Daron Babcock digs his hand deep into the carrot leaves, grabbing the base of the stems before pulling out a bright orange 8-inch root with a split down the length of it. He’ll save that one to feed the goats.
The winter harvest has wrapped up at Bonton Farms, and soon the South Dallas urban farm will grow summer produce in an impoverished neighborhood that brushes against a Trinity River levee and is the namesake for Babcock’s 6-year-old effort.
More than two months into the coronavirus crisis and after many business adjustments, Babcock has realized that Bonton Farms may have just a few more months of life left in it.
“If this lasts through summer, that's a long time to try to sustain what we're doing without something changing,” he said. “I can't see how we would make it.”
When Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced in March that only essential businesses could operate during the pandemic, Babcock had no doubts that his farm would remain operational in South Dallas. He said residents in the neighborhood remind him every day that the business is needed to help solve its longstanding problems.
Nearly half of the predominantly black neighborhood’s population of more than 1,000 people falls below the poverty line. Bonton’s also a food desert, a place with little easy access to healthy food. And residents have roughly double the rate of chronic illnesses than the rest of Dallas County.
It’s a grim reality that works against Bonton residents during the pandemic: Dallas County data show that South Dallas neighborhoods have the second-highest coronavirus infection rate in the county with about 48 cases per 10,000 residents. Only the ZIP code with the county jail ranks higher. As of last month, in county coronavirus cases and nationwide, black residents have been hospitalized at a higher rate than white residents.
Dallas City Council member Adam Bazaldua, whose district includes Bonton, said its residents are possibly the most vulnerable population because many are working class or essential workers. The low-income community relies on public transportation, increasing the risk of exposure in a place where testing is not a viable or available option for many residents, Bazaldua said.
“There’s a very obvious desert on many fronts: quality food, quality health care, transportation,” he said. “Any community that already experienced these disparities is seeing how much of an impact those disparities have on the community during a pandemic like this.”
Behind the wooden fences of Bonton Farms lies an oasis of fruits and vegetables to sustain such a community. On any given day, Jeanette Avila can be found on the side of a shed singing Michael Jackson songs as she rinses freshly picked produce under cold water.
The New Orleans native said the once bustling farm now has little to no visitors, and volunteers who used to help out in the garden are nowhere to be seen. The chairs in The Market cafe sit on top of the tables, as they have for weeks.
Avila said she knows how important it is to keep the business going. The community depends on it and so does she. It was just last year at the gates of Bonton Farms that Avila tasted a fresh blackberry for the first time in her life.
Avila, who was homeless for four years, said she’ll keep going to work until she can’t. She’s been through worse than this pandemic, and she’s bounced back.
“I’ll just keep living,” she said. “Maybe one day it’ll all change and come back to normal.”
‘Difficult decisions have to be made every day’
Babcock and his wife, Theda, started Bonton Farms in 2014 to bring healthy food staples to South Dallas. The urban farm transformed the area, providing living-wage jobs and affordable, healthy food.
Bonton was physically cut off from the rest of the city when the southern portion of U.S. 175 was built in the 1960s. The Trinity River routinely flooded the neighborhood, leaving some residents homeless, until the Rochester Park levee was built in the 1990s. It has had its share of violence — maybe more than its share, including the killing this year of 1-year-old Rory Norman, who died when someone shot into his mother’s home where he was sleeping.
Bonton Farms has expanded to include a dine-in and carry-out restaurant, a coffee shop, a farmers market and an additional 40-acre farm. Beyond food, Bonton Farm brings attention to a once-neglected part of Dallas.
“This is a place where school kids come and learn about urban agriculture and how biology and chemistry and math are involved in farming,” Babcock said. “It's a place where people come to do volunteer work and connect with their city and give back. It's a place where people come to learn about issues that affect people in their city.”
Like other small businesses, Bonton Farms is struggling to meet the demands of the pandemic while also keeping its roughly 30 workers employed. Babcock hasn’t had to lay off anyone yet, but the day social distancing began, 97% of Bonton Farms’ business disappeared.
Babcock said Theda then created a plan to expand the business into the farmer’s market, which saw an increase in traffic after the cafe closed its doors to dine-in customers.
“That plan has kept the kitchen busy and grown our business in the farmer’s market to where we’ve not had to let people go yet, but it’s still borderline,” Babcock said. “Really difficult decisions have to be made every day.”
Even as the state partially reopened, Babcock said the new system will remain in place for Bonton Farms until there’s enough data to ensure the community will be safe.
“We have decided to be cautious, as our community is more vulnerable than most due to the predominance of health issues here,” he said. “We will wait and observe how it does before making a move to reopen in any way.”
While The Market cafe continues to offer carry-out orders, several adjustments were needed to meet other community demands.
Services have expanded to include a feeding program to supplement efforts by local food banks — the program has grown to about 150 families who are facing new or worsening food insecurity during the pandemic.
The farmer’s market, which is typically stocked with produce from the farm, has grown into a small grocery with out-of-season produce from local grocery partners, and several wooden crates inside the store are filled with essentials such as toilet paper and paper towels.
To cater to customers who are elderly, are immunocompromised or just want to support local businesses, Bonton Farms began offering grocery orders by phone or email for curbside pickup or for delivery within 10 miles with a purchase of $40 or more.
On a recent afternoon, Babcock delivered three bags of fresh produce to Jera Ragan in Lakewood. Ragan, a vice president and senior counsel at Comerica, had been to the farm several times. She found out through Facebook that the farm delivered.
“I never had thought that this would happen, but we’re working with it and trying to help out local businesses where we can,” she said.
Donations to fuel the family
Even with the changes, the money flowing through the business still isn’t the same. In the past, Bonton Farms has relied on donations from large foundations and its 18,000 or so annual visitors. Less foot traffic through The Market means those donations have dwindled significantly.
“People give $5 a month, $10 a month, $20 a month,” Babcock said. “We're not just supported by the big foundations; everybody that comes down gives in whatever way they can.”
Those donations not only fuel the crops, but they supplement the well-being of the employees, Babcock said. Bonton Farms employs and houses several people who are coming out of difficult circumstances, such as homelessness, addiction or domestic abuse. In some ways, Babcock said, the farm is all they’ve got.
“From the housing we provide to the relationships, we are a family, and for many of them, maybe even most of them, this is all the expression of a family they have,” he said. “When things are disrupted the way they were, everybody gets really scared.”
When Bonton resident Tasha Mica Lee became a mother about 15 years ago, her fresh food diet drastically turned into one of fast food, which she says changed her life forever.
“I ended up becoming a diabetic; 317 pounds,” she said. “The doctor basically told me: ‘Hey, you have a choice. If you want to live, you're going to have to do better.’ So that's what I did. I started doing better.”
Lee started working at Bonton Farms last July, a place she calls “heavenly,” not only for the food, but for the coworkers she considers family. In January, Lee learned she has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which has kept her in and out of the hospital and off of the farm. Since the pandemic prevents her from leaving her home, Babcock delivers food to Lee and her daughter.
“They brought me some essentials just to get me through,” Lee said. “I haven't been able to go to the store, so this is actually much needed.”
Willing to go down swinging
Babcock said he isn’t sure if the virus has infected people in his community, but it’s not because people are or aren’t following the rules. If anything, Babcock said the Bonton neighborhood has struggled with information access in the past, and the coronavirus pandemic is no exception.
Babcock said residents have been slow to respond to the city’s safety protocols such as social distancing — a fire marshal had to close down church services because “the message wasn’t getting out,” he said. And, Babcock said, there isn’t equal access to testing.
“My fear would be if we respond late, there would be people that are nonsymptomatic that are walking around with it,” Babcock said. “We’re not getting tested, and it’ll be way more impactful and will be way more devastating down the road because of that.”
Shavon McGregor, a home health aide and Lee’s caretaker, has lived in Bonton her entire life. McGregor said that problems in other parts of the world don’t seem to affect the neighborhood and vice versa.
To her, social distancing during a pandemic is easy to do when you’re already far removed from everyone else. A flood is harder to run away from.
“We've been through a lot. I’ve been through two or three floods,” McGregor said. “This pandemic is better than a flood. It’s better than a flood.”
Still, the future looks bleak for Bonton Farms, but Babcock said he’s willing to go down swinging if something doesn’t change.
But there’s always a chance it will.
“Look at this wild cilantro,” Babcock said as he stroked the leaves in front of The Market. “We planted this last year. This cilantro is just growing in the ‘hood.”
