Seeds And Their People - EP. 13: Halima Salazar & Dria Price: Building a Bridge from Mississippi to Nigeria

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

This episode features Halima Salizar and Dria Price of Justevia Teas in Watervalley, Mississippi with a focus on their beloved food and medicine plants, their work, and the ways the food cultures of West Africa and the Southern US mirror each other. They grow, harvest, dry, and package their tea blends at their farm, and they host pop-ups with local restaurants featuring Nigerian foods. They also grow the seeds of Nigerian vegetables as well as heirlooms from Mississippi and Alabama for the Truelove Seeds catalog.  SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Honey Bean Purple Hull Pea Hibiscus White Velvet Okra Ginger Efo Aleho (Coming soon. Similar to Callaloo) Egusi Ewedu (Coming soon. Similar to Palestinian Molokhia) Ugu (Fluted Pumpkin) Locust Beans, fermented, aka Iru Stevia   MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Help Justevia buy a Farm! Justevia's Linktree Mr. Brown's Farm, Watervally, MS Chicory Market, Oxford, MS The Potlikker Papers, John T. Edge Southern Foodways Alliance podcast: Gravy Ewedu Broom on YouTube Seeds and Their People, EP 5: RAU ĐAY, LALO, SALUYOT, EWEDU, MOLOKHIA Molokhia Survey, by Antonio Tahhan  Antonio Tahhan's Linktree Braiding Seeds Fellowship   ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   SUPPORT OUR PATREON! Become a monthly Patreon supporter! This will better allow us to take the time to record, edit, and share seed stories like these.   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Facebook  |  Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Halima Salazar Dria Price Maebh Aguilar Zainab Muhammad 

One of the really great things is to be able to grow more seeds that are from home so other Africans here can have access to them. Because there's something about holding that plant, you know, live or fresh that makes, it makes such a massive difference. And it's comforting because you're not home. It's like it just takes you back home and it just makes you feel like, okay, I can be happy in this place. There is a possibility that I'm not home, but I can find happiness. here because I'm surrounded by the things that remind me of home. I was just whacking at normal. Welcome back to Seeds and their people.

I'm Chris Bolden-Nusom, Farmer and co-director of Sankofer Farm at Bartham's Garden in Sunny Southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We are a seed company offering culturally important seeds grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and now also you. We are so grateful to the 32 of you who support our seedkeeping and storytelling work through our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Thank you so much to Corey and Ash, our most recent patrons, and thank you to all our Patreon members and all of our listening. Here's a sweet note from Tori in Detroit.

I listen to these while I farm at D-Town, and they always help connect me to the wider impact of what I'm doing. Thanks for sharing the stories and the seeds. Thank you, Tori. This episode features an interview with Halima Salisar, Andrea Price of Justtevia T's in Water Valley, Mississippi. Halima and Drea grow Nigerian and Southern Black Air Lerlin. looms for our seed catalog. We first connected through Lydia Koltai, who gets a shout out in this

interview. In early 2020, Lydia found us through our connection to Solfire Farm and had ordered some of our seeds to create an ancestral garden. She told us we had to meet Halima and Drea. It was a perfect connection because we were looking for farmers to take on some of our southern heirlooms and our West African seed crops. And of course, to do so from a place of deep ancestral connection. And since they live just a couple hours north of our family in the Delta, we get to see them when we visit. So, Chris, what were your reflections on this episode?

Well, I thought it was a very beautiful episode, and it probably is, you know, one of, probably one of my favorites, surprisingly, to me, with all of the episodes and interviews that we've done over the years. Partly, I really liked it because it was in Mississippi, of course, and we love most things. Mississippi. You know, and I really, I really appreciate, you know, you can hear the sounds of rural Mississippi in the background, the sheep and goats and roosters and everybody. So that barnyard life and just knowing that it was coming from my beloved Mississippi, that for me was was very beautiful. You know, and then there were definitely different parts of this story that

I really appreciated and it gave me some deeper insight to the work that Sister Halima andrea are doing and to just the work in general that's happening in Mississippi around food sovereignty and ancestral reconnection. I really appreciated hearing Sister Drea talking about getting the purple hole seed for her mother who lives in the north. You know, we Mississippians tend to go to Chicago or the points west, very different than black folks here in Philadelphia who come from the East Coast South. And so there's a huge Mississippi and Louisiana diaspora in Chicago land And so it just was very powerful. It made me really well up inside to hear that her mother would have no other bean but the purple hole pea.

And she's living in the north and ask her constantly to bring those peas and to start growing them. And so the fact that she's growing those peas. And also for me it felt really powerful because I had something to do with that. Just the thought that one of those seeds, maybe all of them who knows, were seeds that had passed through my farm. So it was this beautiful circle of really. rematriation that happened that I just thought was so powerful that I got to receive seeds from Mississippi from my elder, Duck and Earl, in Shaw, Mississippi, grow them out up here in the north and then send them back to Mississippi so that Sister Drea could grow them and send them back

up north. You know, there's sort of a beautiful cycle there. So there was so much, you know, I think in this interview that really stood out to me and that I think is really, really going to be pleasurable for folks to hear particularly anybody with any connections to the south i will say that i also really love hearing sister olima talk about the connections between uh west african food and african-american food in the south and of course the sidria also weighed in on that and not just the foods you know not just the similarities and you know they spent a good long time on the various different black eyepies of which the honey bean is also you know in that same tribe they didn't point that out but i wanted to go ahead and shout out the honey bean for the vignor tribe same as a

black i pee and a purple hole pea and the crowded pee and just hearing that not just the food but also the food ways how we eat the food you know a little bit around you know sort of some of our rituals and ideas around those foods when they're served you know the importance of red drink throughout the Black South and that that is being something that has definite and still existing roots in Mother Africa, what we come from. I just thought that was really, really beautiful. And then finally, of course, that beautiful shout out that Susser Halima gave to you, Owen, that was, of course, beautiful and well-deserved for all of the work that you are doing

in response to how the spirit prompts you to move in the world. of food and farming. So, yeah, I just think it was great, and I think everyone who listens to it will be blessed. Yes, we love each other. In early June, right after we finished planting our fields up here in the Philadelphia area, we took the train down to Alabama with our little family and drove across Mississippi to visit family in Greenville. During that trip, I also drove to Texas and back to see more family and friends in Austin. Towards the end of our time down there, I took a day trip by myself. Yes, that was my turn to get COVID, and so you were solo, which I guess it's good because you missed the COVID.

Yes, but we wished you were with us, and glad that we're all fine now. Anyway, I took the day trip up from the Delta into northern Mississippi to meet Halima and Drea to talk about their beloved plants and their work. The entire time we were down there, the temperatures were in the upper 90s. It was hot, like in Nigeria, even when we were talking in the shade on the deck, and especially later in the greenhouse. Enjoy the conversation. Well, I am really glad to be here with both of you.

I am down here in Water Valley, Mississippi, and sitting on a porch. in the heat with two amazing farmers and herbalists and their ducks and chickens. Can you actually introduce yourselves to the people listening? I'm Drea Price and I live in Oxford, Mississippi. It's about 45 minutes away from here in Water Valley. I call this area the armpit of water valley because it's outside of the city and if you're not with like the major phone companies, you don't have to. service and I'm Halima Salazar and I live here in Water Valley and all the ambient animals are mine and I'm originally from Nigeria and I'm a farmer and a

chef and a tea maker how would you describe yourself and your work definitely a farmer tea maker of course a baker Halima has given me that title recently and I'm wearing it. I'm putting on my baker's coat and hat. And just a lifelong student of nature. I feel like every day I'm learning something new. Nice. And you have deep roots in this area. Is that correct? Yes. So my mom's dad is from Missouri originally, but his mom and family were from Mississippi. They lived in Grenada, which is about another 45 minutes from Oxford, probably like 20 minutes from here. So it's just nice to come back. I actually didn't know that I had roots in Mississippi from my mom's side of the family until I was grown.

On my paternal side, they're all from Oxford. So I can go to Walmart at 3 a.m. and I see like 18 cousins. So I have, I know everyone here almost. But you didn't grow up here, is that right? No, well, kind of. I moved here from Chicago when I was seven. So we had like a slow great migration over a couple generations to get to Chicago. And we came back because my parents said Oxford would be a great place to raise kids.

They still get backlash about that. And eventually everyone moved back except me because I was in school when they started moving back at Ole Miss. And so once I graduated, I just kind of stayed and hung out because I met Halima and we started farming. So it was a very organic flow into staying where my roots were. Beautiful. And how did you end up here, Halima? My husband and me and the kids moved back to Nigeria probably seven years ago. While we were there, I hadn't been home in, gosh, over a decade because I originally came to go to college here.

And when I went back, it was like, I just wanted to swallow Nigeria and swallow the soil and the culture. I want to learn everything about it and I was a lot older so all the things that I one was not bold enough to do when I was younger I was able to just go there and do so I went to culinary school there I went back to my to the village where my mother is from and I visited my grandfather's farm and I looked at everything and I thought gosh this is all just calling me back and so I started farming a little bit at home thinking I would kind of interlock the farming with the cooking together and then I had to come back to the US because I didn't have my citizenship and it was becoming a problem because they kept telling me every time I crossed the border

oh you can't leave the country for too long because you don't have a citizenship you can't leave the country for too long and so finally I was like okay I'm going to come back and I'm going to get my citizenship and I'm going to go back home because I have so much to go do at home and then at the time that I was coming I came back my husband's job called him back to the US. His company wanted him to come to Mississippi. I was like, where's Mississippi? And we were like, we don't want to go to Mississippi. And they were like, you should just go and see how it works out. I got here. It was hot. And I thought, well, that's great, because I love the heat, didn't want to be in a cold area. And so we moved here. And I thought, okay, well, in about six months to a year,

we'll leave and it'll be great. And then I met Dria. And then I met Mr. Brown. And then I met Mr. Brown. I met Dria and then I started farming and it just felt so, it's just like she said, so organic. It's like, yes, I wanted to do all of that in Nigeria, but the way the flow of our relationship and working the soil and getting to grow seeds for true love that I've been, you know, that have been so personal to me, everything just kind of came together and I thought, well, I guess this is the place that's calling me. yeah so I stayed beautiful so can you describe more that time when you kind of met each other and how you decided to do this project and what it looks like yeah so we actually met on a day very similar

to this it was extremely hot and we met probably like two miles up the road at mr. brown's farm so i came out that morning because mr brown told me dr frank was coming out uh dr frank was coming out uh Dr. Frank is an amazing scientist that focuses on mushrooms at Alcorn State University. So I came out, met him, we talked about mushrooms. He left, and so I was getting ready to leave. Mr. Brown was like, well, hold on. I have this African lady coming and look at my goats. I was like, okay, I'm not interested in goats, but of course I'll stay.

You know, I may as well meet everyone the same day. And it was Halima and her family. They came out. And so we looked at goats. She didn't end up buying a goat. But we looked at goats. We went in the house, conversed, and Halima and I came up with a plan. We were like, well, why don't we come out, you know, once or twice a week, help out on the farm, you know, see if we like it.

It was my first experience farming. And we tell people, once you start coming out here regularly, you don't really stop. Yeah. As you can see, Halima lives here. Exactly. Who is this Mr. Brown, you all? I mean, I've met him, but can you tell the listeners who's Mr. Brown? What's his deal?

So Mr. Brown is an incredible, incredible farmer. His family has been farming on this specific land for at least since right before post-enslavement, right? Like right, because some of the land that was given to, I think his grandmother was given to her by the family that raised her. And I think that they were a white family that raised her. I think she might have been related to them. And so they gave her the land and that's how. So there's actually a house on the property that's about 300 years old. And so his family, they've been farming here for generations.

And he, when he was younger, went to Alcon State University. That's who we also work with right now. Went to Tuskegee to get his master's. And then came back to the land because he wanted a, it didn't seem, I guess, maybe there was any member of his family that was, you know, going to take over and kind of, you know, keep the land going. So he came back and started his journey of trying to keep the land in the family and trying to leave a legacy. And so when we showed up, Drew and I, I think he thought, wow, these girls here are willing to learn and they're, you know, they're able to, you know,

taking all the knowledge that I can pass on to somebody else. And so for the past three years, it's like it feels like we've been in a university. We're just. constantly learning from him. Even the melons, the egusi that we learned how to grow. He's the one who taught us how to help it retain moisture, just everything that we've learned. We've learned from him. And one of the things that really helped for me is my animals.

In Nigeria, there's no growing season. And so usually when you're farming, you just put food in the ground. Usually, you put food in the ground and then you move it around and then you take care of it. well here you have to learn it's like all the plants have personalities here you know you're like oh hello indigo what do i do to you today i'm going to soak you for a few hours and then i'm going to put you in a little container and then when you're old enough i'm going to put you in the ground and then you meet another plant like hibiscus you're like oh hi hi hi you have to scratch me and then put me in the ground and it's just it's just all these things that we've learned from him and just from the community of farmers that we know

has just been absolutely incredible. Yeah. So that's Mr. Brown in a nutshell. Nice. And how would you describe your business and what you grow and where it goes and who it's for? That is a very big question because anytime we have time to sit and think about something for more than 15 minutes, we're like, let's start an LLC. Exactly. Another one.

So Justivia is the first one that we started together. She's our baby. I guess she's a toddler now. She's really growing up. Yeah. So Justivia is an herbal tea company. We grow all of the herbs. All of the processing and packaging and handling comes from us.

So we like to say from seed to sale, from initial plant to final product, it all happens through us. So we make herbal teas using hibiscus, mint. Moki Il, calendula, camoamil, lavender, all the different varieties of mint, pineapple mint, apple mint, spare mint. um and stevia yes that's actually how the tea company started yeah i had never tried stevia before and two years ago we grew stevia for the first time and we're just growing it and i'm you know we're we're repotting it taking it to the market for months and then just randomly i thought i'm gonna try did you tell me to try i think so so i i i tasted it and i could not i could not believe how sweet this green leaf was.

I'm like my brain couldn't the whole it's green and it's this sweet just could not come together from me. And so I went home and I couldn't stop thinking about it and it was during the pandemic. Couldn't stop thinking about it. So I called Drea.

Well, because I thought tea. I thought it's sweet. I thought tea. I thought about all these mints that were growing. I thought about how we go to the market. We sell out of a university town And so we cut herbs for university students because they don't have kitchens or they don't have, they're not big cooks. So they can use fresh herbs and then they don't have to like grow a plant.

And so usually when we're done with the market, we'll take the herbs and throw them away. And so I thought, gosh, this is like a whole recycle situation. If we dry these herbs that we're and we're not throwing them away and we mix it with this stevia that is so sweet, it'll make an incredible tea. So I called Dria. I was like, Drea. She was like, what? I was like, let's start a tea company. And Drea is like the coolest person on earth.

She was like, okay. And as soon as you tell Drea, as soon as I get an idea and I tell Drea, it's like she's like a computer. Like everything just computes and it gets organized. And before you know, it's like standing in front of you. And it's like she went into my brain, dug out the idea and just is like, here you go. This is what it looks like. And that's how Justivia started. It's just been amazing.

And now we're selling, we sell out of the Oxford market. And we sell out of, there's a local organic store out in Oxford called Chickory Market. And we sell out of there as well. It's been, it's been incredible. Yeah. And one of the reasons we started Justivia, like Halima said, it was during the pandemic. It was September of 2020. And if you guys remember that year, it was an interesting year of us.

sitting at home making sourdough making sourdough you know eating our favorite comfort foods and i think that year a lot of people saw their like progression into a healthy lifestyle kind of slow down or stop and so living here in the south sweet tea is such a big cultural thing yeah it's probably like the first drink outside of milk and water that kids get i've worked in a couple of different restaurants and you we sweeten the tea so much and I see people put it in their baby sippy cubs and I'm like that is going to hit their bloodstream instantly and so I was really gung-ho to start this tea company because it was a way for us to combat that sugary surpy sweet drink but also offer an alternative that would you know still fill the gap so it's still sweet

tea but with no added sugar you know safe for diabetic safe for children and with some great properties because it's made from herbs yeah that's beautiful and if i'm remembering correctly your herbalism is kind of something that you've inherited from family members that you grew up with is that is that true yeah so my grandparents have had gardens well they had gardens when i was younger as they've gotten older they're not as into it even though i kind of pester them but they were always looking for ways to heal their bodies from the land to use what the what was the what was growing around them to fix, you know, any ailments they had or any ailments that we had as kids. So it's nice to be able to go back to that, to grow these plants and to say, you know,

oh, this is good for this. If you're having digestive issues or you need help with some of this, why don't you try some ginger or cement? And these are also things that we incorporate into our teas. And this is at a time when people are turning to teas, but maybe for weight loss, like the skinny detox teas and so people are like oh what will this tea do for me and it's like it's not a meal replacement but you can use it you know to reach some of your health goals it's not going to make you lose weight or anything and that's something that's important to me because I studied nutrition at the university I just got my well I didn't just get it but I got my master's in nutrition last year and so selling tea at a market while people are looking for detox teas

is a moment for me to educate people on the nutritional benefits of different herbs and how to reach your health goes safely and not depriving your body of what you need. How has that been going that educational piece in this part of Mississippi at this time? I couldn't help but notice, and I'm of course not from here, but my in-laws are down a couple hours south in the Delta. And I was trying to find something on my way here. to eat, to drink, and I was having a hard time finding something that was a whole food. So I'm just curious how that work has been going for you, and also just want to say that it seems

like, you know, as important as ever, and it's awesome that you're doing that. Thank you. It is a little difficult because we live in an area where people get their lunches from gas stations, and the gas stations only offered fried foods. Like there's pizza sticks and chicken tenders. You're not going to get, you know, even a side of green beans, which is the South's favorite vegetable to reach for. So the education component, it's one of my favorites, but I also know that education alone isn't what's going to fix the problem. There are systemic issues that need to be resolved. And, you know, I can't build a grocery store and help people have access to fresh produce, but I can educate them on what the fresh produce.

will do for their body when they do have access to it. And I worked in a community called Marks. That's about 40, well, I guess everything's 45 minutes away, but it's about 45 minutes from Oxford. They used to not have a grocery store. They had a dollar general, and if you've ever been in the dollar general, it's packaged foods and drinks. Some of them are starting to get like frozen produce, but before then it was like canned ravioli and things that they couldn't have. And I think they recently got a grocery store. But before that, they would have to drive 30 minutes to the nearest grocery store. But it was a food apartheid.

It was a community that didn't have access to anything. And it was also an older community. So many of them didn't have cars and their children had already moved away. And I was volunteering at a food pantry. So those monthly handouts may have been all that they could get. I remember there was a lady there. She said she did get food stamps, but I think she got 12. dollars a month and you know that won't stretch at dollar general so this just

underlines the importance of the vision you all have and the work that you all are doing here and it's part of why I'm just so excited to know you all and collaborate because it's just you know between having a mentor like mr. Brown who's held on to kind of traditional sustainable agriculture practices and pulling from your nutrition background and from your farming background and from multiple cultural kind of locations it seems like an awesome recipe for something amazing what is your kind of vision for how it's going to grow we have big dreams we do so our goal is to have enough land that we are able to grow seeds for you because that's that's one of the biggest we all we both have like our little

favorite things that we do. We love everything so much. But the seed keeping is so, it's so incredible for me, because as a foreigner coming, I came to go to college about 22 years ago, I think. I'm old. And Julia's like, what? But yeah, about 22 years ago. When I wasn't here in the U.S. at that time, there were not a lot of like international markets or international stores or anything. I went to school in Abilene, Texas, and for us to grocery shop, we would pile into someone's car and drive all the way to Dallas, find a store, and then everything was so expensive. So we would like, sometimes each say, oh, you buy this, and I'll buy this, and you buy this, and then we'll pull money, and then we'll get home, and then we'll cook a big meal, you know.

That's actually one of the other ways I got into cooking, and I became like the go-to-person to, okay, Halima's going to cook the meal this time, and Halema is going to cook the meal. middle of that time is we would all pull and then everybody would kind of get their food together and we'd have gatherings where we'll have food and everybody will come and we'll all just eat African food that day and know okay we're done for like two months you know and then having access to like a goosey or a wadu or all of that was such a dream because it'd be dried and you have to rehydrate it or it didn't even exist and so one of the one of the really great things is to be able to grow more seeds that are from home so other Africans here can have access

to them because it's there's something about holding that plant you know live or or fresh that makes it makes such a massive difference and it's it's comforting because you're not home it's like it just takes you back home and it just makes you feel like okay I can be happy in this place there is a possibility that I'm not home but I can find happiness here because I'm surrounded by the things that remind me of home. And so seed keeping is a big one. And then we also would like to bottle our teas. That's another big one for us.

So our teas have been doing really great, but we also have like people who go, oh, how do you brew it? What's the best way to brew it? How long can I brew it? We met a lady at a market we did a few weeks ago, and she said, you know, I take very long trips. And I would love to just make a giant bottle,

put it somewhere. I don't want it to get bad. and then I can just drive and have this tea to drink the whole time. So she bought like five bags. But then if we had bottles, we could just, she could just buy like a box of bottles, you know, put it in the fridge, dump it in her car and then drink as she's driving. So one of our big things is we want to bottle our teas. And then Dr.

And I think because she has that nutrition background and because I have that immigrant background, I'm constantly seeing problems and we're constantly constantly, thinking, okay, how are we going to solve this problem? What are we going to do? We had an event about two weeks ago, and the event was for, the organization was trying to raise money for community kitchen. And when we got there, almost everyone there was black. And so, you know, we looked and we thought, wow. So Oxford is a college town and, you know, they're pretty affluent people there. And most of the restaurants there that are extremely popular are owned by. white people and so we thought well it's because black people don't have access to money they don't

have access to inherited wealth so how in what way and in what world are they going to go oh i i need i want to be able to get a commercial kitchen so i can start you know serving the foods that are cultural to the people that are cultural to me how are they going to do that and so one of the things we thought was because that's our dream is to have a commercial kitchen is at some point we want to have a store where we can sell our plants that we're growing and where we can also have food that we're cooking and then also give the opportunity to other black people and other just everybody else who's different you know who doesn't look like the the way you when you have a picture of somebody who owns a restaurant where it's not a white man who's anybody who does not look like

that can have access you know to come and cook at our kitchen so more people can experience there's so many different cuisines that are cultural to so many people that people don't even know that they're you know how people go the people are all into doing their dnas right now and they're like oh did you know i'm like part congolese or i'm part german or i'm part and there are people from all those countries scattered around well if those people had access to cook the foods of the the countries that they're from and the cultures that they're from then everybody will have access to try it and i completely believe that with that we can become more open-minded because that's one of the ways I think we can combat, I don't know, racism and prejudice is if you try my food and my food is great, then maybe you're not so bad and maybe you do have something to offer me. That's my little thought. And I will also say food is such an important thing, especially here culturally in the South.

It's the way people connect. People are like, oh, my grandma has the best recipe for this. or, you know, my mom used to make this whenever I was sick. And working at the farmer's market, we often see so many black people that come and stay for a short time because they don't have access to a commercial kitchen. And once you grow so much, you can't work out of your house. And at least with the laws here, if you're cooking out of your kitchen, it's considered a cottage food operation. So you can't, like, sell your food outside of the farmer's market. you know, for a profit. And so with access to a commercial kitchen, we're giving black people

and, well, people of color in general, that opportunity to share that deeply, culturally, relevant part of them with everyone else here. That's really beautiful. I cannot wait to see how that takes shape. Well, I ask Chris, who couldn't be here today, unfortunately, what questions he had for you all. And this might, we might be getting close to that here in this conversation. talking about the importance of cultural foods and sharing across cultures. And his question is, where have you noticed kind of overlaps between West African and Nigerian specifically cuisine and food ways and southern black food ways? I mean, we're screaming Gimbiah's Kitchen here.

It's just screaming. So let me tell you about the second LLC that we started. So that is called Gimbiah's Kitchen. She really is our newborn. When did we start that? Very recently, probably this year, actually, and we're only in June. So Gimbi's Kitchen is a mix of so many different things, but it's a way for Halima to share her heritage and trace the foodways from West Africa to basically my heritage here in the

southern U.S. So we've done pop-ups with different restaurants in town, and right now we do monthly pop-ups where we pre-sale plates to people and they pick them up at the farmer's market. So we're trying to, you know, get more people at the farmer's market to meet the other vendors, but also share the story of how this dish from West Africa, which seems so far away, transformed into what they eat regularly here in the, in U.S. and in Mississippi. Yeah, that has been really eye-opening because one of the dishes that we made a few months ago was the Nigerian fried rice and when we made it

someone came up to me and said this is like dirty rice and then you think about gumbo and a lot of people think gumbo because it's Creole came into the U.S. as an influence from France but it didn't gumbo is African

Okro is African and the name is actually African yes okay so I was listening to a book on the way here the pot liquor papers by John T. Edge shout out to

the SFA and the Southern Food Alliance. And their podcast Gravy, which is awesome. Yes, it is. If you're not a member, y'all are missing out. This isn't a paid promotion. I'm just letting y'all know. Get into it. But John T. was talking about how with great Creole cuisine in New Orleans, people were like, oh, it has Spanish and Italian and French influence. And people at the time were like, that's crazy it has all that influence but the people you see cooking it are black you don't any great kitchen that's here there are black people so you can't tell me it has all this influence and you're not naming the african influence yeah okay that's that was my i was listening to it on the way here and i was like he is making points but yeah so one of the one of the big things that

we're we're trying to do is kind of go like backwards it's like people because people always ask me what was going on over there while we were over here and what was you know what was happening there and did you guys know what was happening here did we know what was happening there and so we're trying to tell that story with our food you find things like hush puppies and then you know we have akara you have dirty rice we have the Nigerian fried rice you have black eyed peas you know we had last this last Christmas I went to go visit a older lady that grew up in um in Louisiana and um she had like black eyed peas and greens and rice and i looked at that dish and she said you want to make you a plane and i was like sure and it was

incredible but i'm staring at it and no lie if you had just added a few ingredients that dish would have been like it literally would have been probably come out of my grandmother's kitchen and so i just look at southern food and i think it's screaming it's just screaming africa so i thought well if We start making West African food and people start eating it. As soon as they put it in their mouth, I imagine that the first thing they will think of because everyone has, I always tell this day, I always say everyone's palate has a memory. Like even if you haven't tried something before, your ancestors have given you that memory. And so if you tried, it will remind you of something.

And so everything that I make or that we make, I always think they're going to eat this and they're going to sit down and they're going to go, okay, this reminds me of this thing that my grandmother made or my aunt made or my uncle made and it will bring them back home and through that it will connect them to where I'm from, you know, and so they know, okay, she's really, everything that she brings here and everything that she is is from where we're from, you know. So the whole idea with our pop-up is we say the journey is my food comes from, your food. comes from where my food comes from because it literally is where my food comes from you know everything every way that we cooked in in Nigeria and in Western Africa when they enslaved came here all they did was replace ingredients that they couldn't find to change the recipe it's still the same basic recipe it's still the same basic ingredients they just switch things around so it will create the texture it's in finding that flavor and that texture the other things were added

but it's still african at its base so yeah that's that's food for you that's beautiful i'm wondering maybe you could give us a little tour of some of those ingredients that span the the ocean and span you know yes all right let's go over there i'd love to hear a little bit about some of these plants and why you're growing them and what they mean to you all right so this right here is airwise beans in Yoruba. It's very similar to black eyed peas, but it's creamier and it's reddish. So it almost looks like red beans and then it tastes slightly like black eyed peas but creamier to me. Is that the texture to you also? Yeah. We use it to make rice and beans and it kind of reminds me of the red rice and beans that they eat here in the south. We boil it and use palm oil to

make it creamy and then we can eat it with rice so you eat it with our red stew and then beans also the black eyed peas you used to make the fritters i was talking about called akara you can use it to make moi-moi which is like a steamed bean cake and you can also use it to make a soup with it it's like a creamy like milkage soup it's called beggary and it's absolutely delicious and you eat it with pounded yum and that's what this is trellison on this cattle panel and it's also called honey bean right it's called honey exactly this is called honey beans because it's sweet yeah nice and this is one of the varieties you're growing for our seed catalog as well yes this is actually this actually belongs to you guys these are your honey beans these are our

honey beans i've just heard so much especially from Nigerian and other west african and African in general, customers, how meaningful it is to have access to these varieties through the catalog and through your collective work. So I just am so grateful that you all are able to do this. Yeah. We're so glad that we heard of you. I believe Lydia told us about you. Yeah. We love Lydia. We miss her. We miss you, Lydia. She's she's a genius when it comes to growing, when it comes to, you know, herbalism. She's an incredible, incredible human. We, we, we still seek her knowledge whenever we can yeah but yeah growing growing beans because there's so many varieties of beans and they're all because of the taste that they have you use them in different

um cuisines differently and and you're like oh do i have this bean and do i have you know this bean and do i have this one and okay so no i don't have this one so i can't make this meal and gosh honey beans is like it's like just looking at this every time i come out of my house it's the first thing that I see, because it's right in front of my eyesight when I opened the door, and I'm just blown away that it's amazing to me. Because 20 years ago, I mean, I hadn't seen this in years until I went back home. I hadn't seen it. I hadn't tasted it. But look, it's growing right here. And I will say, I told my mom that we were growing beans. She's back in Chicago now, but she lived here for several years. Her favorite beans or peas were purple hole

peas. She refused to eat black eyed peas. She's like, they don't taste the same. I'm like, they do, but whatever. And so I told her we were growing beans for your seat company. I have the Mississippi butter beans at my house. And she was like, please, please grow me some purple hole peas. So I'm not growing them this year because of spacing and timing and everything. But I don't know, we just, there's another like cultural connection between the importance of beans and having access to things that you can't get. Like, it's Purple Hole Peas, so, you know, it's in the U.S., but she can't find it in Chicago.

Like, every time I go up, she's like, just go to Walmart and get me some of the frozen ones and put them in a cooler and bring them. So, yeah. Yeah, that's the same way Chris has been in the past until he started growing the Purple Hull peas in Philadelphia. He would literally go to Walmart, go to the frozen section, and bring them back for our house and all the other Southerners he knew, you know. And now we don't have to do that.

Now he grows at his farm. We grow out at our farm. We have other farmers growing purple hole peas just to make them more widely available. But it makes sense so many Mississippians went to Chicago that there would still be that memory and that taste memory and desire for the exact right peas. So that's cool to hear. One of the things that people in Chicago say, or people in Mississippi, they say that black people in Chicago just have coats where all this, we're both. you know the same people they just wear coats up there well i would hear i forget i think it was mama irea wallace from southern exposure seat exchange who was talking about how when people black

people first moved up to chicago detroit from from the south there would be like trucks of collard greens that would go specifically for the holidays you know and so people would know where to find the truck filled with collard greens for christmas or whatever so that they could at least have the traditional food at special feasts. That is nice. That is nice. So this is our bed of hibiscus. It makes up the base for most of our herbal teas.

And it's honestly one of my favorite things to see. It looks like okra, but you can see it has like that red tint on the stems. And you can actually taste a leaf. Do you want to leave? Oh, I'd love to. Sorry, it's a little sandy. It's okay. It's good for you. Mmm, nice and sour.

You know, we work with a Burmese community. Well, they're not Burmese. They're Karen refugees and farmers from Burma. And they were seeking for decades or, you know, at least a decade or two, a Roselle herbiscus that they eat the leaf of in their traditional meals. And they call it sour leaf in their language, Chimbong. and they were doing what you were saying around substitutions for textures and flavors for so long from spinach to an African roselle or hibiscus and eventually finally finding the one from Burma and Thailand years later.

So always substituting with different ingredients like spinach and tamarine sauce. Yeah. And then finally getting the actual one. So a lot of people do eat the leaves too. But how do you use this plant? Can you describe to people who aren't familiar with it how to grow in hard? harvest and use it. Yes. So like I said, it grows very similarly to okra. We wait until it flowers. We don't harvest the actual flower. We harvest the part that holds the flower. And then we dry that. It becomes hard and darker. And then we grind it and that's how we use it for tea.

Nice. And what kind of flavor and what's the kind of experience people have? it's very tart and when you put sugar in it it's it's absolutely like delicious and incredible we traditionally give it to women like during the late stages of pregnancy in Nigeria at least the northerners do I'm part northern northerner that sounds like I'm like northerner from New York but not that from like where from northern Nigeria and yeah so we use that a lot and then also for like blood pressure a lot of the the plants that we used to drink to make for teas or to make for illness and even for the spices we use for our food they're all connected to some form of ailment like cure for ailment and so

hibiscus is just really big and then it's it's become so popular in western Africa that when you go for like weddings and parties they always have like bottles and bottles of it that we used to serve visitors and to serve guests and it's it's very very popular in western africa and it's it's it's really good for you and it's it's just absolutely incredible and it has the really beautiful red stem and it has the flower that comes out that's red and it's just it's gorgeous and then we have the um white velvet ochre growing beside it and it's native to Alabama right yeah it's a variety that kind of is attributed to Alabama of course it's African it's African exactly it's African and yeah and okra is is okra and

gumbo the reason gumbo I think did so well coming here was because and this is just my two cents of my thought and I think I'm right is because the enslaved were taken from like cities that were kind of sitting on the ocean and I think a lot of times when they would go fish they would just cut up their okra and put seafood into it and kind of mix it up with their vegetables it was an it's it's an easy like making okra the way we make it is very easy and has very few ingredients and you know it has like all this nutrition because of all the seafood in it and before you know you're eating something really nutritious so i think also um speaking of overlaps that was probably an incredible connection for okra and for southern food because once again it was

something that was familiar to their palate and it was something that was familiar to them as they grew they thought okay this is comfort from me I know how to make this well so I'm going to cook this and I'm going to serve this and then it became part of the southern culture yeah I also want to add back to the Hibiscus um you mentioned Halima mentioned how um having that beautiful red drink is so common at like parties and weddings and everything and for black people there's there's also that red drink connection through the journey it's become fruit punch but Hibiscus also has that beautiful red color that that you would expect so that's just another connection you know it's it's not only food it's also drinks and in music and it's everything and is that that's what

you served me when I came in the door is that correct and it was jam packed with ginger too it was so refreshing yeah yeah every time my stomach's hurting no my mom calls me and she goes oh are you okay and I'm like yeah I feel kind of weird today well have you put ginger in zobo and put honey and put pepper or clothes have you done that and i'm like no and she goes well go do it you'll feel better in Nigeria before we usually go to like western medicine we have people and they're like women and they teach your children you see them with like buckets on their heads and they're kind of hawking on the road and they have buckets of like bottles with bottles in them and they have like traditional medicine and it's just herbs that they've gotten on different

combinations of them, kind of like the way we make our tea blends. They make blends of different herbs and leaves from branches and then they boil them and then they make medicine and people drink them in the morning and it's kind of like their vitamin. And so in a way, that's culturally like when you speak of overlapping, Drew and I could talk all day because she's southern and I'm West African and will do something and she'll go, huh, this reminds me of this that I'm doing and I'll go really and then we'll talk about it. sometimes we end up crying because we're talking and we're talking about how our cultures are so similar and there's just no no denying that we're just we're related even when she was talking about people

selling drinks on the streets I think back to you know any big city here I always think back to Chicago you know you always have people selling water and candy and chips and fruit on the street you know the street vendors and we also have I don't know what you call bucket boys and they play like play the drums in the street for change. And even like the morning medicines, now a lot of people have moved into like ginger and turmeric shots in the morning. My grandfather, he drinks, he won't tell me what it is. He calls it Laro, but it's a mixture of apple cider vinegar and garlic.

And there's so much other stuff in there, but I don't know what it is. And he drinks it every morning faithfully. And he swears, you know, it's what keeps him healthy and moving around. Beautiful. That's beautiful, too, to think of those connections being so powerful that it'll even bring you to tears, this personal question. But where do you think, why would it bring you to the point of tears? What is what is happening in that moment?

So something that Halima and I have talked about often is how brutal the slave trait was. But how the people who were trading these humans knew how to strip them of their identity and knew how to, I don't know, strip them of their will basically and erase the knowledge of, you know, their past generations and knowing who they were. So when Halima and I are talking about these connections, it's like building that bridge back to the past sometimes. And if you've ever been black in the United States, you know, how hard it is to trace your genealogy and how hard it is to make it from where you are today, you know, even back five generations or, you know, seven generations, almost impossible to make it back to Africa. So when we're building that bridge together, it's just so emotional because we're

able to, to, I don't know, put history back where it is or just, I don't know, mend things that were torn apart. Right. These are the like living DNA tests. Yeah, exactly. Beautiful. Are there any other plants you'd like to share with us? Yes, they're in the greenhouse. Okay, let's take a walk over. Wow, it's hot in here. it is yeah so there is a goosey this right here is a goosey and it's starting to flower

already and we're just growing it for seed for you guys this year and then this right here this right here is a lejo which is also a fall and it's our green vegetable

this is Nigeria spinach and there are different varieties of it and the incredible thing is for so many years when a Nigerian cooks any kind of meal that's supposed to have spinach in it, they use the regular spinach from the store. But this year, I don't have to. It's the most insane thing to me.

And you just, you just, it's growing right here. And so we're going to grow the seeds. And the thing I like about EFOR is unlike Egouci and unlike the beans, you don't have to be a farmer to grow it. you just have like a little pot and you put the seeds in the pot and you grow it you have a fine you can make a meal for your family it's just it's the easiest and the most incredible thing and the joy i imagine we're eating this is just amazing and then this over here this shiny shiny plant is a wedu and we have these are all we're just going to let all of these everything in here is going to go to seed so this is going to go to seed and all of that's and i have like there's a bunch back there as well and it's like a shiny bright green and it looks kind of like weed doesn't it yeah the first time i took a picture of it to see what it was i knew what it was but the um my phone told me i was growing uh i told me i was growing weed and i was like no not but yeah we we cook with that and it's also um there's a very traditional meal called abula that we we use we blend it and then it it

It kind of pulls as you eat with it. And then we eat it with, like, bean soup and the red stew and some pounded yam. Oh, my gosh, it's delicious. Can you tell people the English names for them? Do you know them? No. Oh, yeah, I know that this is Amaranth, right? Yeah.

I have no idea. So Alejo is an Amaranth. It looks a lot like Jamaican Kalilu. Yeah. It's the same genus, at least, if not the same species. And it looks like a weedy plant. Like plants like this grow as weed. in a lot of our farms and gardens.

And we eat them. We prefer the weedy amaranths to eat at our farm than the ones we cultivate. It's the best. The ones that grow as weed here, though, they have thorns. Oh, not for us. These don't have thorns. Yeah, our weedy amaranth don't have thorns. That would be hard to eat.

That's delicious. Yeah. So the Alejo is an amaranth, the leafy amaranth. And the igousy is a watermelon. Yeah, so the igusi is different. So if you guys don't know this, watermelon is actually like okra also already. originated in Africa in Western Africa and so the Egousi actually looks exactly like a watermelon but the flesh is not edible so what we do is we take the seeds out of the

core and it's very very seedy has seeds almost all the way up to the very core of it so we take the seeds out when they're completely dry and then we peel them and use them to make an incredibly delicious soup called Egousi and one of the things you can also do when you're cooking with it is use egosia and also sometimes once in a while it's just to be different I'll put some alejo to make because the egucis seed is kind of white and so your sauce is kind of orangey to give it a green color ugu or alejo are one of the things that I'll put in it to give it a little color and the ewe do in English it's jute or Egyptian spinach and we usually call it Malachia because we first learned about it from Arab speaking people Egyptians, Palestinians, Syrians,

And they all call it Malachia, but the one from the Middle East looks very different. Yeah, they're both shiny like this, but the leaf shape of the African varieties that I've seen is very different. Yes, and then it pulls more. Because in Africa, if you cook okra and a wedu and it doesn't pull, the older people will tell you you can't cook. And by pull, you mean it's slimy, right? It's slimy, exactly. It's slimy. It needs to be slimy and they have to like, you know, it has to like just draw.

or they're gonna go what is this nonsense you cooked for me over here oh my god it's hot in you okay let's get out of here oh there's a dog I like how there's a way to growing everywhere yes there is that I put I put some over there you see them over there too there's a batch back there and then this is all a lejo I just dumped it all in there I'm like just keep on growing I'm not gonna mess with them I wonder I bet it's 110 degrees in there It has to be. Make us your plants like it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would love to hear how you prepare your Ewe-Doo. Oh, okay. Yeah, so Ewe-Doo, the way you cook it is you cut the leaves. When we lived in Nigeria recently, my kids grew up in Nigeria. They would sit down with my mom and they would take the leaves off the a wedu because it's my daughter's favorite soup.

So we'd cut it up and then put it in just a little water so it'll steam a little. little bit and then we have this a wadu broom it kind of looks like a broom with a handle and then you you kind of mash it up until it becomes kind of like the the the leaves kind of disintegrate kind of and then you put this seed called locust beans in it and it has like this intense intents umami flavor and they're fermented yes they're fermented exactly I have some in the house and then you put it in there and then you mix it and then you pour it over your red stew that's really spicy and it has like a tomato and pepper base and then you just eat it it's really good that sounds great that sounds really really different from the middle eastern

yeah version yeah how do they cook theirs well we did a whole episode on it so i'll refer people back to it who are listening and then he did a he did a poll and had all of us like that's right talk about how i took part in that that's right there was a there's a man researching yeah All the different uses of this plant. All the different uses. Yeah, exactly. Well, I didn't interview him, but I have interacted with him on Instagram. I'm forgetting his name right now. I follow him. I can't remember either.

But he's doing great work. Yeah. Okay, I'm just chiming in here to say that his name is Antonio Tahan. And I'm going to put his link tree, which has lots of interesting things on it, including a TED talk, and a lot of information about Syrian cuisine and the Malchia survey that we mentioned, as well as a Malchia map of the world. world. So check out the show notes. And this is also a note to just check out all of our show notes because I put lists of the different things we talk about on each episode with links every time

we release an episode. But yeah, the people who I've spoken to, there's a few ways. But usually it's a community event stripping the leaves with the kids. Yeah, exactly. Everyone grew up doing that. And then either chopping it really, really, really finely. Or doing it whole. or rough chop and usually people do it sounds like to do it with chicken oh good meat in it yeah not always um sounds like you could do chicken lamb or a vegetarian wow and i'm not going to do it justice i think people should go back and listen because it's not my traditional food and i've listened to it while editing many times but it's usually a stew like a slimy silky we say silky in our house for okra and molchia silky that's a good word silky yeah because we love that that texture yeah

well this has been great i wonder if maybe we could end on like your um namesake the stevia on like a taste experience and a send-off with the sweetness of stevia Who makes that sound like a sheep? There are sheep back there. Oh, I thought I was impressed with it. I thought it was a bird. No. It's a sheep that sounds like a sheep.

And the peacocks are loud. The peacocks are really loud today. Oh, Stevia. Yeah, so this is Stevia. This is our namesake, Just Stevia. We named our company Just Stevia because we just use Stevia to sweeten it. All blends aren't sweetened, but if they are, it's with Stevievia. And if you've never seen stevia, it's this beautiful green plant that grows kind of tall.

It has these long, oblong leaves. She's kind of being dramatic because it's very sunny and like her leaves are pointing down. But normally they're like spread out or, you know, even up if they feel like it. If you take a bite of the leaf of a stevia plant, your mouth fills with sweetness instantly. it wrecks people's brains because imagine I don't know if you have like a spinach leaf and you bit into it and it tasted like a spoonful of sugar that's what is like biting into stevia so this is one of our favorite plants we hate well Halima hates cutting it to dry it because it's so beautiful and it's one of the ones that we need the most so when we cut it we're like well that's our baby she's gone but she grows back very quickly. She overwinteres. Yeah, she does. We found that out this year when we were planning something in another bed. We were like, oh, that's Stevia. That's Stevia. Back there, too. So, yeah, we love Stevia. Very grateful for Stevia's existence.

Beautiful. I'm grateful for your all's existence. Thank you. We're grateful for yours. For yours. Oh, and congratulations on your big fellowship. Can we announce it? I mean, this will come out in a couple weeks at the earliest. I think so. So we were one of the Braiding Seeds Fellowship people, awardees. We're in the cohort, however you work that. We are so incredibly grateful.

We got the announcement yesterday, but when this comes out, it won't be yesterday. And Haleema was in a meeting, and I was here teaching her daughter math, and I was just screaming. And her daughter was like, what's wrong with you? She's a teenager, so. So, no, we're just so incredibly good. grateful for that opportunity. I still can't believe it. It still feels like a dream.

What is it? I think a lot of people won't be familiar with it. Okay. So it's a fellowship. It's an 18-month-long fellowship where you are paired with a mentor, and there are 10 people in the cohort. You have the opportunity to learn about legal and financial help, making a business plan, farming. Yeah.

There's a 20-hour farm. farming component to the scholarship in addition to an incredible amount of money so it's it's just everything you'd need to to be successful there's there's money there's education there's exposure networking community of other farmers that look like yes yes it is geared towards black people and people who support black people so um it is from from Salfire Farm. So shout out to Salfire. We are obsessed with them.

We are. We're like, when we, when we first saw the application, we're like, oh my gosh, it's Salfire. We had the interview on Friday. That was like the second step of the application. She's like, do you have any questions for us? I'm like, yes, do we get to come to the farm? I like how we keep saying we.

Drea is actually the one who got the, all of it happened in drew is the one but i was there we were like we're always together but i was like texting her and we're texting each other as we're as she's talking and it's really cool really we're yeah really really grateful yes do you get to go there yes we do she does oliva's coming i wouldn't dare go without alibi get a big suitcase to fit you in there exactly well thank you both so much this is so fun to see you all and to share your story with with the world thanks for all you do and and you know i don't know enough people tell you this owen but you have opened our farm and life to to so many

great things like we are i will start crying and i should know but this the seed that we're growing and all this familiarity and how all of these seeds have become children to me is because of you you know and getting to send it to other people is because of you and i i don't know what to say i just i think about growing it and i think about africans across this country eating it and i keep thinking in my mind this i wouldn't have had i wouldn't have known what to do with the seas if i had not if i hadn't met you i wouldn't have known so thank you you you are an incredible human thank you Thank you so much. It has even like changed my mind to when I'm eating some fruit or vegetable. I'm like, oh, I need to save the seeds from this. I would love to have this exact same

thing later. Later. And because of that, I will save this seed. Yes. And so we're actually going to be at a Juneteenth festival this weekend. And I don't know, I'm a little nervous because I feel like it's kind of controversial. But we're serving slices of watermelon. And we're doing a write-up about the Black People's History with watermelon and where the stereotype comes from and I think that education component is so important and I hope people read it before they see us just passing out watermelon at a black festival um but we're talking about there's a paragraph in there about the importance of seed saving even with watermelon because people are so concerned with profit and growing the biggest sweetest watermelon

and so through this work with you I'm encouraging other people to to save their seeds so we're not you know, just growing the same variety of everything all the time. Yeah. So thank you so much. Wow, so beautiful. I'm going to cry. It'll get lost in my sweat, but I'm going to do it anyway. But thank you all.

That means a lot. And I'm, again, just so grateful for the partnership. And to be able to come down to see my family here and have a bonus trip to see you all. It just feels really special. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much to Halima, Salazar, and Drea Price of Justivia. We're so grateful for your friendship and for this interview.

To all the listeners, please consider giving financial support to Justivia as they look for land to call home. They're looking for farmland. See the link in our show notes and help them get to that next step. And thank you for listening and for sharing this episode of Seeds and their people with your loved ones. Please also subscribe and leave a positive review. Thank you also for supporting our seed keeping and storytelling work by ordering seeds, t-shirts, and more from our website. Trueloveseeds.com, and again, please sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com slash true love seeds. Your support keeps the episodes coming.

And remember, keeping seeds is an act of true love for our ancestors and our collective future. Thank you.