I (Mary Ann Adams) grew up in a farming family in Spartanburg County, South Carolina. My relatives, going back to colonial times, sharecropped and farmed. Many of my relatives had beef cattle and large vegetable gardens when I was a child. Although my parents were both teachers, they spent the summers and time off school managing the cows and preserving food from the garden.

I am not sure I was aware that corn and peas were for sale at the grocery store when I was little, and although most children loved corn-on-the-cob from the school cafeteria, I did not like eating the mushy, overcooked mess when I had been spoiled on corn fresh from the garden.

Scott is my husband, and his family stopped farming after his great-grandparents died, although he grew up in a community and had relatives that still farmed. He was more of a city boy. We both grew up in Spartanburg County, and our great-grandparents and grandparents knew each other.

Scott and I both graduated from the College of Charleston, and I also obtained a Master's Degree in Social Work. Scott has worked with the same company since shortly after he graduated from college. I worked as a social worker/therapist in the urban poverty of Charleston, South Carolina, for about five years after graduate school until Scott's job moved us to the Blythewood, SC, area (near Columbia).

After living in the city during college and early adulthood, I was ready to return to the country. I think Scott thought I was a little crazy, and he probably still does, but he does accommodate my desires to live in the country and to have dirt under my fingernails and animals in the yard.

For fourteen years, I gardened on our first property. Through trial and error, hours of study in books and online, and of course remembering lessons I learned as a child and with ongoing guidance from my family, I grew enormous gardens every year and raised chickens for meat and for eggs.

During those fourteen years, we had three children. Our oldest attends private Catholic school, we homeschool the middle child, and the youngest will enter public Kindergarten at a local magnet school this fall.

In 2017, we purchased a larger property where we built a home. We are privileged to be the first owners of this land outside of the original family who first obtained this land before 1788. I think of those ancestors when I work outside, and I hope they approve of my activities. I know the relatives that remain are relieved that we put one house on the 28 acres instead of turning it into a subdivision.

Our first batch of pigs helped till and fertilize part of the space that is now the cut flower field.  Later batches of pigs worked on an adjoining area of pasture and ventured, inside electric fencing, further into the several acres of woods and pasture in which they enjoy gathering grubs, acorns, roots and other treats from the forest floor.

2021 is our third season on the farm.  Our present focus is on pastured pork and cut flowers.