Buttonwillow Embraces Displaced Inner-City Farmers

With a name like Buttonwillow, a town is surely predestined to give a wholehearted welcome to evicted refugees from South Central Los Angeles. The tiny town just west of Bakersfield is now home to a group of inner-city farmers, deemed urban heroes by Hollywood supporters, who were forced out of their 14-acre urban farm by police officers in riot gear just two years ago. Their community farm was seized in 2006 when the Los Angeles Food Bank lost its grasp on the property to its previous owner. A court order allowed him to buy it back and farmers, reluctant to leave, were forced out in spite of protests, media attention, and celebrity support.

Nowadays, some farmers from the former South Central Community Gardens have become landowners with the help of a nonprofit foundation, having bought an 85-acre work-in-progress spread just 130 miles north of their former lot in one of Los Angeles' poorest neighborhoods.

Although the Buttonwillow property will not be a functioning farm for two years, some surviving plant specimens are thriving on leased land a few miles away in Shafter. Every Friday night, farming commuters from Los Angeles pile into an old school bus they bought from a Craigslist ad, bunk in a rental house, and harvest their organic greens for a number of farmers markets. Many of them claim that weekend farming makes them younger, and that not being defeated by a hostile seizure of their Los Angeles farm garden contributes to their health and happiness. In spite of over 40 arrests during the eviction, much like plant life, they have re-rooted and are flourishing.

A local neighbor, impressed by the weekend workers' dedication to land left untilled for over eight years, is inspired to help. He advises the weekenders on drainage, soil and seeds, and has even used some old parts to make tilling equipment they couldn't afford to buy. Rough and arid, the land is empty, save for two donated mobile homes. Although it looks like nothing at first glance, the cooperative sees it as a farm, and that spirit of the farm is what keeps them going weekend after weekend from Los Angeles to Kern County, in spite of inflated gasoline prices and prior adversity.