Shantae Johnson and Arthur Shavers remember their first garden fondly. The couple poured all of their free time into a small plot at their Portland condo, but didn’t realize the significance of the project until an early morning tussle between neighborhood cats left the green space in tatters.
“When I was pregnant with our son, it was like 2 o’clock in the morning, and we heard this craziness downstairs and found these cats fighting in our garden,” Johnson said. “We put the garden back together at 2 in the morning, and I said, ‘Why are we doing this?’”
Their shared love for horticulture motivated them to leave their careers to pursue farming full-time almost a decade ago. They later launched a food pantry and community farm together. The duo, well established in the Black farming community, is now reaping a new harvest as the operator of Multnomah County’s CROPS Farm…