The past few decades have brought changes to Gullah-Geechee communities in the Lowcountry, as ancestral land and farms have been turned into private, gated communities with golf courses as a playground for the wealthy, accompanied by higher taxes. But farming is still a big part of St. Helena’s industry, with both large farms and family operations, such as the Marshview Community Organic Farm, still in operation. 

In many cases, land has been passed down between generations, including the acreage of Tony and Belinda Jones, owners of Morning Glory Homestead Farm. It’s one of the handful remaining on an island that was once full of Black-owned farms. 

A shared journey to farming

Both with Gullah ancestry, Tony and Belinda met while attending South Carolina State University. They reunited at a friend’s wedding after Tony joined the military. 

“We were engaged in 1985. In April, we were married. It was the Anthony and Belinda Show,” she says. “From that point on, I was on the road. We were from one duty station to the next, and we have five children.” 

Tony’s job brought them to bases all over the world, including stints in Germany and Belgium. Belinda noticed that, at each place they were stationed, there was some sort of farming operation, whether a small herb garden or raised beds. She set up her own gardens to teach their kids about farming. 

“We found it very interesting that both [Tony and I] grew up with similar experiences in that our families had gardens and his grandparents had chickens and occasionally had hogs and so did mine,” she says. “I grew up helping my grandparents after school, when I was in first through eighth grade, feeding their chickens, helping with planting in their gardens, harvesting and collecting fruits from their fruit nut trees. They had pecans, black walnut trees, pomegranates, big trees, hard pears.”

The family moved back to the United States when Tony’s father’s health was failing. The Joneses started looking for land after his retirement, but one plot kept coming up on St. Helena Island. 

The 12-acre parcel was originally purchased by a formerly enslaved man in 1868 and passed down through the members of Tony’s family for generations. “His father bought it from another family member in 1968 when that person no longer wanted to be responsible for the upkeep of the property and paying the taxes and everything,” says Belinda. “But they wanted to make sure it stayed in the family.” It had been rented out to other farmers over the years but hadn’t been actively used for some time, instead doubling as a community softball field for the Seaside Sliders.

“We’ve known it’s been in his family for a long time,” says Belinda. “I guess it was more like a family investment, like, ‘Here’s something for you to consider and for your future,’ which was a wonderful thought.”

A family affair

Tony planned his retirement from the military in 2002 and his parents gifted him the family land. Unlike many of the farms on the island, Morning Glory is individually owned by the Joneses, not an “heirs’ property,” a term applied to land shared by heirs of the original owner, usually within the Gullah community and who often don’t have documents such as wills and titles. 

The Jones family cleared land and built a house, wired by Tony’s uncle. They started a small garden for the kids, who were getting involved with the 4H program, following the precision taught to Belinda by her grandfather, a brick mason.

The farm started out with chickens, selling eggs at the local farmers market. The operation has since expanded to include lettuce, okra and collards, plus pigs, goats, turkeys and ducks. The Jones farm follows traditional Gullah agricultural traditions during the island’s long growing season including permaculture, crop rotation and minimal tilling. (Although the Joneses don’t have cows, the Gullah-Geechee are also considered to be originators of free-range cattle, adapting to the landscape in a way that European methods didn’t.)

“At first, we were just doing this to feed the kids, everybody and teach them some great skills that they can always use if they have the inclination to do it later,” says Belinda. “They’re all grown now, but every now and then, they’ll put a seed or two in the ground or a container or something. And when they come back, well, they’re always interested in what we’re doing.” 

And it’s not just the Jones children that connect with the farm. Morning Glory Homestead also offers tours for school groups that bring students up close to the farm’s plants and animals. Family camp weekends allow visitors to stay on the island and learn about notable Black agriculturalists such as George Washington Carver. 

No gates, no golf

Black land loss is sadly nothing new, especially in the Gullah-Geechee communities. Hilton Head Island serves as a cautionary tale: Previously home to a large Gullah population, it is now a mostly white resort town. Officials in coastal Georgia voted for rezoning to allow an increase in home size on Sapelo Island, which residents of the Hogg Hummock community fear will attract the wealthy and force them out. And on neighboring Bay Point Island, a 2020 plan proposed an eco-resort among the unspoiled acreage, which was recently denied. It would have covered an area called Land’s End, surrounded by small farms, which was the site of a Civil War fortification that’s an important part of local history as it’s where enslaved people were freed, well before the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

“There was a battle there called the Battle of Port Royal, where the Union Navy came up and attacked both of those facing forts and won.The Confederates left, and the Blacks call it the day of the ‘big gun shoot.’ The military term for the newspapers called it the ‘Great Skedaddle.’ So, all of the plantation owners left because now they were under Union occupation,” says Belinda. 

Attention is now turning to St. Helena, where signs around town say “No Gates, No Golf” in response to plans for a 500-acre resort. Farms are being lost to outside developers and economic hardship, especially due to these heirs’ properties. 

A sign protesting development in St. Helena. (Photo: Caroline Eubanks)

“The battle over that is still going on. There are already, within the St. Helena zip code, five golf courses, and two of them are directly on St. Helena; two are on Fripp [Island],” says Belinda. “Then, within Beaufort County, there are over 30 golf courses. So, why do we need one more?”

Family-run farms such as Morning Glory are an important way to protect the Gullah culture of St. Helena Island. Groups such as  the Pan-African Family Empowerment and Land Preservation Network, the Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation and the Penn Center’s Land Use and Environmental Education program are providing residents with much-needed assistance such as business workshops and legal services. 

For Belinda and Tony Jones, it’s not just about land ownership. They consider themselves stewards of this piece of St. Helena and want it to continue for generations as it is. 

“Don’t just kill that land out there just so people can come play on the back nine,” says Belinda. 

The post Meet the South Carolina Farmers Following Gullah Agricultural Traditions appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Sharecropper Joe Williams raised his family on a cotton and corn farm before passing it on to his son, UD, who was able to purchase the farm in 1949 thanks to the money he earned from cotton and homemade moonshine. It’s still run by the family today, now growing 100 acres of mostly sweet potatoes, the warm-climate vegetable that is an important staple in African American foodways. 

But the process hasn’t always come easily. After the Civil War, the sharecropping period often involved predatory practices, including low wages and unsafe conditions. Landowners collected rent for the land as well as a percentage of the crops, while the farmers who worked it received only a small amount. In 1919, a nearby town in the Arkansas Delta was the site of the Elaine Massacre where hundreds were killed in a conflict that stemmed from a labor union meeting of Black sharecroppers. 

By the late 1980s, farming became more difficult as equipment and material costs rose, causing many to close, including farmers. The USDA loan program was another source of discrimination as Black farmers were denied assistance for arbitrary reasons, resulting in the class-action lawsuit Pigford v. Glickman in 1999.

“Many farmers, especially Black farmers, got out of farming at that time or diversified … My dad chose to diversify and change over to more vegetable farming,” says Harvey Williams, the fourth-generation farmer who currently manages the farm with his brothers Andre and Kennard.

“I’m really grateful and proud that my dad was able to find a way to make a living with our small acres and his limited resources,” says Williams. “At the same time, I’m saddened that so many other Black farmers in the Delta were not as fortunate. Their reasons and conditions may vary, but the result ended the same—thousands of acres and hundreds of Black families are no longer living on nor farming their ancestral land.”

Sweet potatoes are a staple of African American foodways. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Williams took time away from the farm, taking a corporate job and moving across the country, then returned to Arkansas in 2016 to work for a company around two hours from Helena. But he still felt connected to the family business. 

“I wanted to do something tied to the farm, and I didn’t know what that was going to look like. I just didn’t want to do traditional… I don’t know, crop farming, just driving tractors every day.” 

His brother and late father, Harvey Sr., continued to farm sweet potatoes and, while at a 2016 farming conference, they learned about a farm in North Carolina producing sweet potato vodka. 

“I got really intrigued and said, ‘We should do that.’ My brother was trying to get me to go into sweet potato pies and other things, but I really thought it would be a unique opportunity to produce a sweet potato vodka,” says Williams. “There’s not many on the market.” 

He soon found out why that was the case when launching Delta Dirt Distillery, the first Black-owned distillery in the state.

“The process of extracting the fermentable sugars out of sweet potatoes is not an easy one. So we put a lot of effort into figuring that out,” says Williams, noting that it’s not as straightforward as producing vodka. “With sweet potatoes, the nuances really reside in the cook and mash processes. Sweet potatoes are known to be a hearty and nutritious vegetable, and the sugars extracted from them lend a unique and delightful hint of earthy sweetness to our vodka.”

Distilling vodka from sweet potatoes is more challenging than from regular potatoes. (Photo: Thomas Williams)

One thing working in the company’s favor is the fact that they grow their own sweet potatoes, allowing them to control the costs and quality. 

“With enough research and effort, we figured out a way to create this product out of sweet potatoes and our corn. We grow both of those raw ingredients, which makes it even better,” he says. “We enlisted the help of industry consultants and a university professor. I still admit that sweet potatoes are not the easiest source for producing alcohol, but, over time, we were able to develop a process that met our expectations of delivering decent yields and exceptional taste.” 

The Williams family bought a building in the quiet stretch of downtown Helena in 2017 and set about converting it into a distillery. The pandemic threw a wrench in their plans, but it gave them time to perfect their recipe, testing various methods until they produced a bottle that met their expectations in December of 2020. The tasting room followed, opening in April of 2021. 

“People that come in will say, ‘Man, this doesn’t feel like Helena’ or, “This is something that could be in downtown New York,’” says Williams.

Delta Dirt’s tasting room opened in downtown Helena in 2021. (Photos: Thomas Williams)

The distillery has also benefited from community support as the pandemic allowed locals to see the progress and interest grew through word of mouth.

“They have really embraced the business. Not initially, especially the locals, they didn’t know what it was,’” he says. “Now we have a regular crowd that comes in, mostly on Friday evenings, and then the rest of the weekend, Saturday and Sunday, we have people from all over the state, and in some cases, all over the country, come and check us out.” 

In addition to the original sweet potato vodka, which won Double Gold in the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, Delta Dirt also has gin and bourbon, all of which are available in Arkansas and parts of Texas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

The distillery is now a family operation, with Harvey’s wife Donna and sons Thomas and Donavan as head distiller and operations manager, respectively. Not only was the family able to diversify its agricultural offerings, but it has also continued the legacy started by Joe Williams to be passed onto the next generation. 

“It was originally 86 acres, and we’ve kept that land,” says Williams. 

The post Meet the Arkansas Farmers Turning Sweet Potatoes into Spirits appeared first on Modern Farmer.