185: Teresa Smithmyer, Bulls Bay Saltworks (McClellanville, SC)

This time of year, you have to get out early to the greenhouses at Bulls Bay Saltworks. The sun and humidity are already bearing down on the day by 10 a.m. so in order to spend time tending and harvesting the salt farm, Teresa Smithmyer has to be finishing her day in the field then, not beginning it. The salt grows slowly in a few greenhouses on her land, which is a beautiful hobby farm (as she calls it) where plants from passion fruit vines to bamboo to corn are grouped in a way that feels more like a botanical garden, and chickens dart into the shade beside the house while a goat is in the field next to it and pigs in a pen till the land for a new garden. In the production shop, the small but mighty salt company ships out a large amount of product relative to the small working space, and at the center of it all is Teresa, a woman whose clear-eyed vision of sustainability and the importance of the ecosystem she’s in create a taste of the Lowcountry to bring to the table.