When it comes to organic farming,
Robert Pierce has the answers.
- I believe that if you eat healthy food,
you get a healthy mind.
- Shellie Meier: He's very important to, not just our community,
but to anyone that wants to know how to grow,
whether it's their own farm or their own garden.
- Robert: You getting in?
Okay.
- Angela: Robert learned about food at an early age.
- Yes.
Then them's the turnips,
mustards.
- Angela: He grew up in the '50s
on Madison's South side.
- Robert: My grandmother, she had a big garden,
so we were always in her garden.
- Angela: Today, this is just one of several gardens
Robert tends to.
- When you think of farming,
you don't think of your traditional African American family.
You don't think Robert Pierce, farmer, Madison, Wisconsin.
- Angela: Robert has nurtured this homegrown idea
since coming back from Vietnam, quitting school,
and setting out to become a certified organic farmer.
- Robert Pierce: It was like 1983.
They had discerned that South Madison was a food desert,
and that there was not enough fresh, safe, affordable food
in the area.
I wanted that help out by bringing that healthy food back
to South Madison.
- Angela: As one of the few African American farmers
in Wisconsin,
it hasn't been easy.
- Lonely. [chuckles]
It's been a hard road, but I'm still here.
You know, grace of God.
- Angela: Robert's secrets aren't found
buried in the soil.
The seeds of success are found in his heart,
along with the three p's of planting.
- Robert: Patience is number one,
that you can put the seed in the ground,
but you can't make it come up.
Being persistent.
If this doesn't work, then maybe this'll work.
Not to put all of your tomatoes in one basket.
[laughs]
Passion.
If you love what you do, then do what you love.
You can't lose that way.
- Angela: Sharing the love often happens
at the South Madison Farmer's Market.
- Robert: Whatever is in season, we usually have.
- Angela: Robert, along with his daughter, Shellie,
have run the market for more than 20 years.
- South Madison Market is a hub of love
as I call it.
When he's there, it's like a little celebrity.
Everybody wants to talk to him.
- Interesting part is growing stuff
and then having people tell me how great it is.
- Angela: For many years,
Robert has also planted a lifeline
for those coming out of prison
in a program called FAIR,
Farming After Incarceration Release.
- Robert: It's a program that was put together
to help learn how to do a farming operation
for themselves and how to become self-sufficient.
Well, it gives 'em a sense of hope.
[people laughing]
How can I help you?
It's also a sense of giving back to society.
How do you check the soil?
Being able to say, "Let's do this together."
You should be dry enough out here
for you to do something with your tilling today.
- He doesn't just teach you how to farm,
but he also teaches you kindness, love,
a little, sometimes stern, you know?
How to be your own.
[gentle music]
- Robert: We're helping right now
to get African Americans back into this.
We're building our own farmers.
- Angela: Convincing others to follow his lead
has been a challenge.
- Most African Americans associate farming with slavery
so they gotta get out of that.
- I don't see it as like a slave work.
I see this as work that needs to be done
because this is beautiful.
I'm connected to the ground.
I'm connected to the earth out here, and it's healing.
I call myself "the dirty diva."
[Shellie laughs]
- Angela: For Robert, his mission of teaching others
to farm has been a long road of toil and torment.
- Robert: We still gotta put more,
some more lettuce, rest of that lettuce there, too.
- Angela: And the path to success is still
a work in progress.
- Robert: That's gonna be a good one.
- He's a community patriarch.
He's Robert; he's my dad.
[Shellie laughs]
- There's a satisfaction
knowing that I'm helping somebody to help themselves.
Yeah, I see progress happening
- Angela: And progress on this farm,
always comes with a smile.
[Robert laughs]
- Yeah, life is great, man. [chuckles warmly]
[upbeat music]