Midlands Farm Tour offers glimpse into life on Lexington County farms
Ever wondered what living on a farm might be like?
You’ll have the chance to see this weekend on the Midlands Farm Tour. This self-guided tour of Lexington County farms is a good way for individuals and families to get to know local growers and producers, see what life is like on a farm and possibly establish a greater sense of community between consumer and grower.
The tour is a project of the Midlands Food Alliance, a grassroots group of chefs, farmers and eaters who came together in 2014. The group’s goal for the Midlands was to create a food hub – a business or organization that actively aggregates, distributes and markets food products from smaller, local and regional farmers and producers to strengthen their ability to satisfy wholesale, retail and industrial demands.
Charleston’s GrowFood Carolina and Feed & Seed in Greenville are food hubs. In Charleston, small farm operations can bring their harvest to GrowFood for collective warehousing, sales, marketing and distribution to restaurants, regional grocery stores (such as Harris Teeter, Whole Foods and EarthFare) and institutions (such as College of Charleston).
Saturday’s Lexington County farm tour is the first major event for the Midlands Food Alliance, part of Sustainable Midlands. Funding for the tour is coming from a USDA grant for grassroots events to support local food and farmers.
“Since one of the goals of the tour is to promote agritourism, Lexington County was chosen as a location that could be easily travelled in a single day,” said Autumn Perkins, project manager for the tour.
Participating farms for Saturday’s tour include 6 Berry Farm, Bee Trail Farm, Humble Farms, Mercer House Estate Winery, Patchwork Farm, S.C. State Farmers Market, Sandhills Heirloom Tomatoes, Terra Kotta Farms, USC’s Green Quad/Sustainable Carolina Community Farm & Garden, and Wright Farm of SC.
Here, a closer look at two of the farms:
The Wright Farm of SC
973 St. Matthews Road, Swansea
Kendrick and Wendy Wright raise registered Berkshire pigs and Boer goats for meat, as well as rabbits and chickens on a 35-acre farm.
Kendrick Wright is retired military (Air National Guard) and has an MBA from Western University. The Wrights established their farm in 2009 and their animals are fed a natural diet of grain and foraged material with no medications or growth hormones.
Kendrick grew up in Eutawville on farms, where his father raised cows and his uncle raised pigs. He started his farming career early, raising goats and pigs while in high school. He graduated from S.C. State in 1995 with a degree in mechanical engineering and worked at Westinghouse before joining the Air National Guard at McEntire in 2001. After getting his MBA at Western, Kendrick started with his farm in Swansea with horses in 2004, then added goats and pigs.
“I always look for a niche. I want to raise best quality meat,” he said. “Whatever I touch I want to improve the quality.”
Visitors can expect an up-close view of the pigs and goats, children’s activities that include a hay ride, bounce house and games, food samples, barbecue and refreshments. Pork cuts (smoked bacon, pork chops, Boston butt, sausages, fatback, ham hocks, feet, and ears) will be offered for sale.
Sandhills Heirloom Tomato
3266 Calks Ferry Road, Pelion
Derrick Gunter is dedicated to growing and preserving historic heirloom tomato varieties.
A U.S. history teacher at White Knoll High School, Gunter been raising tomatoes for six summers. His mother got him into it when she asked about creating extra income over the summer, when school is out.
Gunter grew up around farming – his grandfather and father were peanut farmers – but got hooked on raising garden tomatoes after sampling some from a neighbor’s garden. Gunter began researching varieties of tomatoes, settling on six heirlooms that include Marion, Cherokee Purple, German Johnson and Mortgage Lifters.
His first garden had 20 plants. This year, he hopes to have more than 250 plants in the ground before the tour Saturday. The plant sizes in his garden vary because Gunter wasn’t able to plant early because of cold weather.
Some of the tomato plants have only been in ground 21 days, “but if we get two inches of rain in the next week, the plants will take off,” he said.
Sorghum (milo), millet, marigolds and sunflowers are planted around the edge of the tomato patch to help bring in beneficial insects. Sorghum will control nematodes, the worst enemies of tomatoes in a sandy soil environment. Millet and sorghum will help build up nutrients in the soil, and the sunflowers bring in the bees and wasps – the bees to pollinate, and the wasps to control the leaf-footed bug, a stink bug that birds won’t eat but wasps love.
In the next couple of months, you can expect to find some of Gunter’s ripe tomatoes on the menus of area restaurants. He grows green zebras for restaurants – because chefs like them for their look as well as the taste – and is trying an Oxheart variety. His Black Crim and Black Brandywine plants came from local nurseries and should produce until late July-early August.
2016 Midlands Farm Tour
When: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday
Where: Various farms in Lexington County
Tickets: $10/person in advance; $15 at gate; free for children under 10, as well as WIC, SNAP and EBT beneficiaries and families (with proof of eligibility)
Participating farms: 6 Berry Farm, Bee Trail Farm, Humble Farms, Mercer House Estate Winery, Patchwork Farm, S.C. State Farmers Market, Sandhills Heirloom Tomatoes, Terra Kotta Farms, USC’s Green Quad/Sustainable Carolina Community Farm & Garden and Wright Farm of SC.
Midlands Farm to Restaurant Feast
Local restaurants this week are highlighting local meats and produce on their menus. Participating restaurants: Oak Table, Bourbon, Rosso, Jake’s on Devine, Rosewood Market, Cantina 76, Motor Supply, Yesterday’s, Solstice, Terra, Gervais & Vine, Wired Goat, Dupre’s at the Market, Arabesque, Juniper, Midlands, Spotted Salamander and Za’s.
About the Midlands Food Alliance
The organization is part of the non-profit Sustainable Midlands organization, which advocates for cohesive integration of land use and transportation issues when it comes to planning growth of communities to help preserve, protect and reinvest in farms, forests and open spaces.
One of the first projects completed by the Midlands Food Alliance was the creation of the Midlands Local Farm & Food Guide, a directory of local farms and their products, and markets and restaurants that sell locally grown food, according to Katie Welborn, of the alliance.
The guide is available at www.midlandsfoodalliance.wordpress.com
Derek Gunter’s tips for growing tomatoes
▪ Typical Midlands sandy soil is non-productive until worked and mulched. The mulch will break down over the growing season and will help retain moisture for the plant while keeping down weeds and grass. Gunter uses rye straw from local dairy farmers along with cow manure, which is organic and rich but not overpowering in sandy soil like a chicken manure would be. “Each plant had a liberal scoop of cow manure” applied when planted.
▪ Choose a tomato variety that does well in South Carolina heat. German Johnson, Mortgage Lifter and Cherokee varieties are good choices.
▪ Never water from above. Heirlooms varieties will develop blight (early comes on slowly in June), so cut bad leaves off and keep the plants as dry as possible.
▪ Tomatoes require organic matter and fertilizer. Gunter uses Burpee Espoma Organic Tomato-Tone every two weeks.
▪ Plant marigolds and sunflowers near your tomatoes that will help attract beneficial insects such as bees to aid pollination and wasps to control destructive bugs.
This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Midlands Farm Tour offers glimpse into life on Lexington County farms."