By Kenicia Francis
Keisha Knight is the head of the front office at the Mill Reef Club, and a full-time livestock farmer who runs The Knight Legacy Farm.
The farm has been in her family since the 1960s.
Her father, who recently passed away, took over the business from his father and she assumed the responsibility in 2021 at the age of 31.
She took over the farm because she considers herself a serial entrepreneur. “I didn’t grow up thinking I’m going to become a farmer. It was never in my mind. I never even did agriculture in school,” she told Observer.
Knight is also the owner of a business called Dare to be Dapper, more commonly known as Dapper to Succeed, which sells men’s accessories.
Additionally, she co-owns a business with her mother called Yammings, where they sell local delicacies.
She also claims that her pleasant memories growing up and tending to the farm, and her father’s illness, inspired her.
“It was always exciting to go up by my dad and help him wash out the pig pen, or help him milk cows. That was the greatest thing ever to me as a kid.” she recalled.
“My father was sick for a while, and the farm was there but nobody was doing anything with it. I wanted my nieces, nephews, and even my future children to understand what belonging to something like that is like. So, I thought it would be nice to get two more pigs,” she continued.
She then procured 80 chickens while repairing some of the infrastructure on the farm.
One of her main challenges includes running the farm on her own while having a full-time job.
“As the head of the front office, it usually requires me to be at work for long hours, and I live in All Saints and the farm is in Piccadilly. So, I leave home, go to the farm to feed everybody and pick up my eggs then I go to work. I do the opposite coming back.” she explained.
“I do get assistance sometimes from my family, but it’s mainly me,” she remarked. Sometimes I’m tired from work, and I wonder if I can go straight home, but then I’m like ‘what if I haven’t picked up all the eggs’, or I have to go to make sure no predators have gotten into the pen,” she said.
Knight also stated that the biggest misconception about farming is that it’s just for men or poor and uneducated people.
However, she’s a single woman with a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Bachelors in Tourism Management.
The Antigua Girls’ High School recently paid Knight Legacy Farm a visit.
“It was good for me to be able to show young girls you can do this. You can work full time and do this on your own. Not saying that it’s easy, because it’s extremely difficult, but it’s not impossible,” Knight said.
She told Observer, “Farming is a passion I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t planned, it called to me. And you have to have passion, because if you don’t, when the challenges come, you’re going to give up.”
In closing, Knight stated, “Yes you’re going to end up with speed bumps, but you have to learn to overcome them because technically, if you don’t experience anything then you don’t know how to handle anything.”