Worms, Strawberries and Confirmation: Niamke Shropshire-Boykin

I have a little story/anecdote. My first time going to Maurice’s house, I remember going to his backyard and seeing this really cool greenhouse. I got out of the car. My mom dropped me off, she said bye… see you later… talk to you later… peace, peace… So, I walked back to the back and there are these pallets… there’s this pallet compost bin that he’s built and its full of worms. It’s completely full of worms and I was thinking to myself, wow! It is full of worms and leaves. Leaves, worms and other compost. But it was so many worms! I had never seen so many worms in one spot before. Basically, it was worms inside of the pallet system but there were worms also outside of it. There were leaves everywhere as well, a thick layer of leaves. It was really amazing to me. I remember talking with him about natural farming which is a system of traditionally farming using your local terroir; using the microbial organisms that are in the soil that are locally available to you because those microorganisms are what is going to help your plant grow the best as opposed to using fertilizers or other microorganisms from a different place. You want to use the things that are from there. I remember him showing me his beet fermented plant juice. I had some at home and it was amazing because I had just started some a few days before I came to visit his house. He had a whole gallon full of it! It was a confirmation of me being on the right path; of me being in the right place at the right time and Maurice was one of those people that I needed to meet. He also had this Bio-Char, this charcoal that had been finely ground up and it was beautiful and we talked about that as well. The icing on the cake, the cherry on top, was when I went to his front yard and he showed me everything that was up there. When I came to his house, we were in the middle of a drought. We had a drought so bad that you couldn’t even light fires. People were scared of things catching on fire and starting forest fires here in the southeast. So, we couldn’t do any fires, but we could grow plants. Maurice was growing plants and his plants didn’t even look like they had been affected by what was going on. They were thriving. They were doing just as well as plants that had water. What was important was that the soil was able to hold all of that moisture through the microorganisms, through the soil life that had been built up, through all of these different connections that had been made in years prior so that he did not have to water his plants. After that, he told me that he had some strawberries for me, and ya’ll, I said “where are these strawberries from?”. I think he told me and I promptly forgot. After the strawberry touched my tongue, went down my esophagus into my digestive lining, it was like I was in heaven. That was the best strawberry I ever tasted. I don’t enjoy eating any other strawberry now. I need more of those strawberries Maurice (shameless plug)! I really, really have felt that Maurice has helped me to walk on the path that I really need to be on, to get from point A to point B. He was one of the connecting links to where I needed to be. It was confirmation of me getting deeper into regenerative agriculture, confirmation of me going harder with mushrooms and with creating natural farming, and eating fresh fruits and vegetables from friends and from family members. That’s the best way: sharing the bounty, sharing the abundance of what you have grown with other people who are doing the same. Thank you Maurice. You’re a mentor to me. You’re a friend to me and I love you man. Peace.

6 months working with Maurice in 2019