Farm in the Wildwood co-owner Danielle Pereira fell into gardening almost by accident when her parents bought a piece of land in Piedmont.
“Where has this been my whole life?” Pereira asked herself after feeling the soil in her fingers for the first time.
Now, six years after that pivotal moment, having successfully hosted the farm’s public grand opening April 23, she reflects on the process that brought her from a highly driven corporate trajectory to a slower path to growth.
A Greenville native, Pereira graduated from college and jumped straight into a successful career in human resources with recruiting firm Find Great People. While she was pregnant with her third child, her husband, Ricardo, was offered a job with Ally Coffee that would move them to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She resigned her job after seven years and started the relocating process. It turned out that Ft. Lauderdale was not a good fit for their family, nor were Ricardo’s future non-stop worldwide travels for work.
“Somehow he got them to agree to let him start specialty coffee in Greenville,” she says.
Back to Greenville they went, and in that stressful time of transition, Pereira started a garden. She describes her mental state as “in a fog.” One day after another, though, she showed up and worked the soil and planted seeds all the while knowing in the back of her mind her HR certification renewals were coming due.
“You’ve been taught better than to throw away a seven-year career you’ve been working so hard at,” she remembers thinking.
She decided to give the garden a go for a second year and eventually let go of her HR career as the small garden turned into an acre and a half which she and her dad till and maintain with hand tools. Their success would expand into the farm stand they now run, a weekly subscription program and restaurant accounts.
“I knew it was going to be a slow and messy process,” she says. “Nature doesn’t grow quickly. I was used to throwing out 40-page reports in two weeks. I had been so removed from the cycles of nature that I was completely unaware of them.”
Through Greenville Technical College’s Sustainable Agriculture program, Pereira learned about soil and water and how to make sense of this new unknown. After a few years of juggling classes, soccer practice and the garden, she graduated in August 2021.
“Seasons and weather create endless learning,” she says. “It never becomes predictable. The fun of it is endless learning.”
How it started: I was not smart in the beginning — at all.
How it went after the first harvest: I filled a freezer and fed three families for a year.
When she’s not at the farm: Unlocked Coffee is my hiding place. I’m crazy addicted to their Guava Cheese Delight (Colombian cheese bread).
Current restaurant accounts: The Poinsett Club, Stella’s Brasserie, Sunbelly Cafe, Harvest Kitchen
Favorite crops: I grew up going to the panhandle of Florida to visit my grandmother. She always had white acre peas for us to shell. That’s our sentimental crop. Piquillo peppers are my love letter to Brazil. My father-in-law has a recipe to pickle them.
View this post on Instagram
