Growing a Vision
The first episode of Timothy Smith’s new film project shows how Pandora Thomas and her team at EARTHseed Farm are planting seeds for a healthier world
Three years ago, Timothy Smith didn’t know anything about Pandora Thomas, pigs, or persimmons. But when his fiancée Dominique Drakeford suggested they start a backyard garden, Timothy’s eyes were opened to the wonders of growing your own food.
It sent him on a path to find out more about black and brown farmers, merging his newfound love of gardening with his passion for storytelling through film. The result was a documentary film project made with FUJIFILM X-T4, FUJINON MKX18-55mmT2.9, and FUJINON MKX50-135mmT2.9.
Gardening helped Timothy cope with the difficult early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has asthma and felt that he was ‘losing his mind’ cooped up in their Brooklyn apartment, worrying about getting sick or dying if he stepped outside. Dominique, who is a sustainability consultant, suggested that they build a greenhouse in their backyard. Enjoying their own fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes and cucumbers set off several small revelations for Timothy. Gardening is cheap, delicious, sustainable, and incredibly therapeutic. It made him want to research more farmers that looked like him and amplify their work.
“We all have our heroes, right?” Timothy asks. Pandora Thomas is one of his. In 2021, Pandora founded EARTHseed Permaculture Center and Farm, a 14-acre orchard and retreat center in Sonoma County, California, centering on the wisdom of Afro-Indigenous communities.
“Permaculture says the problem is the solution. So, I actually feel like there is a problem with the current agricultural system,” Pandora explains in the film. Rather than relying on toxic pesticides and fertilizers, EARTHseed uses farming practices that respect the plants and animals as part of a larger community. The farm has a ‘U-Pick’ option for people to gather their own apples, pears, or berries so locals can connect directly with the source of their food.
EARTHseed, named from a word in Octavia Butler’s book The Parable of the Sower, is doing more than just creating a product. It fosters a way for people to be in a more peaceful relationship with the planet. As Pandora and her coworkers feed pigs, gather fuzzy mullein, and prune bare branches from fruit trees, the camera lingers beside some berry bushes. A hand-painted wooden sign reads: “We ask that before you pick, you introduce yourself to the fruit or berry. Ask permission and send appreciations for all it does for us.”
Timothy didn’t set out to create a fact-heavy documentary, instead choosing to create beautiful scenes to help a viewer become inspired by the magic that happens on farms. “I feel like the whole premise of it is that these farmers are superheroes. And I want to spark enough interest in the viewer to let you go do the work.”
It rained the day Timothy and his film crew came to visit EARTHseed, having been sunny every day before and after their scheduled filming day. “The day we filmed was horrible,” Timothy says. Though he was disappointed, he found a silver lining. He especially loved playing with the pigs that help with composting, though he was a little nervous. “I’m a city guy,” he says, “And I’m not gonna lie, at first I was kinda scared, like – ‘Yo, this is crazy.’ Right? This is pigs, like, for real, for real.”
He and Dominique picked mullein, sipped persimmon tea, and enjoyed warm apple cider while learning about EARTHseed. “I was like, this is actually good because not every day in farming is grandiose with horses running, right. It’s not super beautiful. It’s like the offseason in sports or anything else. You have to do things to prep yourself for when the season comes back around.”
Likewise, it took Timothy many years of preparation to be ready to embark on his first serious film project. As a child, Timothy was obsessed with superheroes, especially Spiderman. Timothy would make cameras out of cereal boxes and write scripts with his friends for his action figures. He saw parallels between his own life and Peter Parker, Spiderman’s alter ego; Timothy’s grandparents raised him, and Peter Parker was raised by his elderly aunt and uncle. When he wasn’t saving the world, Peter Parker worked as a newspaper photographer. Timothy always wanted to be an artist, but it took him a while to realize he wanted to be a photographer like his hero.
While he was in college, Timothy saw the movie Black Swan and decided to try making a film. He thought it would be amazing and, of course, he says, laughing at his younger self, “it was pretty bad”. But he looked at a photo he made from the film he created. “I can’t draw,” he remembers thinking, “but now I’m drawing with light.” He sold everything he owned to buy equipment to teach himself photography. After graduating with a degree in communications, he began building up a small portfolio. His family urged him to go to art school to study photography. Timothy then applied to graduate school and gained the training he needed to create the images he saw in his mind.
As he began researching black farmers across the country, Timothy was driven by a desire to help people learn that a farmer is not just “a white guy in a lumberjack shirt and overalls on a tractor.” He found that only a small percentage of US farmers are black, but he was impressed with farmers like Pandora, who are part of a growing network of people reclaiming ancient traditions and healing traumatic associations with agriculture. Timothy is excited to learn from both farmers who are just starting out, and others who have been doing it for generations. “Do people actually realize that there are black and brown farmers, that these people exist, and it’s not tied to underpaid labor or slave work?” he demands.
Pandora stood out to him, not just for her work as a farmer but for her work towards building a community. “What is our common unity?” Pandora asks in the film, as she goes about the quiet work of planting seeds. “We are all a part of this system. Humans, we are an animal, also oftentimes we are the overbearing, less-listening, we-think-we’re-controlling-things animal.” The film offers a glimpse into a gentler way to be human.
Once he became interested in gardening, Timothy recalled how his grandfather planted vegetables in their yard in Brooklyn and Queens, but as a teenager Timothy was uninterested. “Older people have so many gems that we don’t appreciate when they’re around,” Timothy says. Now he is passing some of that wisdom to the next generation.
He and Dominique are parents of a toddler and eagerly awaiting the birth of their second child. Tomato, pepper, and cucumber seedlings are sprouting in the kitchen. “We have to stop my toddler now because he waters the plants too much,” Timothy says with a laugh.
He doesn’t anticipate that their children will become full-time photographers or farmers, but he looks forward to teaching them basic life skills, like how to make a good photo and how to grow food.
“I have two FUJIFILM X100V’s that never leave my side, especially now with a kid.” Working as a professional photographer, Timothy went through a period of not wanting to take photos for pleasure. “It’s like, cameras are for work, you don’t use ’em. Now it’s like I’m low-key in love with image making again.”
Timothy is excited to interview more farmers in the US and throughout other parts of the world, to ignite a love of farming through his film project. “I don’t want to spoon-feed it to you. I want you to get a little bit and be like, ‘I like that recipe. Let me go home and look it up, see if I can make it.’ Because then I feel like that’s what really sparks change.”
To explore more of Timothy’s work, visit his website. To learn more about the gear he used, shop FUJIFILM X-T4, FUJINON MKX18-55mmT2.9, and FUJINON MKX50-135mmT2.9 today and read the full specifications here.
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