“The long day wanes. The slow moon climbs. The deep moans round with many voices. Come, my friends. ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.”

—Alfred Lord Tennyson

More than 70 years ago, Vernon Grant started a farm on the gently rolling land that will soon be Kettlesong. Though he felt like a son of the soil at heart, he wasn’t your typical farmer. Now a legend of the York County community, Vernon was born with an equal love for the land beneath his feet and the vivid colors of his imagination.

In the first half of his life, Vernon turned his childhood love of drawing into a successful career as one of America’s top illustrators. His work appeared on the covers of magazines, on advertisements and products, and in numerous children’s books. During the “Golden Age of Illustration” in the 30’s and 40’s, he created beloved characters like Kellogg’s Snap! Crackle! Pop!™ and was ranked "America's favorite children's artist” by LIFE magazine in 1938.

With a flair for color, fairy-tales and friendship, he saw the world with bright eyes, continually finding inspiration in the people and places around him. He made endearing characters from the animals that played with him by the river. He made gnomes dressed in the same patchwork hand-me-downs he wore growing up in South Dakota. He made dreams come alive in the minds of children as they poured over the pages of his books, following the story’s trail into playful new worlds. He made friends in LA, Chicago, and New York, welcoming them with his warmth and storytelling, and made his neighbors tap their feet to the sound of his banjo.

But it wasn’t until 1947, when Vernon moved from New York City to the verdant hills of his wife’s family farm in York County that he made roots, roots that grew from 200 to 670 acres, roots filled with ingenuity and reverence for the community surrounding him. He always felt a hankering to make a mark on the world, to bravely follow his creativity wherever it might lead. As he explored the lush landscape stretched out before him at a farm he named Pinetuck, his hankering found a home.

Even though he was new to South Carolina and to running his own farm, it still felt like a return. A return to the good earth, to open skies and to the possibility of adventure. Raised on big sky prairies north of the Black Hills in South Dakota, Vernon learned that home was a place you built for and with the people around you. Growing up miles from a town, or even a store, his family made everything they wanted themselves and relied on the help of their neighbors. They worked together to build their own homes and a one-room schoolhouse. They enriched their simple, hard-working life with music, humor, storytelling and art.

At his new Carolina homestead, Vernon dug deep with the same nourishing mix of heart, hard work and creativity. He brought with him his loyalty to nature, his vision and optimism, and his generous spirit of community. As a result, York County welcomed him with pride and open arms.

Instead of making toys out of clay soil by the creekside as he did as a child, he raised cattle and plump concord grapes, fescue and lespedeza seed by the ton. He tended the land with innovative conservation and farming methods. He continued illustrating but in addition to magazines and ads, he gifted his art to the community in hand drawn Christmas cards and festival mascots. and a Main Street children’s museum filled with playful whimsy.

As his closeness to the community grew, his life ripened with age into something even more enduring, grounded in the desire to make a difference. Active in farming organizations, the Rock Hill Housing Authority, Urban Renewal programs, and the Chamber of Commerce, he was a force of renewal. Real renewal. The kind that enhances quality of life and lifts nature up, appreciating the beauty of things not organized in perfect rows. He believed there were no boundaries between urban life and rural life, for one could find beauty and meaning in the kinds of connections that sustain them both.

For Vernon, home wasn’t just a place, it was an action, a gesture of creativity and care. He had the capacity for seeing anew the beauty in our daily lives, in the ways we make life bright with cheer and commitment when we connect with the land beneath our feet and the people next to us.

The legacy Vernon Grant bestowed on York County is a simple one, but it’s not ordinary. It’s the legacy of a joy-filled life and a spirit that made everything feel like home. Like Vernon, Kettlesong believes the feeling of home takes many forms, and nowhere is it more strongly felt than in appreciation for nature and community.

Kettlesong hopes to continue Vernon’s legacy by renewing the heritage of what he loved, recreating on a stretch of land that was the Grant farm, a new home place filled with bright landscapes, new opportunities and meaningful experiences.