I learned this at a folding table

4:45 a.m. The old Nissan comes up the road and the booth goes up: canopy, folding table, the kettle, the cash box. Kettle corn, every Saturday for ten years. I ran the cash box from the time I could count change.

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years at the market
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Saturdays, give or take
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cash box
The Corks booth at the Statesboro farmers market
Some of my favorite vendors
A goat dairy couple in their barn holding two kids
At the farm
The same goat dairy behind their table at the farmers market
At the market

Bootleg Farms

Milk goat farmers who taught me a lot about the goat milk industry. They brought goats to the market, which is where I first really interacted with one. I visited their farm, and eventually got a goat of my own because of them.

Visit Bootleg Farms
Two of the family out in the pasture with the herd
At the farm
The same family behind their booth at the farmers market
At the market

Hunter Cattle Co.

I’ve known the Hunter family a long time. They raise grass-fed beef and run the whole operation as a family. What I admire most is the effort and passion they put into education — teaching people about farming, and about why eating local and eating healthy is worth caring about.

Visit Hunter Cattle Co.
Two growers among their berry rows
At the farm
Their produce stand at the farmers market
At the market

Poor Robin Gardens

Some of the prettiest vegetables you’ll ever see. They understand the beauty of nature and of food, and they taught me that from a young age. The kind of green thumb everyone wishes they had.

Visit Poor Robin Gardens
Brown Swiss cows at the fence line
At the farm
Their stand at the market, milk and ice cream on the board
At the market

Southern Swiss Dairy

Brown Swiss dairy farmers running a true small-town creamery. They make some of the best chocolate milk you will ever have, and everything else they put out is just as good.

Visit Southern Swiss Dairy
Photo · the animals I raised

My own animals

I got so far into it that I talked my dad into letting me raise them myself.

What it taught me: the sheer effort and passion it takes to get one real thing into a customer’s hands, and how little of that anyone sees.

What I grew up on.

The kitchen · Statesboro, Georgia

Supper on the table, and a jar of Braswell’s pepper jelly always open.

This is the food that shaped what I cook and what I crave — and the reason a basket from here tastes like here.

You were just standing in it — one kitchen, one town. Here is the rest of it.

Everybody knows the beachfront. I’ve spent my whole life down there and I love it — Tybee, Hilton Head, Folly Beach, Kiawah, Isle of Palms, every island end to end.

The food, though, comes from a little further in — an hour inland, the whole way from Savannah up to Charleston. The people who make this food live and work out here.

The Lowcountry I mean.

Between Savannah and Charleston

Savannah and Charleston still look like the Lowcountry. The small towns between them still live like it.

It’s the older, quieter Lowcountry — the one the coast has mostly grown out of. Nine of these towns are in the basket.

Why this exists

A thousand gift basket sites. Not one built around this food.

Independent only.

Never corporate, never private equity. None of the conglomerates are in it.

From here, provably.

SC and coastal GA Lowcountry. We don’t stretch that claim.

The Lowcountry Basket, packed and ready to give
I know who made it.

How it is made and why it matters. Not a vendor list. People.

Nine makers, seven towns.

Metter to McClellanville, and every one of them small.

Made to give.

So someone who has never set foot here can taste it, and the people who make it get seen by a bigger audience than a Saturday market.

“Nothing goes in unless it’s something I keep in my own kitchen.”

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