Firstfruits Farm was established in 1993 on a played out, overgrown abandoned farm in Upstate South Carolina best at growing briars and multiflora rose. The founders are a husband and wife team, both of whom have rural backgrounds–he in New Hampshire and she in Georgia. After nearly 20 years of married life and with children leaving the nest, they had seen enough of suburban neighborhoods.
Slowly and painfully they cleared and fenced much of the 24 acres, which then became a learning and testing ground for two novice goatherds raising Boer meat goats. Soon, they switched to mixed breed Alpines and Nubians with poor milk yields, then sold the whole herd and bought expensive but productive Saanens. Along the way, we added a good flock of pastured laying hens and honeybees.
Why Firstfruits? If you’re going to compete with corporate, subsidized large operations, you need much more than soil, capital, good weather, hard work and savvy marketing. You need the Grace of God. That’s the basis of Firstfruits Farm. We acknowledge God as the creator of ourselves and of our land. He has placed us in temporary stewardship of this place and given us our vocation of tending it. We can but only offer Him our first fruits.
AND THE LORD brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders: And he hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey. And now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land, WHICH THOU, O LORD, hast given me. And thou shalt set it before THE LORD thy God, and worship before THE LORD thy God: And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing WHICH THE LORD thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.
Deut. 26:8–11
