About

My Roots

Quite simply, I want to help people grow food.

Chris harvesting broccoli in golden light
Golden beets, carrots, oyster mushrooms, radishes and turmeric, harvest flat lay

What it's all for

The why

My goal is to reconnect people with the process of growing food, letting them see exactly what went into it and where it came from. Blending aesthetics with productivity, I want to show how beautiful a functioning edible garden can be, and I encourage every teachable moment that comes along with one.

I'm a fan of the culinary world and an avid home cook, so I love working with chefs. I get excited helping them grow exactly what they want, offering new and creative uses for specialty products, or a bit of edible inspiration right out the kitchen door. It helps them save on food costs, and it gives them the pinnacle of freshness to cook with and a true story to tell: it's growing right outside the kitchen.

The roots

I worked for over a decade in landscaping growing up outside Chicago, with construction, kitchen, and landscape warehouse jobs mixed in through high school and college. I've always enjoyed making things beautiful, creating things with my hands and being able to look back at the work that I've done. I have a very romantic ‘Thoreau’ean’ connection with growing food and crafting things that blend functionality with beauty.

I went to school for Environmental Science and Sustainability on the shores of Lake Superior at Northern Michigan University. Learning about all of the environmental problems we are facing, I became compelled by sustainable agriculture. I started out by keeping a garden and building an aquaponics system as a sustainability project. Aquaponics grows fish and plants in one loop: bacteria convert the fish waste into food the plants can use, while the plants clean the water for the fish. The project turned into a hobby, then somewhat of an obsession, before I ultimately dropped out of school and ran away to Mountain Harvest Organics, a small sustainable farm in the mountains outside Asheville, NC.

Chris crouched inspecting pea shoots in the field, overcast light

Where it started

Portrait with a beet bunch
The long way around

The goal was to immerse myself in life on that farm for a season, living and learning, becoming involved with every aspect of running a small farm. It's also where I developed my passion for cooking. I had to cook lunch once a week for the farm crew using fresh ingredients from the farm, and learning to cook seasonally and creatively, tasting food at the peak of its flavor, sent me down the seed-to-plate culinary path.

After 8 months on the farm in Hot Springs, NC, I spent a winter helping put a roof on an earth-bermed house on an urban no-till farm in Kansas City, MO. Then a job on a farm outside Chicago.

Greenville

Now at Marigold Hill Organics, working the fields and selling at farmers markets in downtown Chicago. Selling vegetables to some of the best chefs in the city, Beverly Kim from Parachute, Lee Wollen from Boka, Erling Wu-Bower from Nico Osteria just to name a few. Seeing what these chefs were interested in and how they used it only added fuel to the slow food fire. I decided to learn more about the farm-to-fork movement by moving to Grand Rapids, MI, where I worked at a farm during the day and a farm-to-table restaurant at night.

I worked at Ham Family Farm during the day, continuing my field work and helping sell vegetables to local chefs and at a few tailgate markets, and at The Greenwell Gastropub at night, to see farm-to-table from both sides. Learning even more crop varieties and how talented chefs used them let me hit the ground running when I moved down to Greenville, SC, to help run Reedy River Farms.

Once in Greenville, I immediately began to implement all of the specialty crop varieties I had learned from my previous farm and restaurant experience, along with efficiencies, marketing strategies, and experience working with and talking to chefs. I worked with George DuBose to turn Reedy River Farms into a profitable enterprise, helping run it for almost two years while also working part time at a local farm-to-table restaurant, Bacon Bros Public House.

Volunteering to grow some food on the back porch of Bacon Bros, and being asked to build a garden for another chef's restaurant, gave me the idea: provide a service, and progress the local food movement by helping everyone grow their own food. I became That Garden Guy, blending a decade of landscaping experience with 6 years of commercial organic food production to create unique and attractive edible gardens.

Horseshoe Farm's farmers market booth, carrot mountain

The market stand

Coffee mug held over Horseshoe Farm rows, pond behind

The market years

Cupped hands full of freshly dug red potatoes
The farm, the hard chapter, the way back

In 2018 the farm found me. Chef Greg McPhee of The Anchorage and I were looking for land when the owners of a 20-acre property in Travelers Rest happened to walk into his restaurant for dinner. That became Horseshoe Farm: beyond-organic, regenerative, and unsprayed, not even with the organic-approved stuff.

Named 2019 Urban Conservationist of the Year by the Greenville County Soil & Water Conservation District for starting multiple micro-farms, community gardens, and residential edible installations through That Garden Guy, alongside founding Horseshoe Farm.

Then the farm did what farms do and claimed nearly all of my time and energy. That Garden Guy went quiet while Horseshoe fed restaurants, the Travelers Rest Farmers Market, and a farmshare community I wrote to every single week.

Farming is a losing bet you keep making because you love it. In 2024, Hurricane Helene called that bet: flooded crops, a washed-out drive, a greenhouse gone. I wound the farmshare down that fall and took a desk job to pay the bills. It paid them. It also settled the question of which kind of tired I'd rather be.

The way back started with a conversation at Topsoil Restaurant about a garden steps from their kitchen. Building it brought That Garden Guy back to life, and Horseshoe is coming back with it, this time starting most of the plants that go into the gardens I install, so they show up already used to Upstate clay and Upstate humidity.

The mission

I look to work with and employ the underserved, and partner with area non-profits such as Feed & Seed and Soteria. Whether I'm working with at-risk youth, high-end chefs, or a family down the block, the goal is the same: reconnect everyone with the process of growing their own food, increase community food security, and strengthen the local food movement by supporting local farms and growing food everywhere.

In the press