Sophia Buggs, owner of Lady Buggs Farm and a Mahoning Valley Food Access coordinator, is working to aid food access and education in the Valley from the farm to the table.
Buggs, also known as Mama Sophia, was recently nominated for the League of Women Voters of Greater Youngstown’s Women’s Hall of Fame for her efforts to revitalize the community.
“I'm just a small woman farmer that really has a farm the size of a garden, [who’s] trying to make a big splash in the world,” she said. “To be recognized — and to be recognized with the women that are on the list, and I know most if not all of them — I’m very honored.”
Additionally, Buggs was recognized as a community leader during the Habitat for Humanity Women Build Week from March 8 to 15.
Buggs, who was born in Youngstown, moved to Florida at age 10. Although she’d travel back to the Mahoning Valley to visit family, she eventually settled in Florida and taught public speaking for film and recording arts at Full Sail University and was a breastfeeding peer counselor for the Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program.
“I think it was 2010 … I lost my grandmother and we brought her home to Youngstown to bury her. And that was the time that I knew that being at [my grandmother’s] house, I just knew I was coming back [to Youngstown]. It just so happened [that when] I went back to Florida, I was laid off both of my jobs,” Buggs said.
“I took it as an opportunity to start all over,” Buggs added. “I came back home to the whole house and a whole other Youngstown.”
While trying to adapt to her new normal, Buggs decided to bake her grandmother's homemade zucchini bread from scratch — which meant growing zucchini.
The once flourishing garden Buggs remembered from her childhood was marred by gravel and pulled-up bushes.
“So I decided to grow zucchini in some kiddie pools in the backyard,” she said. “ It was a great plant to learn. Then I decided to try my hands with some herbs. But by then, it was kind of catching on and people were like, ‘Oh, yeah, that lady is growing in kiddie pools in the backyard of the abandoned houses.”
“But I didn't know it was a thing. I didn't know urban agriculture as that name. I was just trying to save my own self and my own life, really. I didn't know that it was food justice, activism, social justice,” she added. “I didn't know that there was a thing called food insecurity, food sovereignty. I didn't know any of that. But doing the work, you fall into it, you know?”
Eventually, Buggs wanted to grow beyond her fence, so she went to Mahoning County Land Bank and developed plans to grow on nine lots backing up against her house — now known as Lady Buggs Farm.
Lady Buggs Farm is a 1.3 acre urban farm on the South Side of Youngstown. Buggs said what produce she grows and where it’s available varies each season. This year, Lady Buggs Farm is growing herbs and edible flowers.
In 2012, Buggs also entered an apprenticeship through Goodness Grows, which led to her spearheading gardening programs at Turning Point Residential.
“Farming is small steps. You’ve got to clean up the space, first of all. You’ve got to better understand the ecosystem that you live in. You need to assess the neighborhood. You got to look at where the sun falls,” Buggs said.
Buggs told Mahoning Matters that when Goodness Grows couldn’t handle the capacity of what she needed through a full growing season, she began working with Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation at the start of its Iron Roots Urban Farm project in conjunction with Goodness Grows. Buggs received two Lots of Green grants from YNDC and a 2021 Youngstown Business Incubator small-business grant for $5,000 to aid in the development of Lady Buggs Farm.
Through that relationship with YNDC, Buggs was encouraged to join AmeriCorps VISTA in 2015.
To see the full story from Mahoning Matters, click here.
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