GARRISON, KY – The gravel road to U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie’s home snakes its way up a hill, past a tree he’s tapping for maple syrup, and ends at a home he built of timber and stones he hand-chiseled.
His house sits at the top of a hill on his 1,500-acre farm in Garrison, Kentucky, which is about 100 miles east of Cincinnati. It took about four years of work before his family was able to move in.
“We have a double-wide up this holler that we lived in for a while,” he said. “900 square feet with four kids and I kept telling her, ‘Honey I’ll have the house livable any day now.'”
That was more than two decades ago.
Since then, he’s been elected to Congress seven times. His four children are grown and married. Rhonda Massie, his wife and high school sweetheart, unexpectedly died in June 2024.
“It’s like an amputation. You don’t get it back, you don’t get over it. It gets easier, but I do cry every day,” he told The Enquirer about losing his wife and both of her parents within about 18 months.
Massie invited The Enquirer to his farm in Garrison, Kentucky, on March 30.
The small city is home to just over 700 people, according to the U.S. Census. The major features of it include a local grocery store, drive-through tobacco shops, and trails people use to ride their ATVs.
The area is home to Massie’s off-the-grid home and farm where he spends his time when he’s not in Washington, D.C.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie has been building his timber and stone house for more than two decades. He gathered the materials from his 1,500 acre farm, cut the wood into lumber, and hand-chiseled the stones.
The ‘worst Republican’ in congress
Amid the massive change in Massie’s personal life, he’s also facing his biggest political obstacle since he was elected in 2012: President Donald Trump’s wrath.
Trump and Massie – who represents almost 800,000 Kentucky voters in the 4th Congressional District – have butted heads on and off for years.
But their relationship nosedived after Trump took office again in 2025.
They’ve disagreed about federal spending, U.S. involvement in foreign wars, and the release of the Epstein files.
Republican Ed Gallrein speaks to a cheering crowd during President Donald Trump’s visit to Hebron, KY on March 11.
“We’ve got to get rid of this loser,” Trump told voters when he visited Hebron, Kentucky in Massie’s district on March 11. “He’s disloyal to the Republican Party. He’s disloyal to Kentucky. And most importantly, he’s disloyal to the United States of America. He’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”
Trump endorsed former Navy SEAL captain Ed Gallrein for Massie’s seat in October.
Gallrein, a fifth-generation farmer, has not responded to repeated requests for a similar farm tour or interview with The Enquirer through his spokesperson.
He did comment in written responses to The Courier Journal’s primary election voter guide. He said the district “doesn’t have a Congressman looking out for us … It is holding Kentucky back and has diminished our voice in Washington.”
Ed Gallrein’s supporters wait in the rain to hear President Donald Trump speak March 11 in Hebron, KY.
While standing onstage with Trump in early March, Gallrein also took swings at Massie.
“Mr. President, I will stand with you and the party to put America first and Kentucky always,” Gallrein said. “Tom Massie stands with the ladies of ‘The View.’ Mr. President, we stand with you.”
The May 19 Republican primary for the seat is shaping up to be one of the most expensive political primaries this year, serving as a test of Trump’s influence in the GOP as a nationally unpopular and lame duck president.
Off-the-grid living: ‘I wanted to do something that was real’
The gilded ballrooms of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago could not seem farther away at Massie’s farm, where Massie showed off inventions and projects he’s worked on for years.
He points out the “Appalachian ingenuity” he’s using to build a small bridge on his farm with recycled railroad ties. He gushed about a barn that’s been standing since the 1940s. And he slipped in a dad joke about a piece of farming equipment.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie is building a bridge out of railroad ties on his 1,500 acre farm in Garrison, KY.
“Can you guess what this piece of equipment is? Here’s the clue: this company will not stand behind its product,” he said with a smile. “It’s a manure spreader, so it flings manure out the back!”
Closer to his home, he repositions three large solar panels in his yard while he talks about the Epstein files.
He and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., led the effort to unseal documents related to child sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law in November and files have been released in waves since then.
“Are we going to convict anybody in those files? There are clearly some men who are guilty here in the United States that need to be brought to trial that aren’t,” Massie said. “And so the question is, do we really have a system of justice?”
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie’s off-the-grid home is powered by solar panels and a repurposed Tesla battery.
The solar panels, along with the ones on his roof, and a modified Tesla battery, power Massie’s off-the-grid home.
His tinkering and inventing dates back to when he was a kid building robots and taking things apart at home.
His dad ran a small beer distribution business and his mom was a nurse. He grew up with a sister and brother, though his mom sometimes invited “borderline homeless” teens (who faced family troubles) stay with them, he said.
For his and Rhonda’s first “date,” he told his parents he was going to help her with a science project.
“That was my racket. Everybody thought I was helping her with a science project, but I didn’t know anything about superconductors,” he said. “She was off the charts smarts.”
They both graduated from Lewis County High School and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Massies lived in married student housing before they bought a house in New Hampshire. Together they created a virtual reality company that they eventually sold when they moved back to Kentucky in 2003.
“I spent a decade doing the company, and at the end of that, I wanted to do something more tangible,” he said. “I wanted to do something that was real.”
Growing food and sourcing all the materials for their home felt like the exact opposite of what he’d spent the past decade doing.
Now, he has trees that grow nectarines, peaches, apples and sweet cherries. He has multiple gardens, cattle and chickens.
His farmland is operated under a company called Howard Massie Farms LLC. The land is split into several parcels worth about $1.32 million full cash value, according to documents from the Lewis County Property Valuation office.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie holds two duck eggs while giving a tour of his farm March 11 in Garrison, KY.
But his homesteading is also rooted in the things he valued growing up. Because in addition to building robots, he also loved exploring in the woods. Looking for downed trees that he can then use as timber for a barn or his home feels similar to those youthful adventures.
“It’s just – creating things, tangible things, is rewarding,” he said.
A man checks out lottery tickets at Collins Country Market in Garrison, Kentucky.
‘If the country is savable, I’ll win’
Massie drove The Enquirer to Collins Country Market, the local grocery store that’s been around for 80 years with a taxidermy collection of animal heads − like buffalo, elk, and deer − on the walls.
He needed to pick up a red bell pepper and oranges for his new wife, whom he married last fall. He met Carolyn Grace Moffa, years ago when she was working for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul and they reconnected after his wife died.
After the small, intimate ceremony on the Massie farm last October, they slaughtered chickens together even as she kept her veil on.
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie and his new wife Carolyn Grace Moffa butchered chickens after their private ceremony at their Kentucky farm Oct. 19.
Massie chatted with the store clerk while he bought his items and drove off. Moments later, his truck circled back into the parking lot.
“She added something to my grocery list,” he said, gushing with a smile as he walked into the store again so he could buy flour for her sourdough bread starter.
After the grief Massie recently experienced, it’s hard to understand why a private person who’s so excited for the next chapter of his life would stay in such a contentious political race.
But Massie said his perspective on reelection is different from a lot of his colleagues.
“They desperately want to get reelected like it’s the best thing that ever happened to them in their lives,” he said. “But for me, it’s always been a job. Not something that I need to validate my existence.”
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie stands among hay bales in a barn at his farm March 11 in Garrison, KY.
Fancy dinners, rubbing shoulders with other leaders, and their shiny congressional pin is the kind of lifestyle a lot of them value, he continued. But the fact that he doesn’t care as much about those things has meant that he’s able to cast votes more “independently,” he said.
Based on the results of a recent political fundraiser, that independence matters to voters.
Massie Moneybomb
The same day The Enquirer was at Massie’s farm, he was hosting a “Massie Moneybomb” fundraiser online – an effort to raise $100,000 in 24 hours.
He easily hit that goal by early afternoon and said it might be possible to hit $200,000 with some online programming he had scheduled later in the evening.
Donors ended up pouring in more than $300,000 by midnight.
Massie feels confident he’s going to win the election, though no reliable, independent polling has happened in the race.
He thinks that, even amid the recent insults from Trump and Gallrein in his own district, while voters wore T-shirts and waved signs in support of his opponent.
“If the country is savable, I’ll win. And if it’s not savable,” he said, “I don’t want to be there.”
U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie shows off equipment he uses to cut trees into wooden beams March 30 in Garrison, KY.
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This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Thomas Massie’s off-the-grid farm life amid Trump’s attacks
