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FarmaSis president Thomasena Laudmon shares a laugh as she tends to the group’s crops at the Sandhill Research and Education Center near Columbia. Clemson Experiment Station provides use of the land and other support services for an annual lease fee of $350.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
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FarmaSis Founder Bonita Clemsons is on a mission to spread the gospel of gardening and the health benefits of fresh food to communities across the state. “I’m a firm believer that everything we need to eat can be grown ourselves.”
Photo by Andrew Haworth
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Maintaining their plot at the incubator farm requires year-round effort, but the ladies of FarmaSis are committed. From left: Teresa Wilson, Carmen Tisdale, Jeannie Jackson, FarmaSis founder Bonita Clemons, Lauretha Whaley, and FarmaSis President Thomasena Laudmon.
Photo by Andrew Haworth
In the field where they are planting, you can still hear the constant thrum of traffic. After all, a mile away is Northeast Columbia’s busy Village at Sandhill mall. But the six women in wide-brimmed hats on a warm May morning focus instead on the ground before them, where they are planting row upon row of lettuce, basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, watermelon, cilantro, parsley and hibiscus.
Collectively, they are known as FarmaSis—an all-black, all-female, all-organic farmers’ group that, in the words of their gregarious founder, Bonita Clemons, has three goals: “health and wellness, economic development, and to work together collectively as black women.”
“We called it FarmaSis because, you know, we’re playing on words,” Clemons says. “A pharmacist gives medicine. We give food. Food is medicine. Black women call themselves ‘sister’ or ‘sis.’ We always call each other ‘sis.’ So, FarmaSis.”
The field they are working is a portion of nearly 600 acres that make up the Sandhill Research and Education Center, operated by Clemson Experiment Station. The FarmaSis plot is part of the five acres set aside for incubator farms that help beginning farmers learn the trade during three-year lease agreements, says farm manager Cody Bishop.
For an annual lease fee of $350, Sandhill provides use of the land, reliable irrigation, use of farming tools and even facilities to wash and package produce for sale, he says. Leaseholders provide the labor and their unique entrepreneurial vision.
“Our incubator farm is a learning experience where somebody who wants to learn how to farm can have an environment where some of the risks that normal farmers face are not on their backs,” Bishop says.
The FarmaSis group, which has been part of the incubator program from the very start, is a perfect fit with the program’s mission to help beginning farmers serve their communities. The women come out four to five days a week, all year, to tend to the seasonal demands of farming—amending soil, planting, watering, controlling insects, harvesting and packing.
“This is the vision,” says Clemons. “For all to learn, then you go and you teach 10, and you tell those 10 to teach 10, and eventually we’ll have enough food circulating to feed ourselves. Because I’m a firm believer that everything we need to eat can be grown ourselves. We [as a society] import more food than we grow, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We’re planting the seed to change that.”
Clemons often speaks in gardening metaphors. Her leadership style, you might say, is like the crops she plants—it’s rooted in the local, but it blooms into the universal.
The first seed was planted when she was working at Shaw Air Force Base, where she met a local farmer and “felt something there.”
“I noticed, though, that the African American farmers were old and getting older,” she says. “I didn’t see any new people, and I didn’t see any women, so I said, ‘I want to train other women.’”
She recruited like-minded farmers on social media, all of them inspired by the chance to make positive impacts on the local community. Clemons herself had once been ill and says she healed herself with the best natural medicine—healthy food.
“I’m telling you, food is one of the most important things that helped me turn my life around. I just realized I had to take certain things out of my diet, and that’s when I went vegetarian. To feel good again,” she says. “I tell people, ‘I don’t demonize food, but because of what animals are being fed and the chemicals? Food has changed.’ So, I wanted to teach them about good health and then knowing that fresh food is a part of that.”
As someone who studied business and economics, and who has a master’s degree in public health, Clemons recognizes that, to many people, eating well is equated with spending more money. She wants to combat that notion.
“I think the cost is going to balance out in terms of your health because as we get older, the medicine is going to get you,” she says. “Yesterday I bought some squash and nearly fell over when the lady told me ‘Five dollars.’ I could buy a pack of seeds for two dollars, and I could feed—I’m not lying—like a whole community.”
Thomasena Laudmon, who took over last year for Clemons as the group’s leader, takes a break from planting to say, “It’s such an important issue, food is. Because that’s how we grow. If we don’t have proper nutrition, then that stunts the growth in so many ways. Nutrition is the catalyst for a healthy, vibrant lifestyle. So the work that the group and I do is very important because, as women, we are mothers, and as mothers we take care of our families and communities.”
Carmen Tisdale, the self-described “foodie” of the group, is out here today dragging plastic to thwart the weeds. She’s already cleaned her beds and planted some peanuts for the first time, and she likes how much fun they have out here telling jokes while they work. As she works her rows, she talks about making radish hummus, beet ketchup, pesto, Jamaican green sauce, vegan oxtails, kale salad—all from what she’s grown.
She’s even brought gardening into her classroom at Logan Elementary and shown the kids how to make and sell smoothies; it’s a lifestyle approach she hopes to eventually pass on to her own daughter.
Because the ideas and practices of FarmaSis are as interconnected as the farming ecosystem itself, the women also see feminine beauty as another benefit of the farming lifestyle.
“Farming keeps me fine!” says Laudmon. “It’s exercise for me. After I get up in the morning and do my meditation and libation, I get out in the garden, and that’s my workout.”
“FarmaSis brought style to farming,” says Clemons. “You could really make the connection—the reason you look good in that dress? It’s because your lifestyle, the food, the farming. It all comes together. That’s why you look the way you look in that dress.”
They laugh as they begin preparing for another planting day ritual—the potluck lunch. They break out the tables and chairs, and, still ignoring the noise of the nearby traffic, they bless the food and dive in. It’s a smorgasbord of kale salad, pasta salad, collard green salad, guacamole salad, black bean dip and fresh-cut watermelon.
They know they have much to be thankful for, which also means they still have so much left to teach.
“We’re taking care of ourselves and taking care of the earth,” Clemons says. “It’s the same thing.”
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Get More
Follow the women of FarmaSis as they share their farming trials and triumphs on Facebook @the-farmasis.
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Room to grow
The incubator farm program at the Sandhill Research and Education Center is hosted by Clemson Experiment Station. As this issue went to press, five growers were engaged in the program, which can accommodate up to seven participants at a time. For more information, contact farm manager Cody Bishop at (803) 788-5700 or wcbisho@clemson.edu.