THE FARM is about our family's relationship with the land that makes up our family farm. I like to think that it is more than that however, as I try to describe the massive landscape changes that have occured from just after the end of the American Civil War to the present time, not just on our land, but on farms across the southeast. I attempt to show how these impacted not just the people living on the land, but birds and wildlife of all descriptions, both native and non-native.

The history of our land is long. The Farm is roughly 1250 acres situated near the Wateree River in the heart of the COWASEE Basin in Lower Richland County, South Carolina in an area once flooded by sea water. Many millennia after after the ocean receded, ancient Native American trails tracked through COWASEE up both the east and west banks of the Wateree River. When the first Europeans started showing up in the sixteenth century, these same trails were followed, and later when the first settlers arrived these trails became roads connecting Charleston and Camden. Sharp eyes can find evidence of these ancient cultures on our Farm as well as the neighboring countryside.

This book is intended to be a work of non-fiction, and I try to credit sources wherever possible. I must confess however, that many of the sources are from family legend or from things I have been told over the course of my life by friends, family, and various mentors that are no longer available. That said, I have verified information wherever I could, but be aware that it is possible that some dates or facts could be misstated simply because I could not verify, and I remembered them wrong. I hope that will not detract from what I am trying to report. The reason that I am writing this book in the first place is that over the years, I have frequently been told by friends or visitors as I have been showing them around the Farm, "Cate, you have got to write some of this stuff down." I have always responded, "Oh, I am much too lazy." I have come to realize that I probably have more institutional knowledge than anyone now living, and if I don't record what I know, much of it will become simply lost.