In 2015, Shantae Johnson and Arthur Shavers decided to embark on a major life shift and begin a career as farmers.
In the past decade, their work has expanded immensely to include a nonprofit, two farms, a commercial kitchen, a food pantry in the Portland-metro area and a soon-to-be Black Community Food Hub opening in Gresham.
It’s all dedicated to their mission of empowering, educating and creating economic opportunity for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who want to work in food systems. This work is done under the nonprofit “The Feed’em Freedom Foundation.” Executive Director Shantae Johnson joins us to talk about their work.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. In 2015, Shantae Johnson and her partner Arthur Shavers made a major life shift. She had worked various jobs in public health for Multnomah County. He’d had various jobs, too, including as a driver. They decided to start a farm. In the decade since then, their work has expanded immensely. It now includes a nonprofit, two farms, a commercial kitchen, a food pantry, and soon a Black Community Food Hub here in Gresham. It is all animated by the same vision: empowering, educating, and creating economic opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and people of color who want to work in food systems. Shantae Johnson joins me now.
It always tells me something when people need to clap and celebrate somebody before I’ve finished describing who they are. It tells me that people here already know you and already love you. But let’s introduce you to the rest of Oregon right now. I mentioned that you and your partner made this huge life shift. My understanding is that you’d had some farming in your family backgrounds, but had never done anything like what you started 10 or 11 years ago. How did you decide to take that leap?
Shantae Johnson: Well, you know, I am an Oregon native and grew up farming with my family, mostly. My great-grandmother had a farm in Oregon City that I grew up going to, and my aunts and uncles just grew food wherever they were at. But when I started working at the county, I was there for about eight years, and started just exploring different opportunities within the county. I met Mr. Jerry Hunter, who was a farmer at CROPS Farm that I now get the pleasure of getting to steward that land, and I was inspired.
Mr. Jerry, they call him the coach, he had this amazing farm that was about three acres, across from Edgefield, and he had bees, but also, like, all of his plots were fashioned after sports teams and things like that, so a whole purple patch for the Lakers and things. And I went to that farm and just got inspired and I called Art and I was like, “I think I wanna quit my job and be a farmer.” And he was like, “What?” I mean like, “OK, I’m gonna do the same,” so that’s how it kind of started.
Miller: What made you think that you could do it?
Johnson: Because I have a very tenacious spirit and I’m very adventurous and I love nature, so I decided that I really needed a change of pace from doing nutrition policy work, and I wanted to work with my hands a lot more. Doing direct services was part of the work that I did before, and there is a difference between working with the land and being able to see that change happen almost immediately versus policy that sometimes takes a little bit longer, but both work is important.
Miller: The farm that you started with, you called it Mudbone Grown. What does that mean?
Johnson: Yeah, Mudbone Grown, that name came actually from Arthur’s nickname. He was the city kid in Northeast that had this raccoon hat, that had all kinds of fun adventures, and his friend used to call him Mudbone, and so when his friend came to our first farm and we were like, “Oh, what should we name our farm?” he was like, “This is Mudbone Grown.” And we’re like, “That’s a perfect name,” so that’s how the name kinda evolved.
Miller: What were some of the lessons you learned early on?
Johnson: To harvest squash on a more regular basis, that zucchini could get really, really huge, and that farming was a lifestyle.
Miller: What do you mean by that?
Johnson: I mean that farming kind of just creeps into your world, creeps into your life, where you start to work with the land and almost become obsessed with it. And you get excited about planting your harvest and watching it grow and being able to share that food with the community. So I just got hooked and then I couldn’t stop.
Miller: What was the dirt like at your farm, that first farm?
Johnson: That first farm, I remember it was in North Portland and it was an acre farm and one of our friends went to Bali for like the summer, and he was like, “The farm is gonna be developed into new housing for the community, but you can use it for now.” So Arthur and I started just growing as much food as we could. We worked with the daycare out here in East County that served about 60 families and we grew food for the 60 families as we were learning, because we didn’t wanna charge people if we were just kind of in that learning stage and so that’s how we got started.
Miller: That was the first farm that you started, but since then, as I mentioned briefly in my intro, you’ve just been a whirlwind of activity, including creating the Feed’em Freedom Foundation. What is that?
Johnson: Yeah, so Feed’em Freedom evolved out of the work of Mudbone Grown, and when we were doing – well, we still are Mudbone Grown as well, that is our for-profit enterprise – we were doing three different types of agricultural training programs. We were on the Oregon Food Bank land there and partnering with them to do these training programs.
One was the Beginning Colors of Farmers training program. We had over a hundred applicants apply in that first year and we had ten folks that learned alongside us, and learned how to farm. Some of those folks are still farming today and have their own agricultural businesses. We did a Boots to Roots program, working with veterans, and then we had a Pathways to Farming program that focused on helping people create their own agricultural businesses as well. Feed’em Freedom came into play because we wanted to expand upon that and do more, getting into more education and more outreach into the community, and just to be able to grow more food, have our food pantry and do those kinds of things.
Miller: Did you have educational opportunities like what you’re trying to provide to other people right now?
Johnson: Yeah, we went through Oregon State University’s BUFA program. It’s a Beginning Urban Farmers’ Apprenticeship program. There was a marketing track and then there was a community track, and because we already know how to work with the community, we chose the marketing track. Arthur and I went through that program. One of our mentors, Jen Aron, is an amazing farmer. She lives out in Corbett and we’re still in contact with her today. So that’s how we learned how to do more of the technical skills.
Miller: Can you tell us about the Black Community Food Hub that you’re creating now?
Johnson: Yeah, so, the Food Hub… there’s a few things. The Food Hub is probably about two minutes away from this location. And we purchased a five-acre space and what we’re currently doing now is working with a lot of farmers, over thirty farmers, to help them create pathways into institutional markets. A lot of farmers wanna just stay on the farm.They don’t wanna have to worry about going to farmers’ markets or taking their food to sell it to schools or other institutions. The Food Hub kinda evolved from that, because we know what that struggle was like to always think about, “Well, where is this food gonna go?” There’s a lot of amazing great growers out here in East County that are growing a lot of food for the community and sometimes they just don’t have that outlet and so that’s how the Food Hub came to be.
Miller: What’s it like to have your own land now? For years you were leasing or working land that somebody else owned, but now you have some of your own land.
Johnson: Yeah. It feels really good to be able to not have to think about moving from place to place, and we started with just building out the land and building alongside community, and for the past couple of months we’ve been working with Oregon State University to do a food-forest series where communities coming in to do some skill sharing with one another, but we’re also bringing in OSU instructors to help support some of that learning. One of those first workshops was all about how to start your own food forest.
Miller: What’s a food forest?
Johnson: A food forest, many people have their own definitions of food forest. For us, the food forest is a place where there are over 30+ fruit trees. There’s an understory of herbs and flowers, and it’s not like the traditional kind of “straight rope” growing. It’s a place where there’s a lot of diversity built into the space. What we’ve designed, at what we call the North Star Food Forest and Food Hub right down the street, is the community got to help pick out what types of fruit trees they would like, you know, even forest bathing can happen in a food forest, which is kind of a fancy word for like walking through the forest, but that food forest will be a place where people can forage and gather herbs and things.
Miller: A lot of the work that you’re doing is for people who want to have some kind of career in the food growing world, but plenty of people listening may want to just get more active growing food on a much smaller scale, in a window box, on their patio, in their yard, if they have a yard. What advice do you have for people who just want to sort of dip their toes in this world, but unlike you, they’re not gonna actually become farmers?
Johnson: I would say come into community green spaces and grow alongside your neighbors. Something that we’ve talked about with some of these workshops is these tree guilds. And there’s these communities of tree guilds, which is, we might look at, like, what are some of the First Nation foods? And there’ll be a whole tree area that’s focused on those first foods. Or there’ll be a guild that has like a space for plant dyeing, you know, plants that you could dye like clothes, and tie dye with indigo and things. So I would say that people that want to just come and experience farming or growing food, to just come and be in community with us.
Miller: Five years ago, you were featured in a really beautiful segment on OPB TV’s “Oregon Field Guide,” and at the end of it you said this: “We really love what we do and we’re going to farm until the day we die.” That was five years ago. Do you still feel the same way?
Johnson: I do feel the same way. You know, it was probably a couple of days ago that we’re now building our own food forest on our land out in Corbett, and I got to sit out there in the middle of the field with art and play music and just be in that space, without any outside noise or anything like that, and look around and see the corn that my children planted and the squash and the herbs and the beginning of my own food forest, and I can say that I still hold that deeply within, that I don’t want this to ever stop.
Miller: You mentioned your kids. Is parenting different on a farm now than it was when you were in the city?
Johnson: I think my our kids have a lot more space to just grow and breathe and be. But also, when I talk about the corn, I call it the “children of the corn” patch because they were tussling a little bit as they were planting the corn, but yeah, I think it is different and I think that sometimes maybe they get frustrated with having to be so far outside the city, but also at times they really appreciate being able to catch frogs and be with the sheep and play with baby chicks.
Miller: We are talking in August right now. What does August look like for you as a farmer?
Johnson: August looks like for me as a farmer, we have a lot of blueberries. I mean, the cucumbers are pumping out of the high tunnels, and summer squash and tomatoes and peppers. The food is just flowing and we’re working with, like I said, multiple farmers that are bringing in their yields as well, and looking at storage crops, and planning around that so that we can make sure that we can feed ourselves but also feed the community.
Miller: Shantae Johnson, thanks very much. It was a pleasure talking with you.
Johnson: Thank you.
Miller: Shantae Johnson is the executive director of the Feed’em Freedom Foundation, co-founder of Mudbone Grown.
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