We’re Lisa & Randall.
Pleased to meet you!
Tucked into the countryside near Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Fireside is a flower farm and design studio. Lisa and Randall grow flowers using regenerative practices and turn them into playful, artful arrangements that honor the wild beauty and biodiversity of North Carolina.
Our Story
Lisa Joyner and Randall Williams met in 2004 while teaching at Duke Young Writers Camp, where they bonded over Adrienne Rich poems and swimming in the Eno River. Three years later, in 2007, they took John Prine’s advice, smashed their TV, and moved to the country.
In 2010, they started teaching at Carolina Friends School and, over time, the farm became a beloved gathering spot for students and friends. That year they also started selling vegetables and flowers at the Saxapahaw Farmers’ Market and to local restaurants.
In 2014, they added a sawmill—first to build their own front porch, then to meet requests for custom milling.
Then, in 2017, Lisa & Randall took a leap of faith and went all-in for their big dream: to create a farm devoted to sustainable living, growing high quality flowers, and caring for their community. Thus was born Fireside Farm: a side-by-side flower farm, design studio and sawmill.
Lisa Joyner
Lisa Joyner grew up in Durham in the 1970s with homesteading parents, summers spent shelling peas, and an early love of books and community. After studying English at UNC-CH and education at NCSU, she taught middle school for over twenty years, weaving together literature, creative writing, social justice, and hands-on projects like fiber arts and goat farming (including the popular Go Go Goats!). While teaching, she helped launch GLOW, the first middle school Gay-Straight Alliance in North Carolina.
Beyond the classroom, Lisa was deeply involved in the local music scene, including managing the Saturdays in Saxapahaw Farmers’ Market and Music Series, launched by her dear friend Heather LaGarde. In 2018, she stepped away from teaching to focus full-time on flower farming. Today, Lisa spends her days at Fireside Farm, planning, planting, harvesting, and creating floral designs that bring beauty and joy to weddings and events across the Triangle.
Randall Williams
Randall began life as a child actor in Charlotte. After a brief kiss with Reese Witherspoon in a feature film directed by Diane Keaton (Wildflower), he found it necessary to live on the downlow to avoid the paparazzi. This initially took the form of mountain bike racing, until a teacher introduced him to Zen and the quiet of wild places. After a short stint at the Asheville Mediation Center, he moved to Chapel Hill to finish a degree in Philosophy and English at UNC, where a job at a Sufi-run tea house connected him to the local farming world and to the delightful village of Saxapahaw, NC.
He later reported for the Mebane Enterprise and published essays in outlets like the Independent Weekly, McSweeney’s, and Salon. Poetry soon became his medium, and he performed with the Lucifer Poetics Group (Lucipo) while also working as a videographer and editor. His love of language eventually carried him into teaching at Carolina Friends School, offering classes ranging from Permaculture to American Literature. His most popular class—Quaker Advocacy—invited students to conduct public policy research and lobby Congress for legislative change.
Now, through Fireside’s sawmill and flower farm, he continues to devote his energies to permaculture, local economies and regenerative agriculture.
