Nivek Teaches Homesteading

 Homesteader Nivek Anderson-Brown poses with a squash in her kitchen at Leaf & Bean Farm. She and her husband have left city and corporate life behind and now live largely off the land in South Central Virginia.

by Katrina L. Spencer

When Nivek Anderson-Brown and her husband decided to commit to the homesteading lifestyle all the way, she said there were field mice the size of cats that rose up out of the land to avoid the rumble of their bush hog lawn mower. They spooked her, but she wasn’t to be dissuaded. Since then, she’s gotten to know all types of local critters: foxes, raccoons, deer, wild turkeys, guineas, a baby bear, groundhogs, moles, beavers, owls, snakes, salamanders, toads, spiders and ticks!

Worn by the hustle and bustle of corporate America, the two, Nivek (nuh-VEEK) and her husband, who she lovingly calls “Mister,” headed for the country in South Central Virginia. There they took on the labor of love in establishing Leaf & Bean Farm, a home built on productive land and the site of her entrepreneurial business as a social-media based influencer. You can find her and the true tales and teachings of their lifestyle on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

“I’m the hardest working woman you know,” Anderson-Brown said.

Between planting, pruning, harvesting, canning, powdering, pickling, fermenting, drying, freezing, photographing, filming, editing, recruiting brand deals and loving her family, her hands are full, and she may in fact win that title. She practices traditions that have been in many American families for generations and uses 21st technologies to reintroduce them to worldwide audiences.

“For all my life, there was some type of growing going on,” Anderson-Brown said. 

A wagon of goods shows the bounty at Leaf & Bean Farm, including tomatoes, melons and leeks.

Her work with plant life started at home and she associates her relationship to the flora with spirituality and medicine.

“I consider myself a conjuring woman,” she said.

She and her mother are herbalists and avid users of home remedies. She takes purple dead nettle, for example, to ward off allergic reactions, and apple cider vinegar every day. What she doesn’t know from home training, she gains from “YouTube University,” she said, taking an active interest in her continued education and being hands-on in her approach. The bumpy patches she has encountered could be the most lesson-rich moments of her journey. 

“I’ve got failures for days,” Anderson-Brown said.

Her first two flocks of chickens were killed by raccoons and foxes, she said, when she and her husband didn’t realize the level of security they needed to protect them. It took her a year to establish a sourdough starter, she said. And once, she took a fall of over four feet that sent her to the hospital.

“Don’t confuse my joy for ease,” she said. “It ain’t easy. But I love it.” 

The trials and the errors all contribute to what she calls the “ever-learning process.” 

“Even the hard stuff is fun,” she said.

Two loaves of freshly baked bread cool on an oven rack at Leaf & Bean Farm.

Her countless wins, however, are not to be ignored. Among them, to name just a small portion, are her beef tallow and frankincense eye serum, powdered aloe vera, collagen soups, dandelion wine that “tastes like sunshine,” she said, floral bath salts, wild rose rosé, pine cone syrup, homemade throat lozenges and more. In an age of dependence on the grocery industrial complex, the proportion of her self-reliance is uncanny.

Anderson-Brown points out that the systems many depend on have certain fragilities and vulnerabilities to them. If any part of the process is interrupted in developing quality crops that are transported to stores, all can fall apart. By that logic, homesteading is not a quirky hobby meant to impress social media followers. Rather, it’s a survival skill. For Anderson-Brown, it’s not a question of if the systems we know will crumple and fail; it’s a question of when.

“If you don’t do it willingly,” Anderson-Brown said of homesteading, “you are going to find yourself in a position to do it unwillingly.”

But before you pack up your things and purchase a plot of land in the southern backwoods, know that this homesteading disciple believes that this lifestyle can take place in spaces that aren’t rural.

“Homesteading is a verb,” she said. “You can be homesteading anywhere.”

Homesteading doesn’t have to be a complex system of cans, jars and drying racks, ducks, goats and chickens, hoes, yokes and scythes. It can be herbs, she said, steeped in water on the window sill or baking one’s own bread or making one’s own yogurt. There are many ways to incorporate the ethos of self-reliance into one’s life in all types of spaces at all types of scales.

Anderson-Brown teaches classes online for anyone worldwide wanting to pick up skills in gardening, fermentation, canning, breadmaking and more. You can launch your journey with her by visiting www.leafandbeanfarm.com or get introduced to her work via TikTok lives on Sundays.

In the homesteading influencer landscape, Anderson-Brown appreciates a less stylized aesthetic that reflects the work of living on a farm. Sometimes that includes dirt, spills, stains and interruptions caused by humans or other animals she loves. Her work reflects realism, inclusion and history. And in terms of community, she looks forward to the establishment of conferences that embrace Black homesteaders and other people of color.

Nivek Anderson-Brown and her husband, Campbell Brown, pause the work on their land for a photo outside at Leaf & Bean Farm.

For other Black people who do similar work, Anderson-Brown points to Upendo States Farm that offers a glamping (think camping plus glamour) experience and the GrounEd Group that also aspires to teaching self-reliance.

With all the richness in Anderson-Brown’s world, she feels no lack.

“We live a life of abundance,” she said. “I’m not missing out on anything.”