Maypop Farm

At Maypop Farm, the pigs sometimes build houses.

Not exactly houses, but close enough to make you stop and look. Raised outdoors in wooded areas, the pigs gather plant material for nests. David and Pattie White say some of those nests have even ended up with roofs.

It is a small detail, but it tells you something about the kind of farm the Whites have spent decades building. The current system is designed to let animals do some of the things animals naturally do: pigs root and forage in the woods; chickens move across pasture; livestock becomes part of how the land is managed.

Farming was not something David inherited.

He grew up in Washington, D.C. At 25, wanting to learn agriculture, he headed to Kansas and spent four years working on family farms. He learned cattle, hogs and row crops and became interested in organic and sustainable farming approaches, including the work of the Land Institute and Practical Farmers of Iowa.

After those years in the Midwest, David returned east and volunteered at Koinonia Community in Georgia. That is where he met Pattie.

In 1993, the couple moved to Darlington, South Carolina. There was no inherited family farm waiting for them. They rented land and started raising free-range chickens. As the years passed, the farm expanded to cattle and pigs, and the couple raised three daughters—Lillian, Louise and Sonora—alongside the work.

More than twenty years after arriving in Darlington, David and Pattie bought land of their own in 2014.

The land supplied the name.

Growing in its sandy soil was maypop, the native passionflower that produces an edible passion fruit. The Whites called their place Maypop Farm.

Today, chicken remains central to the operation. Maypop says its poultry are moved regularly to fresh forage and that David developed mobile poultry sheds to protect younger birds while giving older birds shelter and access to pasture. The pigs are kept outdoors in wooded areas, where their rooting can also help work through brush. The farm says it grinds non-GMO supplemental feed on-site from locally sourced ingredients and is developing silvopasture systems that combine trees, forage and livestock.

The operation now reaches well beyond the farm gate. Maypop sells its chicken, pork and eggs at Florence City Center Farmers Market, ships frozen meat directly to customers and uses its market stand to connect shoppers with foods from other regional producers as well.

David is known locally as “The Chickenman” and “Farmer Dave,” but if there is one thing to remember about Maypop Farm, remember the pigs.

On a South Carolina farm started by a man who grew up in Washington, D.C., some of them have figured out how to put a roof over their own heads.