How Infertility, Fresh Bread, and a Kentucky Farm Changed Everything for Danielle Hayden
By the time most people have found the bottom of their first cup of coffee on a Saturday, Danielle Hayden has likely sold out of bread, packed away her folding tables, and headed home to start another batch of dough, and she’ll tell you, bread isn’t the only thing that’s risen in her life.
Hayden is the founder of D2 Meats and co-owner of Hayden Farms, a diversified Kentucky operation that raises broiler chickens and beef cattle—and raises a little hell with her views on healing, hustle, and what she calls “girl mossing.”
In a recent episode of Your Ag Empire, she joined host Holly Haralson to talk about how her family business was born from hardship, how her infertility journey led to radical health transformation, and why she’s more committed than ever to living slowly, simply, and on purpose.
Danielle Hayden
“This business was birthed from a lot of hard,” Hayden said. “We were not given a piece of land. We were not given money. We were not given cattle. We were not given chickens. We were given an opportunity to rent 50 acres, and we did everything we could to just not screw it up.”
Hayden and her husband are first-generation farmers in every sense that matters. They lease land, raise animals, market their own beef, and show up every weekend at local farmers’ markets with dry-aged cuts and fresh-milled bread loaves, and underneath the entrepreneurial drive is a decade-long stretch of grief, loss, and eventually—healing.
“We spent a decade trying to get pregnant,” she said. “It’s the only reason that we started farming. We were trying to get healthy. We were trying to detox our house. We were trying to grow some of our own food. We were trying to feel like we had control of something.”
That quest for control led them to chickens first—then cattle, then meat sales, and now a fully branded business with a growing customer base and a loyal following. But Hayden doesn’t posture or polish for an audience. Her story, and her brand, are grounded in grit and honesty.
Danielle Hayden
“This is what healing looks like,” she said. “Healing is the long road. It is not the easy road. And we are healing right now by doing the hard thing.”
That hard thing? Choosing presence over performance. Raising kids with muddy boots and homemade meals. Running a business that works with their values, not against them.
Hayden isn’t chasing scale. She’s chasing alignment.
“We believe the Lord gave us this farm for a reason,” she said. “It is a business, but it’s not just for business.”
She’s found freedom not in faster, but in fewer. That philosophy—slow living, full conviction, unvarnished truth—has shaped D2 Meats into more than a product line. It’s become an expression of resilience.
As for the phrase “girl mossing”? Hayden grinned when Haralson brought it up.
“I just want to sit on a rock and grow where I’m planted. That’s it.”
And she is. One cow, one loaf, one honest conversation at a time.
