The Captain and the Farmer: A Fairhope Couple Living Off Land and Sea
“The Captain and the Farmer” sounds like the title of a summer novel, rich with characters and earthy plot lines. In reality, it describes a husband-and-wife team in Fairhope who have split their livelihoods between Mobile Bay and a three-acre patch of Baldwin County soil — he harvesting shrimp from a boat named for his grandfather, she growing flowers and vegetables with the same hands-on intensity.
Patrick Gormandy is the captain. His shrimp boat, the Captain Sam B, carries the name of his grandfather, and shrimping runs in the family line: he began working the deck as a child beside his father, spent years on the water with him, and when his dad retired, Patrick bought the boat, left his other job, and went shrimping full time. His business, Heritage Seafood, carries a name chosen to honor exactly that — the carrying on of a family tradition.
Buying Shrimp the Old Way
Gormandy sells his catch the way Gulf shrimp used to be sold: off the boat. During shrimp season, the Captain Sam B docks at Fairhope Docks Marina at the end of Seacliff Drive roughly twice a week, and customers line up with ice chests for heads-on shrimp pulled from the Bay within hours — sometimes the same day they were swimming. The prices undercut most retail seafood counters; large shrimp have gone for $5 to $6 a pound, direct from the deck.
The demand has grown with the reputation. In the early days, a handful of regulars formed the line. Lately, the line forms early and the boat frequently sells out within an hour or two. Customers follow the boat’s arrivals on social media to time their trips — a modern twist on the dockside trade, but the transaction itself remains refreshingly unchanged: cash, coolers, and shrimp so fresh the ice barely has to work.
Kathy’s Farm, Flower by Flower
Kathy Gormandy is the farmer. She bought her home and three-acre farm in 2016 as a single mom, with dreams of growing food for her family and her community. When she married Patrick in 2017, P and K Farm was born. She started with vegetables and herbs for the household and local markets — and then the flowers took over.
Adding blooms to her farmers market booth as an accent, she discovered the zinnias, sunflowers, and cosmos outsold everything else on the table. She expanded production steadily and now sells cut flowers wholesale to florists and retail shops as well as directly to customers, with deliveries to the door — bouquets cut the same morning they arrive, the freshest thing on anyone’s porch.
Her ambitions are growing with the rows. Her plans call for expanding the production area, doubling spring flower output, and continuing to build soil health — the foundation of everything she grows. New equipment investment is designed to scale up to meet the demand for locally grown flowers in the area. And she is planning a flower studio and workshop space on the farm for classes, hands-on activities, and events, extending the farm from a production operation into a teaching one.
There is a book in it, too — literally. Kathy has written a children’s book, “David’s Farm — Healthy Soil,” inspired by her son David, who is often beside her in the field. The soil-focused story touches on compost, worms, beneficial insects, and the principle that guides the whole farm: healthy soil grows the best food and flowers.
A Gulf Coast Love Story
The couple’s own timeline reads like a local novel. Both grew up on the coast — Kathy in Loxley, Patrick in Mobile — and both played in the band at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School in their youth. They reconnected two decades later and have been married since 2017, dividing their days between the dock at the end of Seacliff Drive and the rows of the P and K.
Together they embody something the Gulf Coast has always prized and lately worries about losing: the working waterfront and the small farm, side by side. One sells shrimp off a deck with salt on it; the other sells flowers cut that morning. Both depend on the same principle — fresh, local, and personal — and both have found that customers will drive out of their way for it.
For Fairhope and the surrounding communities, the Captain and the Farmer are less a novelty than a reminder. The Bay still produces; the soil still produces; and a family willing to work both can build a life — and a line of customers — around it. The shrimp are sold when the boat docks, the flowers when they’re cut, and both run out early. Around here, that’s the best kind of review.