Somali-Bantu make success of farming, American style
CATAWBA – Baskets of yellow-and-white corn, yellow crook-neck squash and zucchini, green beans, vine-ripe tomatoes – and bright bunches of flowers – glow like jewels on tables at the Catawba Valley Farmers Market after a late afternoon thunderstorm.
Hajiro Weheliye and Yussuf Musa didn’t eat that kind of squash and some of the other vegetables they now grow and sell. And flowers? What was the use of growing something they could not eat, 42-year-old Weheliye asked.
Juba Farm project participants Hajiro Weheliye and Yussuf Musa sell fresh vegetables and flowers they grow, at the Catawba Valley Farmers' Market. Photo by Meg Hibbert
The Somali Bantu studied what produce Virginians flock to farmers’ markets to buy in mid summer, and making a success of small farming along the banks of a Catawba creek.
The members of Juba Farm are Bantu people from the African nation of Somalia by heritage. Many of them had spent half their lives in refugee camps in Kenya before coming to the United States as part of a resettlement program since 2004.
Food they were used to eating would be “African food – mangoes, pineapple, papaya, bananas, beans, squash with a hard shell,” Weheliye said. “And corn, but it is different. It is dry corn,” she added.
Yussuf Musa makes change for a customer buying green beans at Catawba Valley Farmers' Market.
“I think everything is wonderful, great,” said 27-year-old Musa. He didn’t grow up farming, so everything about farming as a business was new to him. His excitement over growing produce American people buy is contagious – and touching.
“It is really amazing to plant your own fruit and transport it in your own car,” Musa said. “You don’t have to carry it on your back.”
He and the other 14 members of Juba Farm studied how to farm in at a Growers Academy from January through March.
The agriculture and marketing classes were sponsored by the Virginia Tech Extension Service, and through a grant from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science, as well as the Blue Moon Fund, explained project coordinators Sheri Dorn, Extension agent, and Christy Gabbard of VT Earthworks and the Catawba Sustainability Center.
Juba Farm’s garden plots are at the sustainability center, the large farm owned by Virginia Tech in the Roanoke County community of Catawba.
The academy is classroom training for start-up land-based businesses,” explained Dorn, who works out of the Roanoke County Extension Office in the Brambleton Center in Cave Spring.
Juba Farm participants learn to grow vegetables that were not familiar to them in their native country. Photo by Meg Hibbert
“The folks running Juba Farm participated in the Growers’ Academy with translators, for three months,” she said. “Then we began weekly meetings to work through what didn’t translate or what wasn’t in class, like warm and cool season crops, since they are so different from what would be grown in Somalia.”
Dorn added that she is continually impressed by the Samali-Bantu’s intense work ethic that seems to be shared by everyone in their community, from the children to the young adults and the elders. This same ethic is demonstrated in their commitment to family and community – it is a beautiful.”
All of the Somali-Bantu who work their farm do so after coming from other jobs or taking care of family.
Musa rushes to the Catawba Valley Farmers’ Market on Thursday afternoons after his job in Carilion Community Hospital’s dietary department He has also recently started taking classes at Virginia Western Community College. “I want to become an X-ray technician,” he said.
Weheliye has a large family who came with her to Roanoke: daughters 22 and 20, a 30-year-old son, “and a little boy, 13.”
On a recent market day, the tables of Juba Farm – which is named after the Juba River that flows through the Somali-Bantu homeland – were rapidly emptying of freshly picked corn, green beans and several colors of peppers.
Sarah King of Fincastle was one of those buying the vegetables. “I read about Juba Farm, and took some literature home and read over it,” said King, as she selected green beans. “I like getting fresh vegetables,” explained King.
She brought with her friend Alethea Pettis of Covington. The two work together at Gala Manufacturing in Eagle Rock. “I like to support these kinds of things,” said Pettis.
“This is my favorite market,” added King.
The cut-flower demonstration plot was also a collaboration between the two sponsoring agencies and the Virginia Tech Department of Horticulture, specifically Holly Scoggins. Horticulture undergraduate students raised the plants and helped Juba Farm plant.
The flowers were grown on black plastic with drip irrigation, and provided another learning opportunity for the farmers who had not previously used that method, said Dorn, whose Extension specialty is Agriculture and Natural Resources and Horticulture.
Members of Juba Farm meet most weeks at the farm for a “lesson,” Dorn said. “I have seen Abdikadir, another farmer, improve his English skills to the point that he can translate for his fellow farmers. They have taken the initiative, without being told, to purchase a refrigerator to cool and hold their products between harvest and market,” she added.
Christy Gabbard said working with the growers “has been quite a joy to get to know Juba Farm, their families, and to watch them take their business from an idea and a dream to a reality. I can’t wait to see what they are able to do for the 2012 growing season.”
