This story first appeared in CityView Magazine’s “Home & Garden” May 2026 edition.
A ride along any road outside of the city limits is filled with acres and acres of farms, producing everything from corn and soybeans to tobacco and hemp, each field marked with a state sign designating its purpose and use.
These farms are a smaller part of a bigger system that fuels the nation. That system, unfortunately, has impacted the quality of the food, diminishing the farm-to-table lifestyle that once fed families and contributing to the rise of food deserts.
Food deserts are urban and rural areas where community members lack access to nutritious foods. While there may be plenty of chain restaurants and corporate box chains, access to freshly grown fruits and vegetables is limited, if not nonexistent.
For Black Americans, this number increases, with Feeding America reporting 22% of Black Americans experienced food insecurity in 2023. When it comes to children, the statistics are even more startling, with 1 in 4 Black children experiencing food insecurity in 2023.
Angela A. Tatum—founder of Momma’s Village, a nonprofit organization in downtown Fayetteville focused on providing maternal care and advocacy to Black mothers and infants—and her group, the Fayetteville Black Women Homesteaders Circle, are hoping to change that one homestead or garden at a time.
Farming has been a significant part of life for Black Americans, especially those raised in the South and the Midwest. In 1920, there were almost 1 million Black farmers in America, a stark contrast to the 45,508 reported in 2019 by The Guardian.
Tatum, who was born and raised in Fayetteville, spent her summers helping tend to and work her family’s 98-acre east Texas farm. Her time there ingrained decades of knowledge, experience, and a passion for self-sustainability. The call to homestead was much deeper than simply growing food for her family; for Tatum, it was ancestral.
“It’s part of our ancestral history to know how to grow,” Tatum said. “It’s changing a trajectory from when it was forced and negative, and bringing it back, because it’s calming. It brings natural health. It gives you movement. It lowers your cortisol—cortisol is the stress hormone that leads to a lot of the morbidity and mortality rates that we have. It gives you power, where you may feel powerless. It brings you joy and connectedness.”
Despite never claiming to have a green thumb, she has achieved remarkable success at her Haymount home, starting in 2017 with Lowe’s buckets and eventually reaching 60% self-sustainability, producing most of the food and goods her family needs to thrive. Every inch of her yard and sunroom is utilized in some way and serves a purpose for the family and the homestead.
Over the past nine years, she has dedicated significant time to curating her garden, every plant serving a purpose: to fill or to heal. She not only feeds her family but also grows a variety of healing and restorative herbs that she utilizes with her doula clients. From healing the womb to lactation promotion, there is an herb tucked somewhere to remedy and repair.
The process saw a lot of trial and error, but most importantly, Tatum cultivated knowledge on improving soil, the proper planting seasons, companion planting instead of pesticides, garden graphing to utilize space, and four-season harvesting for a constant food supply.
Her homestead isn’t just efficient and productive, but beautiful too. Tatum utilizes wrought iron structures and galvanized raised beds along with cloth grow bags, creating a space that’s as lovely as it is delicious. Some of her neighbors have even changed their walking routes to include her yard, the highest compliment for a gardener.
While she grows the traditional garden produce, like collards and lettuce, she has recently added corn and amaranth. Her goal in the future is to reach 75% self sufficiency and add honey bees and chickens to the homestead. A goal worth achieving, as maintaining the garden has become a family affair with every member involved in some way, including her 10 grandchildren, with another on the way in the summer. Building a self-sustaining homestead has bolstered her family’s health and wealth while tightening their connection to the land and each other.
Her passion is definitely contagious and infectious, as she has helped other gardeners and homesteaders begin their journey. The evolution of that has been the Fayetteville Black Women Homesteaders Circle, a group started in February 2024 in the spaces of a Facebook group, that has flowed over into the real world and created a community of novice and experienced farmers, gardeners, and homesteaders.
“The reason why I started a group was twofold,” Tatum said. “Whenever I start groups in the community, Black homesteading, Black homeschoolers, Momma’s Village, it’s personal ‘cause I want to create a village to get knowledge and wealth. But then it’s also for others, because I figure if I don’t have this, then they don’t either.”
The group, which meets monthly, trades seeds, provides insider tips and tricks for pests and best growing practices, and most importantly, offers support. The meetings take place on the first Sunday of every month, and are attended by around 10–20 members.
Member Katie Burrus has been with the group for only a year, but has already found friendship, community, and a network of people with whom she can barter her homemade goods and fresh produce. Born and raised in Fayetteville, Burrus got the gardening bug like many others in the country during the pandemic. Starting with a gardening pot and working her way up to raised beds, Burrus was driven by a desire to not just survive but thrive during times of resource scarcity.
Each season, she learned something new, honing her skills and learning the land and the plants she was growing. Much like Tatum, Burrus has worked her way from a hobby garden to about 65% self-sustainability with her homestead. She recently added rabbits, which will serve a dual purpose, for meat and manure for the garden.
Turnips, mustard greens, sweet potatoes, rutabagas, radishes, and so much more are grown on Burrus’s homestead. But she also produces her own jam and wine from a neighbor’s mulberry tree. In exchange for upkeep of the tree, she gets all the mulberries she can handle, keeping her pantry full and her glass full.
Like any good homesteader, Burrus is dedicated to learning her craft, recently attending a winemaking class in Pittsburgh and joining the Fayetteville Black Women Homesteaders Circle. Her homesteading goal is to be as close to 100% self-sustainability as possible within two years. With hydroponic systems already in place, beekeeping experience, and a new venture into herbs, Burrus is preparing her homestead for its next phase.
Both women had different journeys to homesteading, but their common goal now is to educate the community on healthy eating and cultivating their own food.
When asked what people should know about starting a garden or starting a homestead, Burrus explained, “I want people to know that they can do this and know where it’s coming from. You know what you’re putting in the soil. It’s not sprayed with anything. You know how to make sure that you and your family can eat, and that’s the goal.”
Now that spring has finally arrived in North Carolina, it is time for anyone thinking about starting a garden to begin. There are plenty of resources in Cumberland County through the N.C Cooperative Extension – Cumberland County Center, Cape Fear Botanical Garden, Fayetteville Technical Community College, and other smaller groups and co-ops, including Fayetteville Black Women Homesteaders Circle.
Tatum and Burrus are proof that with some determination and willingness to learn, gardening and homesteading are possible for anyone. They are also beacons of hope: Black Americans are finding their way back to farming and self-sustainability.
