Hi there! We’re Susan (aka “The Tyrant”) and Aaron, the people behind this website. We’ve been married since 11-11-11 (hard to forget that anniversary) but together for a decade prior. That’s to say we’ve spent so much of our lives together, we don’t even have to complete each other’s sentences because we know what the other is thinking before words become necessary. (The Tyrant knew I was going to write that.)
We’re parents to a hilarious and highly opinionated toddler as well as a flock of hilarious and highly opinionated Welsh harlequin ducks. (More duck breeds coming soon, but no more baby humans on the way.)
Our human baby is often diapered and spends some time indoors with us. Our ducks are often diapered and spend some time indoors with us as well. We’re a modern, mixed-species family who goes by they/them/quacks. (Not really.) Sometimes Susan even wears duck feathers in her hair. Thankfully, neither of us wears diapers (yet).
Susan is the one with the official Biology degree, by way of College of Charleston. She’s also a former ACSM-certified personal trainer and a (currently) really good graphic designer. The Tyrant’s sister, Dr. Lisa Durette, is a nationally renowned child & adolescent psychiatrist who helps us parent and produce Developing Mighty Minds, a resource for other parents & clinicians everywhere.
Aaron has a degree in Political Science from Furman University, which he used not to go to law school. He’s also a writer and an entrepreneur, making him responsible for getting us into new troubles which require carefully crafted language to justify.
In addition to raising ducks and a baby, we spend our time growing and foraging large quantities of food. Aaron even helped found the farm at the James Beard-nominated Oak Hill Cafe & Farm here in Greenville, SC. As often as possible, we try to make our interests and obligations overlap.
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We enjoy deep engagement with our bioregion. Soil on our fingers, waterfall swims, and observations of our regional flora and fauna make us profoundly happy and ever-more curious about our (humankind’s) relationship with this little blue dot and the planets yet to be colonized. One downside to having a bit of ecological literacy is living in a world full of wounds that few others can see. It can be maddeningly lonely here. Or sometimes just maddening. But we do our best to employ rational optimism.
TLDR? We’re entrepreneurial autodidactic misanthropes who like nature and surrounding ourselves with other lifeforms. We are nature, so perhaps that also means we like ourselves, which is true on most days, despite relentless (constructive?) self-criticism.
This website is an educational platform; our clumsy attempt to share what we see, eat, and learn with other people while also attempting to earn an income for our efforts. We hope it provides you with an enriched understanding of topics you’re curious about, along with an occasional chuckle.
Don’t forget to check out our other website, GrowJourney.com, if you aspire to learn no-till organic gardening and/or small regenerative farming.
We appreciate you being here.