Growing up on a 5th generation family farm, I knew one day I was going to be involved, but how and when were questions always sitting in the back of my head.

My name is Alex Berry and I am a 2019 graduate in Agriculture Mechanization and Business at Clemson University. I have lived in Saluda County all of my life and have been around the “farm life” ever since I can remember. My grandfather, John Faye Berry, began farming at a young age and has been someone I have looked up to my whole life. He began to row crop in the early 1960s and was also in the construction business for a few years. He retired from both of those around the time I was born, with the exception of growing a few acres of corn. Beef cattle are the main focus on our farm as we have a variety of around 250 head of Angus and Herford cattle.

Each year on the first weekend in November we host an antique tractor show and pull at our farm, Richland Creek Farms. The fall show is something I look forward to every year and numerous friends and family from our community volunteer to help put it on. We do demonstrations such as threshing machines, sawmill, syrup cooking, and blacksmithing; just to name a few. People from numerous states come and camp for the weekend and bring their own tractors and equipment to show. It’s a great way to teach the younger generation how far farming has come along and to see how old equipment operates.

Growing up, I spent most of my time on the football field or baseball diamond but if I wasn’t there, I was in the shop alongside my granddaddy working on an antique John Deere tractor. He has been a collector for over 30 years and has a collection of nearly 60 antique tractors. I spent a lot of time observing and learning from him while growing up and am now getting to share his same passion. He began to tractor pull right after he started collecting and would travel almost every weekend to a pull. I guess you could say I didn’t have a choice but to fall in his footsteps.

Our family also owns and operates Golden Hills Golf and Country Club in Lexington, SC. My granddaddy purchased the land back in the early 1980s from the Caughman family in Lexington. At the time, it was nothing but pastureland and dairy cows. He hired a golf course architect to design the course, while he built the course himself with his construction company. My father, Chad Berry, has been superintendent of the course since he graduated from Clemson University in 1992, and also helped in building it. From spraying greens to fixing irrigation leaks, he does it all.

As I was approaching my senior year at Clemson, I was indecisive about what I wanted to pursue a career in. I thought and prayed over it for that semester and finally came to the decision that I would come back home and work alongside my dad as an Assistant Superintendent. I went on to get my commercial pesticides license and have now been working there for two years. It has been a career I am truly passionate about and take pride in.

Between the two of us, we are back and forth between the course and the farm. Through my experience, I have learned how to plan our calving season around our busy grass-growing season at the course and vice versa. The early mornings and long summer days can be challenging, but at the end of the day, I can say with no regret that I am thankful for the ability to do what I do.

My advice to any younger adult going into agriculture or interested in the field is to have an open mind about it. One of the things I benefited from the most growing up and while at Clemson is knowing you can never meet too many people. As the old saying goes, "It’s not what you know, but who you know". Most importantly and I will end with this, do what God has led you to do. Pray about that job or career you might be interested in because at the end of the day all of the money in the world can’t buy you the happiness that you can receive from having a relationship with the Lord. One of my favorite Bible verses comes out of Galatians 6:7 and says, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows". 

I will be glad to answer any questions about our farm, about the golf course industry, or agriculture in general. I'm always a phone call away. I can be reached on my cell at 803-834-9076 or email at alex@goldenhillsgolf.com.