Article by Abi Cumbus

Mauldin High School’s agricultural program has been hosting plant sales for the past eight years, recently adding prom corsages and boutonnieres to their products. The students who are part of this program start out learning the basics of agriculture through the introduction to agriculture class. Throughout their high school years, they have opportunities to learn more about the agricultural field through upper level classes such as horticulture and floriculture. 

Holden Epperly, one of Mauldin’s agriculture teachers, began her agricultural journey in Orangeburg, South Carolina, where she grew up. After graduating from Clemson and moving to Laurens county with her husband, Epperly began teaching at Mauldin High and building the agriculture program. Epperly soon realized that the agriculture she grew up seeing and interacting with was much different than the agriculture that was relevant to the community of Mauldin. Adjusting to this change, Epperly started Maverick Florals and set out to educate herself on the urban side of agriculture. “I’ve tried to focus more on urban agriculture as much as I can because we’re such an urban area. We’re not a typical agriculture program. Like in the lower part of the state where I’m originally from, we have cotton fields, peanut fields, like those kids are still on the family farm whereas up here we’re seeing the hypertonics like how is floral involved in agriculture as we’re trying to like grow our own flowers and do that process in kind of like compact spaces…” Epperly said.

The support from the community has been a motivator for Epperly as she continues to grow the agriculture program. The plant sales have allowed the community to see what these students are working towards and accomplishing through caring for these plants. “It’s what an agriculture program’s about: is to watch the community support. In an area like Mauldin, an ag program is so strange, but having the community come, like we had a line waiting for us to open on Saturday, so it was just kind of like an, ‘Oh my gosh, like we’re doing something right.’ … even after six years of doing it it’s just still such a validating feeling that I’m doing something right… they come, they see what we’re doing and what we’re teaching and the community is the biggest way to get the word out about ag programs,” Epperly said. 

Future Farmers of America (FFA) club president, Julia Chevallard, has been a part of the agriculture program since she was a freshman. Throughout her years, her aspiration for agriculture has grown, leading her to become an agricultural science teacher in her future career. Seeing the community supporting the agriculture program has allowed Chevallard to take more pride in the program that she has been a part of. “I know in the past years just seeing people coming out to support that’s a smaller business. Instead of going to a grocery store or a big nursery, they come and support something that’s a little out of the way for them but they’re supporting a school,” Chevallard states. 

Though the agricultural program at Mauldin is not the largest, the plant sales and Maverick Florals give them a chance to shine out to both the community and the students of Mauldin High. “I mean, if you look at us we don’t really seem like we’re an ag school or we have a big ag program, which we don’t, so it’s nice to have the community come out and be like, ‘Oh we can show off what we can do,’ and we usually get a really good turnout so it’s just really rewarding especially since like before we actually have the plant sale, having that whole season of getting plugs in and doing all the work to make the greenhouse look good and then having people come out and complimenting us on how good our greenhouse is and how good our flowers look,” Chevallard states.

Contrary to popular belief, agriculture isn’t just about plants and animals. The study of agriculture proves to be quite beneficial for urban consumers, making them more educated about the products they are purchasing. One of Epperly’s main goals for her students is to simply learn how to be a wise consumer through her agriculture class. “I always tell my students the first week of school, ‘If you get nothing else out of this class but how to be an informed consumer then I feel like I’ve succeeded.’ So they can go to the grocery store and understand that certain things that they see in a grocery store is more of a marketing ploy than it is a health benefit kind of thing like that and stuff like that just making informed decisions,” Epperly states. 

Chevallard also emphasized the importance of agriculture, stating, “It is like the foundation of quite everything that we need and have to have on the daily basis: clothes, food, shelter, and you don’t think about it, but possibly everything you look at and reach for and touch on a daily basis is like agriculture and I think at least giving students the basic education on that is gonna be somewhat helpful even if they’re not pursuing it. Just having that basic knowledge is going to be really helpful for them to just appreciate it more and be more aware of what they’re using and putting in their bodies … and involving [themselves] in daily.”

Throughout the process of cultivating the plants and flowers, Epperly and her students remind themselves of the inevitability of dying plants, and while all of the plants may not be perfect, they are still worth something to someone. “... You can’t always be 100 percent successful, but even if 50 percent of one plant stays alive and you’re able to sell that 50 percent, that’s still something. It’s better than zero percent. Just failure is always an option with everything there’s going to be a little bit of failure,” she said. 

Money made from the plant sale will be used directly for both the agriculture classes and Mauldin’s FFA club. Whether it’s a field trip or a project, running an agriculture program generates costs that the profits will help cover. “We have a very high running cost, so normally the profits that we make off of the greenhouse they get split in half we have an FFA account and then we have an ag class account, so everything that we do in the class will come out of that account whether it’s building those benches that are right outside or those strawberry boxes that are right outside my door; all of the costs that are involved in that comes from those accounts, and then the FFA trips and the FFA meetings and things like that, so we get breakfast for every meeting and going to FFA camp and state convention things like that like all of those costs come out of that account, and not to mention having to upgrade certain things,” Epperly explains. 

Monetary earnings aren’t the only thing that the program gains from these sales. In addition to extra funding, the Mauldin agricultural program is able to get their name better recognized by the public, encouraging students to get engaged with the program. “Hopefully things like selling corsages and boutonnieres gets our name out further into the school so that even the freshmen, seeing the flyers and stuff around, [have] that name… in their head. We are hoping to go to the middle school to go and talk to them as well just so we can start their thinking earlier. It’s just we get here freshman year and you see all the agricultur stuff going on and then it gets to a point that it’s too late and you can’t take any of the classes anymore so just trying to pique their interest earlier,” Epperly explains. 

The agriculture program is still growing and improving. With the use of integrating agriculture into the more urban lifestyle of Greenville, Mrs. Epperly and her students are learning how to educate themselves and others the importance of agriculture in the daily lives of normal civilians. The funds in which they have raised have allowed them to continue this mission and improve their own organization as well.