The Feed Store

In 1960, Laura and Burton Ingram bought a farm in the Cumberland Homesteads of Tennessee. Laura loved to be in the garden, plant wildflowers, take picnic lunches to the park or woods, and generally enjoyed being outside and active. Burton was a science teacher with an amateur ham radio license. He was fascinated with how things worked, and spent hours reading articles about birds, stars, geology, biology, and much more. They raised five children on the farm and taught them a love for animals and the outdoors, and how to take care of the property.

Mike, their middle child, absorbed a lot of his parents' interests and went on to get a degree in biology. Fueled by the necessity to take care of a growing family, he put those interests to work, and in 1986, he took a loan from his dad and started a business milling feed in the family barn. He called it The Feed Store.