"Samantha greets me at her front door wearing a church hat, a form-fitting dress and cat-eye glasses, with sparkles."

In Samantha Foxx’s front yard, there’s a single row of sunflowers still standing tall at the end of October. They seem to stand in defiance of something. They tower over the mailbox and into the road in the working-class neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Foxx lives and runs Mother’s Finest Urban Farm. You can’t help but notice the sunflowers, still thriving despite the unusual heat that clings to the fall air. 

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“I wanted to go into beekeeping because it was a challenge, but it was also about representation." - Foxx

She grows the elderberries that go into her elderberry syrup. As more people look to alternatives to pharmaceuticals, the syrup and fire tonic are staples this time of year at the many local farmers markets where she sells - as well as in her own home, to keep her family healthy. Farming is no easy way to make a living, much less for a woman of color. Samantha Foxx talks openly about how racism still affects black farmers in the South, and she never shies away from working to overcome that barrier. When she stepped into her first Beekeepers Association class, she walked into a room filled with white men in their 40s and 50s, some of them wearing jackets with Confederate battle flags.

Learn more about Samantha at Mother’s Finest Urban Farm, and continue reading the full interview: The Lipstick Queen of Farming on BitterSoutherner.

Image via BitterSoutherner