Mudbone Grown reimagines Black farming in Oregon

Portland couple nourishes deep roots of faith and community through farming enterprise
Not everyone would choose a career that involves endless days of hard, physical work, virtually no vacation and dismisses the possibility of ever retiring. But in 2015, that’s just what Shantae Johnson and Arthur Shavers did when they decided to become farmers.

The two Portlanders both have farming in their background. Johnson’s great-grandmother raised chickens and sold berries and vegetables from a seven-acre farm in Oregon City.

Shavers’ grandparents moved from their farm in Texas to Portland, where his grandfather found work in the World War II shipbuilding boom, while his grandmother grew food for their 11 children as well as the local community.

Moved by the dream that they could revive their families’ farming roots and raise their kids in a more rural setting, the couple quit their jobs and enrolled in Oregon State University’s Beginning Urban Farming Apprenticeship Program to learn market farming.

Shavers remembers their apprenticeship classmates’ reaction to the plan.