The Joy of Farming – Lucky Acres
On our route from Birmingham, AL to Charlotte, NC we decided to take it slow and sorta mosey our way east. As usual we didn’t book a campground so we pulled up the Harvest Hosts website and found two locations right on our route! We decided on the first one…an Alpaca farm that turned out to be so much more.
Lucky Acres Farm is owned by the husband and wife team of Gloria and Joe Williams. I’m not exaggerating when I say these are the nicest two people you will ever meet! When I asked them why they joined the Harvest Hosts program their answer was “we just like people and we love sharing the joy of farming.” After retirement they moved down from New York and started this farm, that’s right when most people decide to slow down they were just getting started. Joe is now approaching his 80th birthday and if you ask him when he’s going to stop working so hard he says “if you don’t use it, you lose it” followed by “I love this job and my work”. I just hope I’m as much of a go-getter when I turn 80!
We took a tour of the farm, met the alpacas, the chickens, the roosters, the dogs, the cats, the peacocks, the bees, the largest 2 donkeys we’ve ever seen, the beautiful ‘flea bitten’ horse and their newest addition: 2 pregnant fainting goats (did I forget anyone?!?). Gloria and Joe love animals and you can tell this place is a ton of work, but it’s easy to see the work brings them so much joy.
Before the sunset we took Singa and Cleo on a walk through the farm and let’s just say it was exciting for all of us.
As the sun comes up the birds start singing and the faint “cock a doodle doo” lets us know it about time to move on. We met Gloria at the gift shop to purchase a dozen of her farm fresh eggs ($2) and some homegrown honey ($4) before we hit the road and we couldn’t believe how affordable her goodies are compared to other farms we’ve visited (we were sad we didn’t need a scarf or hat because she knits them herself from her own alpacas). She was so kind in asking us to stay a second night, in fact she said “stay as long as you want”. We didn’t want to overstay our welcome, but we couldn’t turn down just one more night on this little farm (plus we wanted more photos of Singa with the Alpacas!).
What’s great about Lucky Acres Farm is its located just a few miles from the South Carolina Welcome center, so we were able to have 3 nights of accommodations at no cost, and the extra bonus is the farm is just off the highway so it didn’t cost us any extra fuel to come and visit. I sure hope our next Harvest Hosts destination is just as good as this one.
