TRUMBELL COUNTY, OHIO — Life can be sweet like honey or sting like a bee, Seth Steward has experienced both sides of life.
In 2017, Steward lost his mother, years later that sting turned into something that has a lot of Northeast Ohio buzzing; Linda’s bee farm, named after his mom.
“It feels good, I have the blessing of hearing my mother’s name every day, to hear the warm feedback from the customers about how the products have helped,” said Seth.
Linda’s Bee Farm sells body wash, moisturizers, lip balm, and obviously a lot of honey.
“I retrieve the honey with the raw materials including the beeswax, the pollen, the honey,” said Seth. “We manufacture various honey products.”
Seth still holds his day job as a postal worker, so his wife Adrienne does a lot of the work behind the scenes.
“All I could think about when he brought the bees home was getting stung and I told him, he could have it,” said Adrienne.
Adrienne cuts, mixes and manufactures a lot of the products they sell online, at tradeshows and festivals all over Northeast Ohio.
“Even though we are selling honey and we are making different beauty products from the honey and raw materials, we are still helping people to stay well and healthy,” said Adrienne.
But farmers who look like Seth and Adrienne are unicorns nowadays. According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture less than 1 percent of Ohio farmers identify as black, McKinsey and Company reports the nationwide number is just 1.4 percent, a century ago that number was 14 percent. These numbers are a stark contrast to the foundation that our nation was built upon, as slaves were forced to worked on plantations for years, growing and tilling crops.
Fast forward to today, access to capital and farmland itself is a barrier for a lot of black farmers.
The US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says our nation’s leaders are working to ensure black farmers have more access.
“We recently made a series of awards both in urban agriculture, as well as beginning farmer loan assistance, developing a number of programs designed to expand land access and market access for beginning and minority farmers,” said Vilsack.
Seth said someone donated him the land that he uses for his bee farm.
Looking ahead, Seth wants to attract a new generation of young black farmers.
“We helped build this country, very instrumental in this development, so beekeeping… yea we can do that too,” said Seth.
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