In the dark basement where I spent my days during the pandemic’s early months, my mind was preparing for the apocalypse. Grocery store shelves were emptying and jobs were sending home their workers, giving me concern about losing access to food entirely.
Doom-scrolling, I found a masterclass by Gangster Gardener Ron Finley. To see a smiling black man so proud of his plants made me feel like I belonged in the garden. I loved how he talked about being able to grow his own food and feed his community in South Central Los Angeles. I had never grown anything before that, but I had been increasingly curious about agriculture.
I went to college in Northfield, Minnesota, a small town with a robust agricultural community. Hearing lectures about farming made me realize how essential agriculture is to our future survival, but in my mind there was really nothing I could do about it. I had never seen anybody who looks like me as a farmer, so I continued looking for my calling. My senior year, I was studying and training to be an academic when alumni Chantel Johnson visited my campus. She had also trained and studied to be an academic, but after she left she had some realizations that made her seek a different way of life. She told us all about her homestead in North Carolina and it became visible to me that there was a path for me to come closer to the land.
It took about a year of being out of college to figure out what that path would look like for me. Weeks after watching Ron Finley’s masterclass, another video surfaced, which ignited me and many others to action. This was the video of George Floyd getting murdered by Minneapolis police. I spent the next weeks attending protests, but my flame quickly burnt out. I was putting so much time and energy into protesting, which only amplified the heaviness of the grief I felt. I needed to put my energy into something that would bring light and healing. How can we have a revolution if we’re aching and hungry? What would it take to really fuel the change that we need to see in the world? I knew what I had to do.
I traveled to Florida to connect with my biological family. I was adopted as a newborn, so I was meeting some of them for the first time. It was cool to see how the members of my family all had a connection to food in some way. Some were versed in plant-based nutrition. Others had gardens in their yards and let me walk through them. I was even more convinced that there was a place for me in the garden.
So when I came back to Omaha, I did an urban farming residency, where I got free housing while I learned the basics of vegetable gardening and basically operated a farm with over 50 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) customers. That was one of the most impactful years of my life. With my 25 ft x 25 ft garden plot, I proved myself to have a green thumb from the start. Neighbors marveled at my garden and told me it looked better than any year before. Despite having by far the smallest plot of all five resident farmers, I grew more food than all but one of them. I am not a very competitive person, but that showed me that I was meant to do this.
Following the residency, I began farming on urban lots in Omaha. In my first year I had an ambitious plan growing on two lots, but I had new challenges trying to balance a farm with having a job. Luckily, I found work with an employer that supports me as an urban farmer. They’ve bought my food and also given me a platform to tell people about what I do.
As a community educator at No More Empty Pots, I am able to share the skills of growing and cooking fresh food with people of all ages. I like to believe this education can shape the culture of our community. That’s why it’s important to me to be my authentic self and build genuine connections when I interact with the participants in our gardening and cooking workshops.
“Growing your own food is like printing your own money” is the advice of Ron Finley. Personally, I’m glad people want to buy the vegetables that I grow, but I want people to know how to do it for themselves. I am proud to be involved in the production of my own food, because I can feel and see the impact of my labor. This makes the work far more fulfilling than anything I’ve done before. I want others to feel that sense of fulfillment as well.
If you want to read more about my origins and my journey in urban agriculture, you can visit my website and read my blog on www.manifestacres.com
Thank you.