The Farmasis, Bonita Clemons - Helping Women Connect to the Land

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Welcome to Karen Hunter's Awesome, and as we head into the season,

when things are being seeded and planted, and we're starting to till the soil,

I think it's a good time to talk with somebody who is teaching women all over the country,

how to plant, how to harvest, how to grow, and how to be in community.

I had the opportunity to speak with Bonita Clemens,

who is the founder of The Pharmacist.

I love it, like a pharmacist, but it's F-A-R-M-A-S-I-S,

because she's a sister.

You understand, the pharmacist, and it was an amazing conversation,

and it actually inspired me to do more.

So, Renee Siler has picked up the mantle,

and she is working on a little something that I hope will all be able to enjoy in the future.

But up next, my discussion with Renee Siler and Bonita Clemens,

the pharmacist, stay tuned.

And let me welcome to the show, 2023 South Carolina,

Farm of the Year.

I'm going to put it that we're going to do that.

Let me welcome the one and only Bonita D. Clemens,

the pharmacist.

Hello.

This is a pleasure.

Listen, I love the name.

I love what you do.

I think more of us are getting our hands in the soil.

One of my neighbors just put a greenhouse in, and she was like,

come on, plant something.

I'm like, okay, I'll be there.

I'm going to put my colleagues in the ground.

You know, it's amazing.

And we're going to be feeding each other,

which I think is how we started.

And we need to get back to it.

So, Bonita, explain or tell us how you became the pharmacist.

How became the pharmacist?

It all started really when I was in a terrible car accident.

As a result of that, I wanted to be healthy and whole again.

So, I went back to when I was,

how I grew up, which was the food.

And just dealing a lot with the food,

letting the nutrition heal my body again,

because I was sick for about five years.

Three major life changing surgeries.

And I didn't want to be addicted to pain medication

and other prescribed drugs.

So, I was like, what can I do?

I just threw all the medicines away.

And again, went to what I knew, which was nutrition.

So, I was deep into the nutrition.

And one day, I heard about a black family who were organic farmers.

I found them in Sumter South Carolina.

And I went there to get food.

And the, he's since passed away.

He's an ancestor now.

Mr. Aziz Mustafa say, sit down, young lady, to have a seat.

And I did.

And after about three hours, I said, I need to go.

But he said, you're the one.

And I said, I'm the one to do what?

He said to keep this information out about the food.

I said, well, I don't want to be the one.

I just want to come and get my food and go home.

He said, it's not your choice.

Wow, you've been chosen.

I'm like, well, why?

He said, because you have that piece of paper.

I said, but you have the knowledge you've been doing

is they have 50 acres organic.

Now, that's hard.

I said, but you have the knowledge.

He said, but you have the love.

And you have a piece of paper.

And I said, what paper?

He said, you have a degree.

And people will.

You have a lot of credibility with that degree.

And they'll listen to you before they listen to me.

And I said, well, I don't want to be the one.

That was in 2008.

Next thing I know.

He's the one.

I said, I'm one of the ones.

It's a lot of us out here.

And what I'm doing is trying to connect us all.

And Karen, I'd like to say that the pharmacist is my brick.

I am a newbie in.

Since March of 2021.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Because we're coming up on the fifth rotation.

And that was that that first time when we said,

you know, this is what it is going to be.

And I always imagine there's my imagination

that it would be a space by us for us

where people would find their corner.

We do have a farming community in there,

which I'm sure you're you're in a group.

Also, you're leading in many ways.

And I didn't necessarily know that.

Because, you know, again, we are.

It's ubiquitous, you know, right now.

Where we are everywhere.

So I love this.

This is the way forward.

We've been talking about this from the beginning.

So to have all black, all women,

organic farming, co-ops, collective.

What did that require?

How did how did you know?

Number one, head to being female.

Number two, you have to be black.

And I don't, I don't waver on that.

I've had a lot of journalists say, why black women?

I don't waver on it.

I'm real clear about it.

We all are real clear about it.

And what it looks like is women coming together,

having fun, learning how to be healthier,

learning how the power of collective work.

So usually on the first week, when I have the farm sits experience,

we all get in a field and they look at it

because I make sure it looks real raggedy.

And it's about 20 or 30 of us.

And I said, come on, we're going to clean this up with our hands.

And then our, so everything looks beautiful.

And I said, can you imagine what it would take one woman to do this?

And so what we do is we go to other sisters who own farms

and we help them work.

And what we can do in three to four hours,

they always tell us it would take them three to four weeks to do.

But we're doing it with fun, having a good time.

Last cohort, I had a sister.

She was in her 70s and she had an oxygen tank.

She's had cancer a couple of times.

She said, I don't want to hold y'all up.

I said, no, ma'am, you're going to be in this class.

She motivated everybody.

She would walk in the rain.

We walk.

She would walk in the rain, no matter what.

Few times I was afraid, but she didn't let it stop her.

But her being in that class motivated everybody.

So imagine sisters being in a field, having fun.

You know, we break down that wall of not wanting to be in the field.

Because there is a lot of trauma and stigma attached to being in the field.

But when I took sisters out there in 2016, this is our 10th year anniversary.

We made it look fun and sexy.

Now it is hard work.

I trust me, it's hard work, but it is so important.

Number one, and we needed and it heals.

I had one sister who was having breast issues.

She would come out every single tooth and put her hands in that soil.

And she had some special oils.

And after a while, she said, her doctor said, what are you doing?

Because we don't see these issues with your breast anymore.

And she attributes that to her hands being in the soil.

But I have many stories, many, many stories.

I have a couple of questions.

One, when you, after your accident, you said you, this is how you got started.

I'm curious about what exactly did you do to heal yourself?

Like was there a certain kind of, did you just a wholesale change your,

your diet or was there a certain herb or whatever?

That's the first thing.

And number two, do you think that we have a disconnect between the food that we eat

and how it is prepared and that that, not just the pesticides and all other stuff,

but the fact that we are just not connected to our food anymore is a big part of our problem?

Absolutely.

So the first thing when I did, I was in the car accident in 1992.

Now, I graduated and went to Benedict in 83.

So when I went to college, I got away from eating whole foods.

Because my grandparents were farmers, they grew so that's what I knew.

And when I went to college in 83, that was the first time I had a big mat.

I not had a big mat before then.

So, you know, I was accustomed to whole foods.

Well, you know, you go to college, you do what college students do.

I ate what we, you know, everything that I didn't eat at home.

So I was accustomed to eating that fine pre-packaged food.

And so after the accident, I was feeling so bad because there was an incision

from my breast all the way down to my pubic hair.

They just sliced me up and explored to our surgery.

So after the surgery, I couldn't eat certain things.

So I started to remove certain foods.

Of course, the pre-packaged food I had to remove first.

And I started to pay attention to what felt good when I ate it.

That was one thing.

Then I imagine this in South Carolina in the early 90s.

I started meditating.

I started doing yoga.

And my family said she's lost her mind.

First, when I stopped eating pork,

they was like, something's going on with her.

Then I took out beef.

But I did that to feel good.

But when I threw in the meditation in the yoga,

she gone, yeah, something wrong with her.

But again, that was in the 90s.

So it wasn't a, you know, being in the South,

it wasn't a household name.

That was radical, though, Bonita.

That was very radical.

And I hate that I asked you what does it require.

Because that wasn't the question I really wanted to ask.

But Renate asked the question that I really wanted to ask as well.

But that, you were doing something radical in the 90s,

because especially in certain black cultures,

that yoga, that meditation was looked upon as like,

that's devil stuff.

That's not what we do.

That's not what we do.

So how did that discover it to her point?

How did you, who led you to that?

Were you reading a book or?

I did.

So one, the first book I read was

whole African holistic hell by Dr.

O'Layla Africa.

I wrote him a letter.

That's when you could snail mail.

And I told him what I was going through.

And he wrote me back.

He was in Buford.

He was living in Buford at the time.

He wrote me back.

And I told him that I was on so many pain medications.

And he said, for your pain,

he said, this is what the pharmaceutical companies do.

They take a herb and they wrap it in synthetics.

So I want you to go straight to the root.

You go straight to the herb.

For your pain, buy some white willow bark.

Till this day, I have that in my house.

So I read African holistic hell.

That's what really set me off.

That book.

From that book, other books.

But that's the one thing that really catapulted me.

And then just started.

And right before the accident,

I had desire to go back to school because I had an undergrad degree.

But I wanted to get a master's degree.

But then something that I really wanted to get it in.

And it had just happened to be public health.

And so with public health and learning about that,

I wanted to do things holistically.

So that's when I kicked in.

So I started with the nutrition.

Read that book.

And then just reading more books

and talking to people who had cured cancer,

who had cured their bodies.

And they were doing it holistically.

So then I came up with what I call the spice nutrition philosophy

that I live my life by.

And spice stands for spiritual, physical, intellectual,

cultural, and the ears for economics,

emotion, and environment.

And those are the ingredients that I use for a balanced life.

And as far as the disconnect,

we've been disconnected for a long time.

Last week, I did a presentation with some college students

and they were all in.

But there was some other sisters

afterwards that said, I am never going back to the field.

And I said, I understand there was trauma.

When you were a little kid, I say,

but if your parents would have paid you,

it wouldn't feel so bad.

I trust me because I watch other communities

and they pay their kids and they train their kids

on how to do farming.

And that's not so much trauma when you get paid.

But anyone, if you're made to do something,

and you don't get paid,

then you're going to have some trauma behind it.

So there is a lot of trauma because of the history

and there is a big disconnect.

Some of that might be epigenetic as well,

you know, that field also bore the lash.

It also bore a lot of degradation and rape and brutality.

That cotton alone, we talk about the pricks on the fingers

having to pick 500 pounds a day or else, you know,

really is epigenetically, I think,

keeping us from the very thing that we need to heal us.

And it's the land, it's the soil,

it's the seed, it's the food, it's the medicine.

It's all of that.

That's the medicine.

And so we say we grow medicine.

Perfect. I love it.

It seems like when you hear organic people think,

oh, that's got to be expensive.

But how does somebody go about eating an organic lifestyle,

you know, using an organic lifestyle,

if they say don't have access to a farm or a fresh farm stand

or something like that?

What can they do?

Well, organic, first of all, that word has been hijacked.

So to call yourself organic,

it really requires a lot of money and a lot of time and energy.

So we have to say the word natural.

We don't put any pesticides because we know we're going to eat those food.

So we don't put any pesticides on it.

For those who don't have access, we start small.

We start in a pot bucket,

a bag, you got to start somewhere.

But we also encourage people to get five people.

Everybody grow one thing and feed each other.

That's it.

Just know how to grow one thing.

And about the cotton, Cameron, I picked cotton one time in my life.

I was about six or seven.

I wanted to go with my aunties.

And we worked all day and they put a coin in my hand.

I wasn't six.

I was five or six because they put a coin in my hand.

I knew then that I didn't want to do that.

No more, I didn't go back to my hand.

They put a coin.

Maybe if they were to give me a dollar, you know,

where to come, but they put a coin.

I was like, I'm not doing this.

Yeah.

So I was kind of traumatized in about three years ago.

I went to a farm that's owned by a white family.

And they had cotton.

And I was hesitating as to whether or not to go

in the field and talk about cotton.

And I said, we need to be traumatized by this.

And my sister, I posted the cotton.

I posted on Facebook.

My sister texted me.

She was like, that don't feel good.

But we need cotton.

So we do have a relationship with it.

That's not epigenetics.

It's historical.

It's tough, but we are breaking down

that stigma of being in the field.

And when you see black women in that field,

having fun, feeding themselves.

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Loving each other, having a good time,

then that stigma just falls away.

And that's part of the healing,

because the thing from the watermelon,

which they try to demonize,

this was a way for us to not just make a life

or make a living to feed ourselves in our community.

It was, and then they demonized the watermelon

to the point where, you know,

we don't even want to eat watermelon,

especially not in public.

But that was done diabolically on purpose,

because black people were becoming

self-sufficient off of watermelon.

And if we could feed ourselves,

then we don't need anybody.

The next frontier is water,

because water is important.

And they are making it very,

very scarce, and they're running water sources.

How do you irrigate or what are your farm areas?

So we keep up with all of that.

So I have an urban farm.

I'm in the city, right?

But there have been some changes with urban farming,

so I'm getting ready to get a well.

My other farms that I work with,

again, it's a collective that are in the rural areas.

They have wells.

They all have wells.

And so that's how they irrigate.

They irrigate with the wells.

Well, so they pump it out of the well

into the crops.

Wow.

And so the well water is non-contaminated, I guess, or they have it.

Non-contaminated, yes.

So they have to test it.

They have to test it, of course.

And then we'll just run a large pipe.

We run what we call drip tape

around the plants.

Got a little hole.

And that's how we water.

But it comes straight from the well.

Wow.

Did you learn all this from

the, the, the, I've forgotten the man's name.

Who you said that.

These Mustafa, a lot of it.

But like right now, I work with

very, very closely with about 12 black farmers.

Okay.

And I just spoke with one last night.

You know, they're elder, elder for me,

mean 70 and 80s.

And they still work.

And they still grow.

And the children are not interested.

So it breaks my heart.

Yeah.

The children are not interested.

But I don't, yeah.

Well, what I've noticed is when they see me around,

their parents a lot, then they come around.

So good.

Get jealous.

Get jealous.

My mother's husband especially the boys.

The boys like, let me get out here with her.

Because I have one farmer.

He just plants watermelon.

And I'll go out because I like to show people

when we're putting the seeds in the ground.

I like to give them the progression.

So by the time we harvest,

they're already sold.

And it's in a town called Blackville.

There's a town called Blackville.

Blackville South Carolina.

Blackville South Carolina has.

Let me get out.

Most watermelons are grown in Blackville.

Blackville South Carolina and Blackville also has a spring.

A spring that,

and that there's a trust and you cannot sell the water.

But it's, they call it the healing springs.

The healing springs is in Blackville South Carolina.

There's so many.

Let me, let me ask you eight six six eight zero one eight two five.

We're talking with Bonita DeClimbins.

She is 2023 South Carolina farm of the year.

She's also the pharmacist T H E F A R M A S I S

dot com is where you can find her as well.

As you came into Nubia because you know,

I'm in right now.

Carbors classroom, which is farming agriculture.

We have chats.

We have feeds.

We have, you know, all of the people can come in.

What drew you to Nubia?

I'm just always curious.

And how have you utilized the space?

Because again, that's imagination.

It was listened to in class with Dr. Car.

So I knew of Dr. Car from my African history lesson.

So I started in 1990s again.

My, my when I was sick, I had a gastroenterologist

and Dr. Bernie Galman and he would have African history classes.

This doctor would come and sit in my room and we would talk

each time I was in the hospital.

So I started learning about African history.

And then it evolved and I learned about

all of the books that we talk about.

I, you know, I had a book met a nature.

In 1996, I went to Egypt.

I was on the study tour.

And I think that was the first year Dr. Car went.

96, but he was on another tour.

But we did see them.

But anyway, that's how I kind of got started with learning

about Nubia because I was in the class and then I heard you talking

about Nubia and telling us we got to bring our brick.

And so my, my handle is at Bonita because I got in there early.

Sorry.

Yeah, I got in there early.

That's the first time I've ever used, been able to use my name

and I have to put numbers behind it.

But I felt in new.

I've always wanted to be in a collective because that's the way.

That's the only way.

And I knew listening every week to in class with Car.

It was, it was my opening to it, to knowing about Nubia.

I love it.

I love it.

Well, now I'm following you because I haven't been,

which is a shame.

So now following the pharmacist.

Bonita declines is here.

If you're in Nubia, at Bonita, follow her.

And let's get the Carver's classroom going.

So between Renee's fasting and your,

so your diet is clean.

Bonita, you, you, are your vegetarian?

This is clean.

I said, I'm in big anish.

Okay.

I like it.

So play based in big anish.

All right.

I just love that smoke.

Go to cheese.

Now, okay, I love it.

Listen, listen, let's, we have to be happy and healthy.

And that's, that's a wholeness is, is not being too extreme

in one direction or another.

A little bit of poison is not bad.

It's, in fact, nature requires it.

Nature requires a little bit.

Karen, I, I got to tell you this.

My grandmother will turn 99.

Wow.

On the 27th Friday.

So we having her a birthday party.

People say, what is she, what is she?

I said, she eat everything except shrimp.

Johnny's food and spicy.

That's it.

Everything else is free game.

She's, everything, everything, y'all.

And she still works.

And she still drives what?

Yes, she still works and drives.

99, she works on a highway, a four-lane highway

directing traffic.

No way.

The work is so far, police officers are going to do it.

Yes, and she still dances.

And so yes, so she eats everything.

She nothing's off limits.

So we do our review gives as a way of helping ourselves

help one another.

And so I selected pharmacists, you know,

as one of the groups that we would bless,

this audience would bless.

So I just want y'all to know is pharmacists

because as we go into the farming season,

and I like that you took, you know,

you take people to see to harvest,

is what's the corridor?

Is that March, April, May?

Like when should we be planting?

If we're doing it in our homes,

if we're doing it in an urban setting, what's the best time?

It really depends on what zone you're in.

So I'm in South Carolina.

So I'm going to talk about South Carolina.

Now is the time you want to start your seeds.

And going back to the old farms,

I'm in that we like to put things in the ground

after the last frost.

Each year, that's a different time.

But you can look it up and see what the last frost is.

That's when we either put the seed or transport the transplant,

which is so like now.

You can start the transplant anywhere between January

and the last frost, you can put them in.

Now with our watermelon in South Carolina,

we start seeding in March.

And we put them in the greenhouse

in about three or four weeks, we set them out there.

Okay.

But now is the time to start.

And you know, I began to say,

I'm going to start my new year in March

because March is when it's popping.

That's when we want to start planting that.

I didn't even know that, but I'm glad.

I'm glad right now about Holy Spirit.

For people who want to win your next cohort,

when are you going out to my next cohort starts.

So I do one live class a year.

Throughout the year, we have a lot of activities.

The next class starts March 29th.

So for seven weeks, we will have 15 activities.

We're going to visit five farms.

We're going to go for walks.

We're going to go visit a juice bar that's owned by a pharmacist

that was in my last class.

And again, it's a seven week in person class.

We go, the five farms we're going to go visit,

we work on those farms.

We got a minute.

How many people?

I take up to 30 people.

Okay.

All right.

That's all I can handle.

But I got another, I got another group

that's starting in the upstakes.

So we're looking to start doing chapters all over the.

Okay.

So me and you are going to be in touch

because we're going to do something in new year as well.

We need to declines.

Okay.

I'm following you now.

So we could be on each other in Nubia.

Thefarmacists.com.

And of course, Urban View Gives next month.

You'll see all that information.

And you can go straight there.

Thank you for coming through.

I appreciate you.

Thank you for, for, for making sure that I had my brick.

And it's the pharmacist.

You did it.

You did it.

You did it.

I hope you enjoyed what you just listened to.

And if you did enjoy it, please go and hit the like button

or the give it the stars or whatever they ask you for

on these podcast platforms.

Give it all.

And leave a comment.

Because I do go into all of this different platforms and read.

Okay.

And you can follow me directly at KarenHunterShow.com.

Click the contact page.

Send me an email as well.

I appreciate you.

I love you.

Till next time.

MUSIC

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MUSIC

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batteries for a dead remote,

or a last minute gift, it is handled.

Try Walmart Express delivery today

and get free delivery with promo code Express.

Promotion valid for first Express delivery order.

$50 minimum.

Subject to availability.

Restrictions apply.