Teresa Smithmyer is a FarmHer who harvests a unique crop…sea salt!
Bulls Bay Saltworks
During a pig roast she hosted many years ago, she ended up with a side product of her own sea salt, leftover from the saltwater brine she had used for the pig. That discovery turned into a passion project, which catapulted into a business, Bulls Bay Saltworks, where she harvests sea salt from water collected out of Bull’s Bay in South Carolina.
She hooks up her truck with huge tanks to the trailer several times a week and drives the five miles out to Bulls Bay. She hooks up her pump and hoses and collects the water.
She then returns to the farm, and she and her crew get to work. They hook up another series of pumps and start dumping the water into rows of black bins that line the tables in one of her four greenhouses.
Evaporating Salt Water To Produce Salt
Then, the sun goes to work and starts to evaporate the water. The greenhouses are run with just the sun’s power, with a solar fan in each one.
On a summer day the temperature can reach up to 150 degrees in the greenhouses, allowing the water to evaporate quickly. Teresa uses her skilled eye to watch the water and knows at just the right point to drain off the remaining water and then harvest the chunky cubical crystals of pristine sea salt left on the bottom. It doesn’t get much more local and real than this!
On the day I met Teresa, we started early, collecting the water and heading back to the house. There Teresa, Noah and Yuka set to work moving the water into the greenhouses and waiting for it to evaporate. They worked quickly to beat the upcoming intense heat of the day.
Smoking & Packaging Sea Salt
Once the salt is harvested from the bins, they do a quick brine rinse and then take it to dry in their packing room. Once dried, some of it gets smoked for hours and hours in the smokehouse Teresa has on the property.
Other salt gets packaged as is or even mixed with red pepper mash to make a variety of salts. Teresa sell her delicious products to local restaurants, at a few farmers markets, at grocery stores and online.
To round out our morning, Teresa led me through a taste test. It was a fun and unique experience to taste such a flavorful and carefully crafted salt!
Seeing the process of harvesting sea salt from saltwater, straight out of the pristine Bulls Bay was a joy. Watching and learning from a FarmHer who has found her passion and worked it into the fabric of her life was a blessing. Teresa is one very unique woman, providing her community and beyond with a delicious product created with love on the banks of South Carolina’s Bull Bay.
