Help Sadia Grow Their Farm
Peace and Love,
My name is Sadia Pollard. I am a young, Black farmer residing in Columbia, South Carolina. I am asking for community support to scale up my farm to the five acre property I have secured in Lugoff, SC.
I am the descendant of subsistence farmers on both sides of my family; fathers that moved earth and mothers that tended vegetables and canned jars of that abundance to provide for a family through the years. My earliest memories are filled with planting flowers with my grandmother and running through the woods playing games with my brother and foraging for honeysuckle and mulberries. To be working alongside land as a form of liberation and healing has been an essential part of my identity.
Nothing has given my life more purpose than putting my hands in soil and facilitating the growth of food to nourish those around me. Since high school I have committed myself to agriculture. I earned a Bachelor's Degree in Urban and Community Horticulture from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 2019. After college I spent two growing seasons with an organic non-profit farm in Western North Carolina. Presently, I serve as the Sustainable Carolina Garden Manager at University of South Carolina.
Knowing that I wanted to start a farm in South Carolina, but not knowing where I would land I started Prosper Farm in early 2021 at the Clemson Sandhills Incubator Farm. Currently Prosper Farm is a micro vegetable and mushroom production that practices regenerative agriculture and sells directly to consumers through word of mouth and donates anything that cannot be sold. The mission of Prosper Farm is to create a nourishing landscape that produces food, cultivates beneficial systems, and fosters safe space and learning for black and brown people of South Carolina. By doing this I hope to bring myself and others that have been historically oppressed through land a place to heal that relationship through intentional cultivation of food and community. I feel most passionate about growing nutrient dense and longer storage foods that limit food waste and nourish bodies. There is also an emphasis on seed saving for Prosper Farm. Not just to pay homage to those that had to save seed to provide for their families, but to also preserve biodiversity. Funds raised will be used directly to purchase soil amendments, the repair and transport of a family tractor, mushroom fruiting house, greenhouse, irrigation equipment, and larger expense tools. Lastly, the property I am leasing has an option to purchase next year. Some money raised will be set aside to be ready when the time comes to purchase this land.
Follow the journey or Prosper Farm on Instagram @prosper_farm and Facebook @prosperfarm.
