Yellow Dog Farm

A quieter plan for retirement

Yellow Dog Farm began with a plan that had little to do with restaurant kitchens.

Ray Healy and his wife were looking for room: room for their horses, a yellow Labrador, a Chihuahua and three Great Pyrenees, and a quieter place to settle as Ray approached retirement. They bought land in Dorchester County two years before he retired.

Ray did not arrive in the Lowcountry as a career farmer. A Seattle native who comes from a farming family, he built his professional life in engineering. That career eventually brought him to the Charleston area, where he served as an executive on Boeing’s leadership team.

The land offered a different kind of work. What started as a garden gradually became Yellow Dog Farm, named for the family’s yellow Lab, Penny.

When a chef asked Ray to grow something different

At first, the Healys sold produce at a local farmers market and shared what they were growing on Facebook. Then a sous chef from Bexley Fish & Raw Bar in Summerville reached out with a question: would Ray grow vegetables specifically for the restaurant?

He said yes.

That relationship helped give Yellow Dog Farm a distinctive place in the Lowcountry food scene. Reporting from 2024 documented Ray growing Cherokee Purple tomatoes, yellow corn shoots, bok choy and frill mustard for Bexley chef Jeremy Holst — the kind of specific crops that make sense when a grower and a kitchen can talk directly about what the chef wants to cook.

The connection became public that February at the SEWE Fresh on the Menu stage in Charleston. Ray was paired with Holst for a chef-and-farmer demonstration built around Yellow Dog mustard greens. The dish was a frill mustard and honeynut squash red curry.

Still growing for Lowcountry kitchens

The Bexley relationship has lasted. In a September 2026 profile of the restaurant, Ray from Yellow Dog was identified as the grower providing much of Bexley’s early greens and flowers.

Yellow Dog also appears in the broader network of local food businesses around Charleston. Laura in Summerville currently lists the farm among its local partners, while GrowFood Carolina includes Yellow Dog Farm on its roster of growers and producers.

Those connections say something useful about the farm without requiring a slogan: this is a small operation whose produce has found its way into professional Lowcountry kitchens because of direct relationships between the grower and the people cooking with what he raises.

Before you make the drive

There is one piece Farm Allegiance is still working to verify: how households can buy from Yellow Dog Farm today. The farm historically sold produce at a local farmers market, but the market name, current 2026 public schedule, farm-store hours and direct pickup arrangements are not publicly confirmed in the sources we found.

For now, the farm’s Facebook page is the best public place to check for updates or send a message before traveling.