, a love of the land and farming. Together with his sister and brother, Bobby bought land in Bath County on the border of Montgomery County. They split it into three farms, and Bobby named it Cripple Creek Farms. You could say he has a sense of humor about the farm name and his physical condition.
“A couple of years ago, I was selling a load of hay to this woman, and she comes up, she looks at the logo on the side of the truck. She just gets a big old grin on her face, and she said, did you name it after that song (Up on Cripple Creek), or do you just have a really good sense of humor? I said the latter. She said, Well, that's awesome. That's great. You have such a such a good outlook on it. I said, yes, it is what it is. You gotta make the best of it.”
Making the best of it means Bobby has adapted his life and way of thinking to become a farmer.
While he doesn’t operate heavy farm machinery, Bobby had his farm pickup modified so he can drive. On the driver’s side of his truck, a huge door swings up, and a lift takes Bobby in his wheelchair up into the cab behind a steering wheel.
He doesn’t use the steering wheel, or the brake and gas pedals. Instead, each of his hands rests on top of a rotating metal plate that has five six-inch prongs. The prongs hold his hand in place and give him something to grip and move.
“I went through a program here in Kentucky called vocational rehab. They help disabled people who are either going back to school or going to work to adapt a vehicle so that they can do that. So, I've got a truck that was adapted. I've had a few people say it kind of reminds them of a spaceship. It's just the control panels and the controls that my hands go into. Like my left hand would operate the gas and brake, my right hand would operate the steering wheel, but then I have a touch screen that puts it in park, driver reverse, and handles all that kind of stuff.”
Bobby drives the truck with ease across his farm, up and down steep hills. “It's not the cheapest owning a truck like this, but honestly, it's about as good as therapy for me. It does a lot more for me than, you know, just getting to appointments or doing work or anything like that. It literally is kind of a form of therapy for me.”
On the farm, Bobby manages hay and its sale. He also has several dozen Kiko goats, known for their meat. He keeps track of them by flying a drone. He’s learned to use the drone to herd the goats.
“They just didn't like the noise from the get-go. So that kind of worked out. It's kind of funny. Now, as soon as they hear it come up over the roof of the house, they kind of know what's coming for them, so they'll kind of go ahead and react.”
Bobby is also producing videos for YouTube that share farm life experiences. He says a couple of the videos have had more than a half-a million views, like bush hogging.
“It's hard not to smile when you see it or think about it. I wish every video could do that good. When we do videos on hay production, one of those videos is, I think it's upward of about half a million views. So, some of them do really, really good.”
For Bobby, farm life is a place of peace and an example of how he’s changed since the motocross accident.
“It took me a number of years to figure it out, but it actually takes more out of me to sit around and be depressed than to at least try to make something of the day. There's always something to put a smile on your face about. I mean, even in the worst times, there's some kind of self-aligning, just to be able to know that I proved the doctors wrong, too. I mean, that's worth it in itself.”
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