GROWING A
FUTURE By Dee Shore
A blossoming Wake County farm provides refugees with new income and new hopes.
For Htoo Saw Ywa, what’s growing at a new small farm in eastern Wake County is more than produce and more than added income for his family. It’s solace from the memories of persecution in his native Myanmar. It’s a way to connect with his farming roots and with fellow refugees. And it’s a chance for generations to bond through food traditions. Ywa and his compatriots have turned 3 acres of a former slave plantation into the Karen Community Farm. The farmers are part of the Karen community, an ethnic group from the Southeast Asian country formerly known as Burma. Many of them, including Ywa, arrived in North Carolina more than a decade ago from camps in Thailand, where they’d lived for years as refugees from their war-torn country. As they have developed their farm, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences alumni, Extension experts in farm business and local foods, and even marketing students have worked alongside them every step of the way. >
26 CALS Magazine
