built and made by the Jones family and their children.
The Jones’ son Allen hand planted many of the pine
trees found on the property. But some features of the
farm predate the Jones family, with one barn on the
property thought to be one of, if not the oldest, poplar
barn in West Virginia. The barn is made completely
of poplar and wooden pegs, in a tongue-and-groove
style, according to the farm literature. Numerous
arrowheads have been found on the property as well,
and the property has an old graveyard.
“The barn was here a long time before we showed
up,” Bill Karnes said. “If you go up to it, you can see
where the pioneers hatcheted it, the way they built
it. As far as we know, it has been a barn ever since
the ‘60s, but who knows it might have been a house,
or a church, we do not know. This place has a lot of
history to it. Right up here we call Turkey Rock, that
used to be the West Virginia and Virginia. line.”
At one point, the farm was home to more than 100
heads of cattle, horses, a milk cow, chickens and pigs.
Over the decades, the farm became the home of three
generations as Woody and Helen’s grandchildren
grew up learning the daily tasks of farm life.
“My grandparents were big animal lovers too, they
were into farming, we had pigs, cows, chickens
and horses,” Lisa Karnes said. “My sister, Amy,
and I grew up right next door here so we grew up
doing all the farm things you can imagine, picking
berries, churning kraut, canning vegetables out of
the garden...That is pretty much how I grew up, we
spent a lot of time outdoors, my parents had goats
for a while, but we had trouble with people’s dogs
that would end up on our property so that became
problematic and they gave up the goat thing.”
After some discussion, Lisa and Bill Karnes decided
to re-enter the world of goat-keeping at their farm
and home of 25 years.
“We started out with a few pigmy goats. I have a
friend who I graduated kindergarten with named Jeri
Elmore and she is our yoga instructor. She and I have
been friends for 40 years,” Lisa Karnes said. “She has
been a yogi for about 15 years and when I told that we
had goats again, she laughed because she remembered
us having them as kids. Then she told me that I
should consider renting out my goats to these other
places because goat yoga is a big up- and-coming
thing.”
At first, Lisa thought Jeri was kidding, but after some
40 Prerogative Magazine