Farm life brings Iredell father-son duo closer together (2024)

Farm work is challenging but Ken Robertson Jr. and Ken Robertson III say they relish the father-son bonds formed while clearing pastureland for cattle and sheep at Rannoch Farms in Statesville.

Rannoch Farms, named after the ancestral home of the Robertsons in Scotland, was bought in 2005. It was hardly a finished product, they said. Trees had to be felled, fences erected, and land cleared.

“Trey” as the younger Robertson is sometimes called, said the work did not call to a teenager. He added that he can look back now and realize the work helped make him who he is today.

“So, when you wake up in the morning, you’re just mad. You’re mad at the world, you’re mad at everything. You’re mad at your situation. But at the end of the day, there’s a different feeling,” Trey said as he talked about weekends helping his dad.

“It’s a feeling of accomplishment when you can look out over something that you’ve tangibly done because as a kid, your friends would go and then maybe spend the day on the boat or go hang out at the mall or watch a movie and at the end of it, you had recreation and maybe you had a good time, but you haven’t achieved anything. You’ve not built anything. You’ve not accomplished anything.”

That was not the situation at Rannoch Farms.

“If you’re doing farm work like this, you can look back over a fence line and go, ‘I built that,’” Trey said. “You can look at a pasture that had been a blackberry bramble, and you went, ‘I set the conditions for animals and managed to turn that into productive ground.’”

Ken said the pair have butted heads a few times — both then and now — when debating the best way to care for the land and the livestock, but those are just part of the memories of turning the wooded areas near Interstate 40 into a workable pasture.

“There is a lot of pride when we put it through. It looked like a fence through Vietnam. Now there are cattle grazing or sheep grazing in a lush green pasture, and it’s beautiful,” Ken said.

Ken said that he also took pride in the fact his son could look back and instead of hardly remembering what he did during those summers, he had something to show for it.

“I always knew what we were doing would be more beneficial, whether for the work ethic or just learning how to do things with tools in their hands,” Ken said as he explained how those lessons don’t always get passed from father to son. “They know how to use a joystick and a mouse, but they don’t know how to use tools.”

Ken spent 23 years in the U.S. Army before he retired as a lieutenant colonel. Trey graduated from West Point before serving in the Army for just over a decade. Trey returned to Iredell in 2022. The Robertson military tradition extends to Trey’s brother Allen, who is currently in the Army.

The hard work that Trey put in on the farm also gave him a different perspective when he arrived at West Point.

“Everybody else showed up and said this place is really hard, we have to get up early and work outside all day. I went, ‘This is easy, I get to sleep in, and I’m used to wearing long pants and boots outside all summer long. At least this is New York and not North Carolina.’”

While Trey’s time in the military took him away from Rannoch, the connection with his father and the land brought him back.

Robertson Jr. said that Trey picked up other lessons watching him as a county commissioner. He said that whether it’s Trey’s Rannoch Pasture Poultry business or the recently opened Bee & Barrel with Chris Overcash in Statesville, he takes pride that he could influence his son. Ken did note that Trey has his own unique style.

While they still work the farm together, it isn’t as often as he wishes, Robertson Jr. said.

“I do miss working together with him,” Robertson Jr. said as he recalled the radio playing music or sporting events as they worked the farm. “It was fun to work and talk and have that time together. I do miss that, but I also got to have it. A lot of parents don’t get to spend that much time with their kids.”