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Down on the farm
Need a family-friendly activity to keep the kids entertained this summer? Consider a visit to a South Carolina farm where tours, events and festivals educate and entertain.
Photo by Milton Morris
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‘It’s a lot of work, but I just love it’
Kathy McCaskill, owner of Old McCaskill’s farm in Rembert, is one of the leading practitioners of agritourism in the Palmetto State. Inviting visitors over for annual events like the sheep-shearing festival, serving home-cooked meals at the farm stand, and offering educational programs like canning classes, helps keep the farm viable in tough economic times.
Photo by Milton Morris
On a late March morning at Old McCaskill’s Farm, the aptly named sheep shearer Chuck Costner—in a move equal parts Chuck Norris in Walker, Texas Ranger and equal parts Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves—grabs hold of a sheep’s two front feet, spins the animal around on its hind haunches, clips its cloven hooves and begins shearing its woolen coat with an electric razor as methodically as a surgeon.
The sheep, for its part, shows no outward signs of anxiety other than its pink tongue bleating and baaing. And although it’s ridiculous to attribute human emotions to animals, it’s also hard not to reckon the sheep is enjoying itself like someone enjoying a spa day. The wool comes off in tufts as thick as mattress foam or shag carpet, and once it’s over, the newly sheared sheep runs around the pen looking like a skinned pear on four legs.
The people in the crowd, for their part, are certainly enjoying themselves. They are all smiles, camera clicks, oohs and aahs, applause, and funny asides (“Are you the black sheep of the family?”) as they stand at the edges of the sheep pen and watch two shepherd dogs herd the flock to Costner’s waiting arms.
“This is why we came out today,” explains Fairfield Electric Cooperative member Shannon Montgomery of Lugoff, with her two daughters in tow. The three of them are part of the more than 1,500 visitors who have arrived at Old McCaskill’s Farm in Rembert for the 12th annual Spring Farm Day. “I really just wanted to see a sheep get its haircut.”
But sheep-shearing is far from the only Farm Day attraction. Visitors can watch dogs herd ducks or a blacksmith forge a candleholder. Kids can try to lasso a sawhorse or fill up their water bottles at a horse trough. Families can sample fresh ground lamb, pickled watermelon rind and stone-ground grits while listening to the band play feel-good standards (“Brown Eyed Girl,” “I’ll Be Around”). And all of it—down to the last drop of hand-pressed sugar cane syrup—is a part of the booming industry of agritourism, in which people visit farms to observe and participate in ways of life that may feel lost to them. It’s why farms all over South Carolina have pumpkin patches, corn mazes, apple-picking, petting zoos, grape stomping, butter churning and even watermelon seed-spitting contests.
“Agritourism is not new, but it’s growing in popularity,” says Jackie Moore, agritourism marketing specialist at the South Carolina Department of Agriculture. “Farming is unpredictable—the weather, other conditions—so it adds another income stream for the farmers. Also, you find that farmers are getting older, and this is a way they can actually get their children back. Instead of just coming and working their dad’s field, it’s helping bring the next generation back. It’s something fun they can do.”
Moore says that she now has more than 460 South Carolina farms working in agritourism, and more farms are calling her every day to see how they can diversify and expand into the industry.
Old McCaskill’s Farm owner Kathy McCaskill, for her part, is something of an agritourism old pro. She started her farm—which is set deep in the rolling farmlands of horse country, where you see signs for tractor crossing and horse crossings—when she bought the 12-acre property with her husband in 1989. McCaskill grew up on an abandoned dairy farm in upstate New York, but when her parents divorced, she moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and experienced a culture shock that made her want to return to farm life.
“It’s instilled in me,” she says. “I love the country. There’s something about the anticipation of the eggs that are hatching from the chicks and the ducks, and the lambing. I love to plant the garden. I love to can. Just watching the cycle of life, I guess. It’s a lot of work, but I just love it.”
Hard work is a plain understatement. In order to make enough revenue simply to keep the farm going, McCaskill has had to put her eggs, as it were, in many baskets. She processes lamb, pork, and beef to sell alongside her wool shawls and blankets at farmers markets. She converted the new farmhouse into a bed-and-breakfast after the old farmhouse burned down in 2007. She serves lunch that her daughter cooks at the farm on Fridays. In addition to the fall and spring Farm Days, she does weddings. She educates schoolchildren on field trips.
“The first question I ask them,” she says of the field-trippers, “is where does their food come from. It’s amazing. They know that a chicken lays an egg, but they still make no connection. To them, eggs come from the grocery store. Same thing with cows. Milk comes from the grocery store.”
Such an eye-opening, back-to-your-roots education is what drives agritourism in a world where, for the first time in history, more people live in urban areas than they do rural areas. But if an agritourist thinks that farm life is simply a life straight out of a picture book, McCaskill is quick to set the record straight.
“People say that they want to get a piece of land. They want to start their own farm. They want to homestead,” she says. “But then when they get into the reality of it—all the work and the heartache—it’s a romantic notion, and people don’t realize how hard it is.”
She cites the fact that many of the sheep in her flock die each year due to parasitic worms. When COVID-19 hit, events got canceled, farmers markets shut down and she didn’t qualify for loans because the farm didn’t show enough revenue and she didn’t have enough employees. (She got by as farmers often must—with a loan from her local bank.)
Still, McCaskill did something else that farmers always must do—she adapted. She taught canning classes to people who were suddenly interested in growing their own gardens and preserving their fruits and vegetables. She put a lot of work into making sure that the Spring Farm Day, when people could finally and safely gather outside, was a success.
And it was. Everyone there seemed to relish and cherish this day on the farm. Perhaps this year, they understood even more what it means to be a part of a community and to be a DIY-er.
“I love making something,” says Berkeley Electric Cooperative member and wool-spinner Kelly Fort as she sits at her drop spindle and weaves wool from her sheep. “I think that’s missing in people’s lives these days. When you make something, it’s empowering.”
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Get there
Old McCaskill’s Farm is located at 377 Cantey Lane in Rembert.
The farm store is open on Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ashley's farm-to-table, first-come, first-served lunch buffet starts at 11:30 a.m. on Fridays. The farm’s next event will be the 2021 Country Christmas Shopping Trunk Show, dates to be determined. For the latest updates, visit oldmccaskillfarm.com.
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More fun on the farm
With 466 (and counting) farms participating in the S.C. Department of Agriculture’s Agritourism program, there’s no shortage of farm days, field trips and outdoor excursions offering a bumper crop of family fun. For a complete list, visit scfarmfun.org or sign up for the S.C. Agritourism email newsletter. At participating farms, you can pick up an S.C. Agritourism Passport and collect stamps at each farm you visit. Collect enough stamps, and you could win Certified S.C. prizes.