The Quintessential Black Farmer: Sista Sophia and Lady Buggs Farm

Sophia Buggs and Lady Buggs Farm, a farm and spiritual center.

by Kirtrina Baxter

When this interview started out it was not your conventional conversation. Sophia Buggs is a magikal woman with a beautiful spiritual nature, thus this article will be quite different as hers is a story of healing and ancestral callings.  Sista Sophia, as I lovingly call her, is a spiritual advisor as well as a gardener and apprentice farmer. She has her own business, Healing Flower, a spirituality and herbal consultant company. It is this business that she plans to transition into a sustainable farm and spiritual center called “Lady Buggs Farm” on the land that she owns.

Sista Sophia’s story starts off when she inherited the house her grandmother lived in and where she grew up. She lovingly remembers her grandmother’s garden and her locally famous zucchini bread. When moving back into the house after her grandmother’s transition, she was looking for this recipe along with other hand-written recipes her grandmother has saved. It was then that she became determined to restore the garden and make it even bigger, in her grandmother’s memory.

Though she knew that she wanted to grow food, she didn’t have much experience in gardening, so she reached out to some neighborhood community garden groups. Along her introductions into garden society, she met two women who shared her grandmother’s and mother’s names and birthday’s though in reverse. It was this sign that led Sista Sophia to know she was on the right path. Believing in ancestral guidance and the infinite power of the universe, Sista Sophia went about a long journey of familiarizing herself with the tools and skills she needed to create her dream of Lady Buggs Farm.


Sustainability is also a key issue for Sista Sophia as she plans to have various programs at her future farm which will include making homemade body products, canned and baked goods and creating practical instruments out of recycled materials. The introduction to sustainable living for the people in her community is of great importance to Sista Sophia. She also has a heartfelt desire to help communities, heal, revamp and restore their neighborhoods into thriving green economies.

Since Sista Sophia is a caretaker of the Earth, she knows the personal benefits of working the land. It is this and her connection to the goddess, who IS the land, that drives her. She has been working with earth elements for quite some time in her spiritual work, utilizing herbs, crystals and natural sound to help others heal, so she sees the practical as well as the spiritual worth in land stewardship. 

Currently she is an apprentice at Goodness Grows in Ohio, where she works with special needs citizens in agriculture-based therapy. Goodness Grows is an outreach ministry to Common Ground Presbyterian church. They also maintain community gardens around the Youngstown, Ohio area and manage a farm that is in an old plant nursery. It is in that farm where she seeks solace in the fields until her dream is realized. She tells me her ancestors dine with her there as she drinks in the energy of the plants around her and the soil itself.