Ali’s Story

By Mac Croom

Ten Mile, TN

A bold goose. A smiling Jack Russel named Gin. Paul Tailor, a mama cow (yes, she’s a she). A creaky old staircase. A potential hidden room. A stubborn, old tractor. A pond, some potatoes, the man-eating ants which prowl the potatoes. The bees and their excited buzz, the great red barn and the bright purple chicken coop. The blueberries, the breeze. The sights of Kimberly Ann Farms!

Ali Simpson is a farmer, writer, and comic who lives on Kimberly Ann Farms in Ten Mile, TN. Ali and her partner, Tim, along with Tim’s brother, Russ, grow an array of organic fruits and vegetables and raise grass-fed beef and pastured poultry on the farm’s sixty acres. Kimberly Ann Farms sells its products at the Knoxville Farmers Market and to members of the local community year-round.  

Ali joined Kimberly Ann Farms in 2021 and has been leading the farm’s fruit and vegetable production since. Before joining the farm, Ali attended college at SUNY Plattsburgh for journalism and attended SUNY Stony Brook for creative writing. Following her education, Ali spent several years in New York publishing and freelancing before moving to the nonprofit sector, working for Habitat for Humanity and SCORE Business Mentoring. Ali then spent a few months in multiple WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) programs across the country before landing, “haphazardly” but perfectly, in Kimberly Ann Farms. 

. . . 

“And I began to think, ‘What would being grounded in place look like?’”

Farming is impossible without a place. It is no secret that farmers need land to survive, or even to exist altogether. Being a farmer requires fundamentally that one has land to farm on; whether their space is 1000 acres or a single city lot, farmers need land to grow crops, raise animals, and support their business. A “place” for a farmer means that necessary land but also much, much more: a farmer’s place is simultaneously their home and their livelihood, their sustainer and their paycheck, their radical hopes for the future and their greatest burden. Place is the fundamental connection between the land and the farmer, an embodiment of the reciprocal relationship between us and the land we stand on. 

Kimberly Ann Farms is Ali’s place. It is where she grows her crops, raises her many animals (including chickens, quail, geese, cattle, bees, and three lovely dogs), and lives her life with Tim and Russ. But Ali has not always had Kimberly Ann Farms, and neither has she always had a place— a place to root into and grow— of her own. 

Ali grew up in a military family, her father a member of the Air Force for most of her childhood. Endlessly “shuffled and dealt,” Ali’s family moved between places all around the country in her early years, including New York, Texas, Colorado, Florida, Virginia, and Michigan. 

“All the places begin to feel very much the same but also weirdly different, but you’re also just floating around,” she shared in our interview. “And that’s normal for you, and I think it’s normal for a lot of people in America, because you have to move for economic reasons or other reasons. You’re just adrift. It’s like okay, I’ll move here for grad school, I’ll move here for a job, and do the incredibly exhausting and lonely work of rebuilding a life, or connecting with that place… And I thought that was just how you were supposed to live, because that was normal.” 

Is it possible to settle down? To find a place in our constantly moving world? For Ali, a place was hard to nail down. Decades of movement for education, jobs, and new opportunities had made sure of that. But after quitting her job, packing her possessions into a van, and moving around the country to live on different WWOOF farms, something changed. 

“And I began to think,” she said, “‘What would being grounded in place look like?’ And so, just by observing people who had that, who wanted to have that, I got a sense of it. I thought that as soon as I find a place that feels like home, I’m just gonna go for it.” 

Ali found Kimberly Ann Farms in 2021, and true to her promise, she latched onto her new home and didn’t let go. Through beginning years filled to the brim with challenges, spanning from untimely bee swarms to COVID-19 to a devastating flood, Ali remained rooted in place. Ali joined the Young Farmers in 2022, and today, Ali continues to cherish and sustain her place, using her land and her skills to provide for her local community. She has also continued to write and perform comedy, a passion she says has been much enriched by farming’s never-ending unpredictability and humor. 

Ali’s hopes for the future of Kimberly Ann Farms and the Young Farmers truly permeate the land at the farm. You can see it at every corner of the property: it’s visible in Tim’s beautiful orchid collection, and in the delicate woodwork made by friends in the farm’s woodworking shop, too. That hope, however, was born from the challenges Ali has faced in her farming lifetime, challenges not specific to her or Kimberly Ann Farms, either. 

When I asked Ali what it meant to her being a young farmer, she replied, ​​“You know, being a young farmer kind of just means you're extra broke. Like you're broke, you're just really broke to the point where you can't buy land.” Farming, she continued, “is nearly impossible to do without having some kind of financial support, whether it's through someone else's family or getting a loan or a grant or a scholarship… you need resources outside of just yourself, a support network at minimum, whether it's knowledge or land or money or opportunity of any kind.” 

For Ali, farming is not some idyllic hobby. It is hard, nearly impossible for her and the other farmers in her community. Farming is a tremendous burden to every farmer who takes on the challenge, and Ali is no exception. But every day, Ali continues to farm. Why? 

During my time on the farm, it was clear that Ali farms because she loves her place, and will do anything to help other young farmers in need of support. As she said in our interview, that’s the reason she joined the Young Farmers: to “connect with other people that have the same interests and are having the same struggles. And help them out, and have them help me out, and connect through that shared experience.” Ali continues to farm because she loves the world around her too fiercely to sell her land to the subdivision developers prowling Meigs County around her, to let multi-billion dollar agriculture corporations sell unhealthy food to her community. 

She also continues to farm, and will farm into the future, because of moments like this, which she described in its hilarious and perfect beauty at the end of our interview. 

“A lot of times,” she described, “all the animals, when the sun is just about to set, they all turn to the west to watch the sunset. All the bees are facing that way, all the geese are, the cows, and they're just standing there looking at it. And I'm like, y'all are weird, but I'm just watching you watch the sunset, so I guess I'm weird, too.” 

Ali continues to be a cherished member of the Southeast TN Young Farmers, and her place at Kimberly Ann Farms inspires the organization every day. For more information about Kimberly Ann Farms, visit their page on Facebook at facebook.com/kimberlyannfarms/ or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/kimberly_ann_farms/.