She hired local teens to help bundle them into smaller bouquets and deliver them to those same women in public housing.įrederick is a town on the move says Natasha. She regularly brought in bunches of flowers for a flower therapy program organized by a local life coach.Īfter Covid-19 caused the cancelation of events in the spring Natasha continued to donate the flowers anyway. She also became involved with The Public Housing Authority in Frederick, where she served senior women in a program called “Bloom Where You’re Planted”. “We use salvias, mint, basil and monarda for the greens.” They also grow dahlias because who can resist dahlias? Natasha is wearing Womanswork High Performance gloves in Aqua/Peach “We picked flowers that were funky and resilient,” says Natasha, “like goldenrod, milkweed, amaranth and a variety of rudbeckia’s,” which is the state flower of Maryland. The flowers they grow are not the obvious choices. The goal is to host as many as 15 of these events a year, twice a week from spring to fall-when things get back to normal. Partnering with local wineries they host Sip and Stem events. They brought their flowers to farmers’ markets, florists and a local co-op in the area, but over time they found that flower arranging events were the best and most enjoyable way to sell their flowers. The plan she and Julie Blair agreed to was they would grow everything in a sustainable way, without machinery or greenhouses. She found she wanted to put her own roots down. But she wasn’t farming anymore and she began to feel the tug of the land. Natasha wanted to collect these stories and was honored to highlight their voices.Īfter the book was published Natasha took to the road again, a little unexpectedly, traveling and being interviewed by Bill Moyers and others. “They are saying, ‘We’re still here and we’re as much a part of this as anyone.” “I realized many farmers of color are farming as an act of resistance. What she discovered was a whole community of people of color gardening. She wanted to get answers, and her findings had a big impact on her. It was a personal journey which led to living out of her car at times. She wondered if the complicated history of black people and farming, tied to the legacy of slavery, was suppressing interest in farming among people of color, or whether there were black farmers out there whose voices weren’t being heard.Īfter fundraising she went on a 6 month long book tour across the country. As she looked around she wondered why, at a time when it was becoming ‘hip’ to take up farming, there was so little representation among farmers of color. It started as a quest to answer some persistent questions Natasha had as a brown woman farming. The book Natasha wrote, published by New Society Publishers, is called The Color of Food. The next 8 years found the two of them going on a book tour, getting married, having two daughters (now ages nearly 3 and 4), and Natasha signing on 3 years ago to join Julie in planting the seeds of a family farm. Natasha had been farming on other peoples’ land and thinking about a book she wanted to write when she met her husband Crosby Blair. Natasha on her farm, Native Mountain Farm in Boonsboro, MD The farm, situated on a lush piece of landscape at the base of South Mountain in Boonsboro, is operated by Natasha and her mother-in-law Julie Blair on land Julie and her late husband Billy purchased 32 years ago. Natasha Bowens Blair didn’t believe you could grow plants in a meaningful way that weren’t edible or medicinal until she experienced the joy of growing and arranging flowers at Native Mountain Farm outside of Frederick, Maryland.
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