Story by Lacey Eibert Keigley
Photos by Jane Howard Photography
Most sunny days have a golden hour and we scheduled our arrival at Horseshoe Farm at just the right time to catch that day’s.
Chris Miller, owner of Horseshoe Farm, met us on the gravel road that runs through the farm. Maranda Williams, the Travelers Rest Farmers Market’s Executive Director and Jane Howard, TRH’s official photographer and TR Market board member, were both gathering with me to hear Chris’ story, to chat farming and loss and change. Maybe we could have each handled our own specific roles at separate times, but every one of us wanted to hear the story firsthand, together, in that pretty sunlight cutting through the oak trees.
Horseshoe Farm was born about seven years ago, through conversations over food. And in those seven years, Horseshoe has weathered not only the highs and the lows of a traditional farming experience, but also a pandemic and a hurricane. Currently, it’s facing a crossroads of reinvention. Farming is not only a labor of love, it’s a labor of labor, and Chris has seen his fair share here in Travelers Rest.
As a college student in the mid-west, Chris studied aquaponics and sustainable agriculture. It’s possible he spent more time collecting creatures and growing plants in his home than studying. “I was raising crawdads and perch I had caught, growing tomatoes. It was negative 20 degrees outside but inside my place with so many windows facing south, it was humid – I had so many herbs and houseplants.”
In fact, his affection and his dedication to farming and to growing actually led him to drop out of college and head to North Carolina where he spent time as an apprentice at a farm, living and working on the land. Part of the requirements of this apprenticeship was cooking for the team once a week. “My love of cooking grew from this time too.” Adapting to his new role, Chris says he had a revelation. “You don’t even have to be a good cook if you have fresh ingredients,” he laughed, slapping away the bugs that have gathered around our heads and our legs. “Simple roasting does so much – you just try not to screw it up. I’d go catch trout from the nearby creek, serve it up with butter I had just churned and some fresh scallions.” This was the birth of his fondness for cooking.
The farm in North Carolina became home, but his affection for food and farming was rivaled momentarily by his affection for a girl – as so often happens. “I chased a girl to Kansas City,” he grins. And I know we’ll revisit this thread of his story.
As he’s talking, you can’t help but notice his tattoos, an arm full of precisely drawn vegetables and fruit – all food Chris had found and picked himself. My favorite is the carrots intertwined. (And there’s a story for each of them, just ask him.)
We trekked through the tall grass, unmowed at the end of season, bending under its own height, golden bits of light bringing its beauty regardless of the wild. Or because of it.
Chris slowly worked his way around the United States through farm work and kitchen jobs, intentionally choosing roles that combined both the farm and the table. “I wanted to see both sides, the kitchen and the farm, growing and cooking.” There was another girl, another chase, but Chris says the timing was always wrong. “They weren’t the girls I was supposed to be chasing,” he admits, a little sheepishly but also from a place of growth, as though he’s learned more about himself in equal parts as he’s learned about the land too.
“I’m a dirt farmer who dropped out of college,” Chris shares, and we all laugh at his joke. But not one of us in that field thinks being a dirt farmer is inferior in any way.
As we talk and walk, we knock down the tall grass with our feet. Chris offers to mow a path to the now hurricane-damaged hoop house, its plastic torn and dangling, a sad reminder of the battle between nature and man. None of us really mind the weeds or the shaggy path from the barn to the hoop remnants. But Chris is eager to impose a little order on the chaos and it feels like the right yes. As he edges the tractor and its bush hog across the field, we all know it was the best call because the sharp smell of lemon catches on the air, the tractor’s mower cutting into the lemon basil growing around the perimeter of the hoop.
As we pick back up on his story, eventually Chris found his way to Greenville – and not to chase a girl. (Although, it should be noted – by the end of our conversation, we did discover that Chris’ days of chasing are happily over and he and his fiancé are looking forward to their wedding day.)
Working as a farmer, Chris started developing relationships with local chefs, specifically growing exactly what produce they were individually looking for but having a hard time finding enough locally. After a foray into landscaping with a start up he called That Garden Guy and helping a handful of restaurants start small farms for themselves and educating folks along the way, the doors opened – or the fields opened – for the start of Horseshoe Farm. Horseshoe Farm quickly became Chris’ full time job, due to the time and the commitment working the land requires.
A self proclaimed romantic at heart, Chris speaks with a deep devotion for the farm work, for the land we’re all standing on, for the growth and the hope and the struggle that farming requires.
Sounds of cicada and tree frogs are all around us, making the background of this conversation a country melody.
Despite all the effort, despite all the love, despite all the potential, currently Horseshoe Farm is in a transition and changes are underway. Chris is no longer working full time at farming and he shares the heartache of seeing the land unkempt. “It drives me crazy to see it like this,” he says – referring to the weeds and the rough edges. “As long as I know there’s going to be an after, I can move forward.”
“I love the contrast between order and chaos,” he says and we agree, looking around at the evidence. “The wild backdrop beside the manicured rows, crops growing, a fully functioning greenhouse. I loved that.” Of course, right now, the wildness seems to be winning.
How does Horseshoe Farm recover? How does any Upstate farm endure?
Of course that’s what we’re asking. That’s what farmers are wondering.
Chris loves a land he will never own. And he has a vision to see Horseshoe Farm redeemed. There are current plans in the works for Horseshoe Farm – for a farmer to work the land, for a school to use some of the space, for the greenhouse to be repaired, for life to come back to the dirt. “This property seems lucky,” Chris says, hopeful to his core. (And a lucky farm fits the horseshoe name, naturally.) The farm sits like a photograph by a river and two ponds.
We walk out to the space where the hoop house lived, to the home where the hoop house will return one day. But currently, we’re standing in the shadow, under a skeleton of a scaffolding, plastic hanging from the edge of what was before Hurricane Helene left its mark.
That’s the nature of farming, of course. The nature of loving and caring for land against the elements that want to grow over, take over, knock down.
Chris is standing in the field, shafts of late summer light crossing his face, that lemon basil smell surrounding us all, when he mentions his appreciation for a host of writers and thinkers who speak the language of agriculture and community. “I’m a romantic. I love Wendell Berry, Thoreau,” and we know he’s speaking our collective language. “To be able to look back at a hard day’s work and to have tangible evidence,” he pauses, shifts gears. “I might also be a masochist,” he laughs. “I’ve always enjoyed kicking my own ass.”
Because the truth is – it is work. The hours are long. The risks are high. “You have to be resilient and gritty,” Chris admits. And although he’s wearing flip flops now and his shirt is a colorful print and not a pair of overalls, I know Chris has put in the time. He’s put in the hours and the sweat and the effort. He’s speaking what he knows, what he has lived. What he has loved. “You work the hours of a doctor or a lawyer, but you are making the income of a custodian. You have to love it,” he says. “And maybe you have to also have a second off-farm income,” he adds.
So what exactly is the love that keeps him connected to the land, I wonder. It’s a duality, I see, because Chris is saying the words – this is hard, this is expensive, this is risky. And he is also saying the words – I love this. I miss spending my whole days here. I am in my suit and my tie and I am thinking about this farm.
I ask him directly, “Chris – what do you love? Why is it worth it?”
His pause is not long. “I love feeding people. Whatever side of the table you’re on, the food or the garden, it brings people together. Neighbors over the fence, families at the table. It is such an intimate display of love. That is a huge motivating factor. And of course the other romantic ideas – the physical evidence of work or lack of work – you can see it, you just look and can see what you’ve done. It’s a beautiful way to live – but it is a silly way to make a living,” he continues. This earns a solid laugh from all of us. He isn’t really joking, of course. The market that constantly changes, the demands that shift even while you’re mid-growing, the weather that can turn on you and you cannot control.
There’s an element of farming that is pure risk. And Chris is no stranger to risk. His personal idea of fun leans toward sailing, climbing, skateboarding, barefoot waterskiing. Farming is a profession that offers risk at high levels.
Chris is a farmer who notices. All farmers do. It’s a secret power. And maybe a requirement. He’s noticing. He’s watching. He’s looking for ways to do better, to save the land, to use the space, turning the plastic to the white side for the carrots, shifting certain plants to the shade. There’s a respect for this intimate connection. It shows in many ways, like the respect and honor Chris has for even the deer who eat his beets and he has to decide how to handle that. “It’s like – I saw you eat my beets, but also there’s a loss in taking the deer’s life,” he explains. “I eat meat and you’re eating my beets, but I have this reverence. It’s an intimate way to be connected to the land.”
And I am telling you, I am not making this up, Chris pauses to catch his breath, tears forming at the corner of his eyes as he shares with us.
Our eyes too, of course, because we’re standing in this field and we all bring something to this collective table, this farming idea. Maranda and her decade of careful tending to the farmers of the Upstate through the Farmers Market, through her dedication to getting their carrots in the hands of local buyers. Jane, with her lens telling the stories of the land and the people who work it, serving tirelessly on the board for years, helping the Farmer’s Fund grow to support people like Chris. Me, my history of being raised by a farmer, depending on the rains and the winds and the sun to feed my brothers and I, to pay for our clothes and our school. My job now, in part, to help raise funds to support our local famers market.
This isn’t an ideal or something in theory. It’s regular and real life that matters to us, that counts. And Chris’ words would be enough. But the knowledge of the sacrifice behind his words, the hope he’s held on to, the waiting he has to do now, to give his daily farm time up to make it better for someone else, the high price we all pay to work and to eat locally, to know what we eat comes at a price and to be willing to pay that price, over and over, season after season. That and this golden hour, the light, the strong smell of the lemon basil, the tender affection Chris has in his words for this land and this hope, well, yes, we had tears in our eyes too.
“Part of what I love is you are so connected to the seasons and to what inhabits the land,” Chris says, as we rally ourselves to close out our evening. “There’s all sorts of problem solving that I am drawn to – an unsolvable puzzle that sometimes you can get pretty close to solving. It’s motivating.”
Wendell Berry says that the act of knowing a place takes a lifetime.
Chris is learning a land. And when we love something here in America, we often want to own it, to tame it, to claim it.
And Chris doesn’t own this farm. Another family does. He just farms it. And it’s all only ours a little while, even when we do have the mortgage in our name. Even then, it’s all borrowed. And that’s not balderdash – that’s the truth.
As the light crosses the sky, as the busy days of Horseshoe Farm pause for a sabbatical, Chris is still optimistic. “It’s just a chapter in the book,” he says, sharing a story of a friend who compares Chris’ farming journey to that of a hero in a fairy tale. A hero who is conquering the dragons that keep the farm from thriving. A hero who is coming back to revive the land. His friend sees Chris as being the hero of the farm. And that idea feels true – farming as a hero’s journey. I believe it.
