Sustaining family farms in a county full of condos

Iona Anderson had no interest in cows.

Or horses, or chickens.

But her husband did.

And now he’s gone.

And she is, so to speak, a small farmer, more adept at herding two small dogs inside her dream home in northern Beaufort County than the livestock out back.

She lives near Dale, north of the Whale Branch, where the Keans Neck Road pavement ends in a community they call Spann.

She’s on eight acres. It was part of the place where she was raised in a family of nine children.

She learned the ways of cows, pigs and chickens from her father, William “Bubba” Fields, who worked on large truck farms nearby.

She picked cotton, corn, peas, beans, okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, you name it. Her mother canned it, sharing the clear jars of goodness with neighbors who needed it more.

Iona wanted to escape the rural life of home, and she did.

“Back then there was nothing here,” she said. “Nothing.”

She had no interest in cleaning other peoples’ houses.

In 1959, after graduating from Robert Smalls High School in Beaufort, she rode the steel rails north from Yemassee to New York City to stay with an aunt. A month later, she was working in a hospital.

Twin Towers

Wilson “Tony” Anderson also escaped to the big city. He was one of 18 children in an Alabama family of sharecroppers. He and Iona were married, and they moved up from one house to another, living in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section.

Tony Anderson was in construction. Iona said he was the head scaffolding man for the World Trade Center, including the Twin Towers.

They always brought their five children to the Fields family place for the summer.

And Tony said he wanted to move South when the retired.

He told Iona, “If you move South, I’ll build you a house.”

It’s a two-story brick mansion, rising from the piney fields of Spann like the tall towers of Manhattan.

“He said he wanted to have cows and chickens and horses,” Iona said.

“I said, ‘You must be crazy.’ But he did it.”

Before he died two years ago, Tony Anderson had cleared space for more than 20 head of cows.

Now she’s got it down to about half a dozen cows, two horses and a gaggle of chickens roaming the place.

But she needs help.

Farm Animal Fund

Melvin Fields lives close by and helps his sister keep the little herd in the right pastures. They know his voice.

And on Friday, more help arrived.

Donnie Pulaski brought metal fencing and a cattle chute where veterinarian Dessie Carter Jr. dewormed and inoculated the cows.

It was among the first visits in a new program set up by the Beaufort County Animal Services department.

Director Tallulah Trice said the goal is to preserve family farms by treating animals that are sometimes emaciated, and educating the animal owners on basic animal husbandry.

No tax dollars are involved. The county set up the privately-funded Beaufort County Farm Animal Fund, which is seeking donations through the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry.

Pulaski brought the issue to Trice, and a willingness to help.

“There was a need for it, and I have the equipment,” he said.

He’s got about 15 cows right now. It runs in his blood. His grandfather was a horse and mule trader on St. Helena Island.

Pulaski said he knows of about 20 places around northern Beaufort County with a few large animals. He said he wants to preserve that disappearing way of life. He said the animals can bring in a little revenue if cared for properly. He said taxes are lower on land used for agriculture, and the animals keep the weeds down. And it’s better to raise calves than condominiums.

Charles Washington, a 69-year-old retiree, helped prod cows into the chute for their treatment on a hot morning Friday. The biggest excitement was when I backed into an electric fence. Farm guys love it when typewriter guys show their ignorance.

Washington was there because the entourage was going next to his place in Poppy Hill by the Marine Corps Air Station. Cows, horses and pigs were part of his sustenance growing up there.

Today, he has six cows.

“It’s a hobby, that’s all it is,” he said.

Carter, whose Carter Veterinary Services is based in Hardeeville, said only 3 percent of his business in Beaufort and Jasper counties is with “food animals” — cows, sheep, goats. He primarily works with horses, specializing in treating lameness in jumping horses.

“The education part is important,” he said. “We try to teach that with deworming, culling and breeding at the right time, you’ll spend a little, but you’ll earn a lot more in the end.”

Tallulah Trice, from the county’s Animal Services department, said, “We’re here to help them keep the cattle. We want them to have the information necessary to sustain small farms. It’s a preventive step so we don’t have citations for animal cruelty and neglect.”

Iona Anderson looked out the door at the hubbub around her little herd and said:

“I’m in love with them now. I can’t let them go.”

This story was originally published May 3, 2016 at 2:03 PM with the headline "Sustaining family farms in a county full of condos."