A Florida farmer plants by patterns of the sun, moon and stars but now faces an uncertain future
While farming outside on his property, Fisher is almost never seen without a cap and an old T-shirt, usually University of Florida-themed. He never attended college — and he never attended elementary school, either. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
May 3, 2021 | Story by Hope Dean | Photos by Carly Blum
Driving up the packed dirt driveway in the middle of Jonesville, the first thing you see is a never-ending collection of things.
An enormous water-stained tool shed with a tin roof. A purple bicycle sprawled on its side, missing its front wheel. An old red George Foreman lawn mower. Three empty five-gallon paint buckets gathered around a lawn chair scattered with leaves from the towering trees above.
It all belongs to R.D. Fisher. But to him, none of it is junk. Everything at his 8-acre home has or will have a purpose for the work he’s been doing for the past 60 years — farming.
At 85, Fisher has a neatly trimmed white goatee and lined hands. He walks briskly but with a slight limp, his right wrist wrapped in a black brace. But that doesn’t stop him from checking on his trees — lemon, peach, orange and plum — contained in a fence to the right of his enormous shed.
Winter treats them all the same, stripping them bare. Without any leaves, only Fisher can tell which is which. He knows which trees have been there for 20 years and which trees he planted last spring.
“See this tree right here?” he says, stepping toward a small tree that could almost double for a skinny stump. His fingers skim over a circle of deep black rot that sinks to the heartwood. “This is dead for a dollar bill. I did away with a lot of [the trees].”
Behind the shed and to the left of the trees are neat lines of crops, their fluffy leaves different shades of green. From a nearby dirt path, Fisher watches over the mustard, collard greens and cabbages that he planted.
But at the end of the field, a high-pitched mechanical beeping rings out. White cement trucks are lined up like army troops, concrete mixers slowly turning.
Fisher points toward the noise.
“They working and building houses, $330,000 and up, within 20 foot of my property,” he says. “I’m having problems with the farming and people building and digging these water reservoirs to drain off the water around.”
It doesn’t always worry him, Fisher says. But what does worry him is the fate of his farm in a world that’s quickly changing — a world very different from 1960, when Fisher first bought land in Newberry and decided to plant.
Fisher is one of 27,000 agricultural workers in Alachua County who make up 17.5 percent of the county’s workforce. With over 175,000 acres and 1,600 farms, farming takes up 54 percent of the county’s land use — and all of its products are worth almost $1 billion combined.
“Life and farming go right along together,” he says. “I’m trying to tell my grandchildren to keep this place as a farm.”
In December 1935, Fisher was born in Edgar, a tiny town 7 miles east of Hawthorne. This small farming community is where Fisher first learned how to coax crops to grow.
Two men survey a Hawthorne, Fla. field growing corn, green beans and peanuts in 1929 — six years before Fisher was born. A few miles away, Fisher would grow up tending fields like these. (Photo courtesy of Florida Memory)
Fisher never finished the first grade. Growing up, he had to help take care of his family, working and cooking and washing ever since he could walk and talk. His mother stole food to help them survive.
Fisher was born sick, often battling pain that sometimes still stretches up and down his body in sharp waves. He was first operated on when he was 3 years old and remembers it being inside a large house instead of a hospital.
“People would be hollering, and then people would die,” Fisher says. “I was right in there, too.”
Fisher married his wife, Leal, in 1957. One year later he was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War — the first war where troops were racially integrated. While stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Jackson in South Carolina, he was one of the only Black people in his unit.
Fisher speaks on his marriage to Leal. (Hope Dean/Atrium)
But sickness had never left Fisher. He still lived with the sharp, full-chested pain that kept him from performing as well as his peers in training.
“I was told by one of them sergeants that I would stop a bullet for a good soldier,” Fisher says. “At that time, I was treated so bad I was begging for death. But death, to me, is the easy way out.”
Fisher was undesirably discharged in 1959. He tried to fight the status but was never successful.
That doesn’t stop him from wearing a faded green Army hat, though.
Now, all these years later at home in Alachua County, Fisher walks into his home from the fields, tracking dirt on the floor. He has to sweep great heaps of it from the square brown tiles every once in a while, dumping it off the side of the porch.
His living room is as eclectic as the outside of his house, furnished with floral couches piled with crocheted doilies. The paint on the walls is salmon pink, layered upon with paintings of lush farms and leafy trees. Several photos of the Obamas rest in frames alongside pictures of Fisher’s own family.
Fisher’s lived-in living room is full of papers and pamphlets and stuffed animals and pictures. On a white wicker end table, two copies of the Bible lay stacked on top of each other, one in large print. A copy of Grier’s Almanac lays proudly on top of a farming equipment magazine. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
Fisher sits down on his cracked black leather recliner, next to the shotgun leaned against the wall. He takes off today’s hat, faded blue with the words “Mt. Zura Full Gospel Baptist Church.” On the bottom shelf of a wicker bookstand to his right lay two copies of the Bible.
“I have a contract with the good Lord,” he says. “As long as he gives me strength to get up and go, I ain’t going away.”
To Fisher, religion and farming are parallel — if you put good things into your soil and into your life, you will yield a good crop.
But God doesn’t leave you without a guidebook. Nature is the great North Star of life and of farming, Fisher believes. That’s why he plants crops based on patterns in the sun, moon and stars.
Fisher speaks on his relationship with God and how he calls upon Him for help. (Hope Dean/Atrium)
If you ask him about how it works, he won’t tell you anything. But by his couch, right next to an old organizational farming chart for grain and livestock and a magazine advertising shiny new plows, lies a 2021 copy of Grier’s Almanac.
Grier’s Almanac is a Southern guide to farming, gardening and more that has been published annually since 1807. Its pages contain a combination of folklore, religion and astrology to help guide its readers through the year.
In this year’s almanac, advice to plant tomatoes, peppers and okra in April and summer grasses in May is one page away from the Ten Commandments, listed in old typewriter font. It outlines out which astrological signs are best to plant under — Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus and Cancer — right next to an advertisement for a gambling charm and a love amulet.
Pages in the 2021 edition of Grier’s Almanac explain what the Zodiac system is, which signs are best to plant under and several ads for spiritual help. (Photos courtesy of Grier’s Almanac)
The almanac reveals when the planets will be brightest in the sky and when the moon’s phases begin and end. Several verses are listed out under the section “Where to Find Help From God’s Holy Word, the Bible” for states like fear, sickness or temptation.
Grier’s Almanac is like a Bible away from the Bible. Fisher has used it for decades.
“What I’m trying to do is what I call ‘do it my way,’ according to what I feel like the Lord wants us to do,” Fisher says. “That’s what I’m trying to do with my farm, let nature take care of it. Why should I do it if [God] will do it for free?”
But that doesn’t mean farming isn’t hard work. His daughter, Meredith Fisher, will tell you that firsthand.
In the ‘70s, other kids got to sleep in late and watch morning cartoons like Josie and the Pussycats or the Pink Panther.
Not Meredith.
Meredith was up early right beside her parents — feeding the chickens, mowing the yard, raking leaves and hoeing weeds. But the hard work was well worth it. Meredith grew up eating T-bone steaks and pork chops with fresh tomatoes and potatoes while most other children were eating dry beans and rice.
“A lot of my friends that I grew up with, they were hungry,” Meredith said. “I never knew that.”
Even then, Fisher was a one-man farmer, Meredith said. He planted on 20 acres of owned and rented land, growing watermelon, cantaloupes and corn. Meredith spent scorching summers and weekends at a produce stand right by State Road 26. Fisher built it himself, and it still stands today, although the land is now owned by different people.
Fisher speaks on farming and how it affects his life. (Hope Dean/Atrium)
Right by the stand stood an enormous hand-painted sign with multiple Bible verses written on the bottom. The first is Proverbs 21:13 — “Whoever shuts his ears to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be heard,” it reads.
Fisher lived by those words. Their family would give out food to the poor and elderly on the regular, Meredith said. They lived by loving those they didn’t know. Meredith herself was adopted in the late ’60s.
“The world is confused about what makes family,” Meredith said. “Blood can be some of the worst family members you have. But blood don’t make you family. Loyalty makes you family.”
These days, Fisher only plants on his own land of 8 acres. He sells his crops at the Alachua County Farmers’ Market on 441 on Saturdays.
Fisher attends the Alachua County Farmers Market most Saturdays, usually selling an assortment of greens, peppers and tomatoes that he brings in large wooden boxes on the back of his truck. He has some regular customers who know him by name. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
But that’s not the only difference between now and then, Meredith said. Planting itself has changed, too.
Since she grew up farming in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the weather has gotten hotter and more rainy. She sees her father’s crops burn out faster than they are supposed to or not produce as much — especially last year’s vegetables and muscadine grapes.
“Last year, it was horrible,” Meredith said. “He burnt up a lot of stuff before it even hit the ground.”
The weather comes and it goes, Meredith said. But as a whole, it’s taking longer to get colder. In 1950, Gainesville’s average temperature in November was about 60 degrees, according to federal climate data.
Then in 1980, it was 63 degrees. In 2000, it was 68. In 2010 it dipped back down to 63, but it rocketed back up to 75 in 2020.
But adaptation has always been a part of R.D. Fisher’s life.
After being discharged from the Army, Fisher worked in South Carolina doing carpentry before a business deal with a man from Ohio led him and his wife to purchase land in Alachua County, where his wife Leal was from, in 1960. Fisher built their house himself.
The Army discharge left Fisher jobless and hopeless after the move to Florida. But Leal wouldn’t let him give up. She found a job and said he didn’t have to find one until he was ready.
“But then I thought, ‘I didn’t marry her for her to work and take care of me,’” Fisher says. “So, I started doing things.”
He worked as a trucker and a broker — but he also started his farm in Alachua County, which would eventually become his main business. He sold his crops locally and in farmers markets all across the Southern United States, taking his wares wherever anyone would buy them.
Fisher attends the Alachua County Farmers Market most Saturdays, usually selling an assortment of greens, peppers and tomatoes that he brings in large wooden boxes on the back of his truck. He has some regular customers who know him by name. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
He and his wife tended to the crops for the first half of the year and trucked and traveled in the second half. The two would drive to states as far as California and those as close as the Carolinas.
“Children would look at us, because they never seen any Black people in person,” Fisher says. “I’d tell people, ‘If you treat me the way you want me to treat you, I don’t see why we can’t get along.’ And I still say that today.”
Fisher was once pulled over by a police officer in the summer of 1957. When Fisher got out of his car and stood 10 feet away from the officer, the man pulled out his gun. It scared the hell out of Fisher.
“He said, ‘Don’t you run,’” he recalls. “I didn’t run. I didn’t do nothing.”
After Fisher showed his license, the officer apologized. But Fisher would never forget about it.
Despite race and class discrimination, R.D. and Leal did well for themselves until the 1980s farm crisis. In Florida, farm debt doubled from 1975 to 1985, going from about $2 million to $4 million, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Fisher would eventually recover his farm from foreclosure. But while that crisis is over, others are just beginning.
When Fisher first moved to Alachua County, he barely had any neighbors in the country. About 74,000 people lived in the county as a whole, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Now, that number is almost 270,000.
Construction booms came with the population rise. The city of Newberry’s future development plan painstakingly outlines the way in which it will preserve Newberry’s downtown area, but agricultural land has few sections of its own, existing mostly as an occasional reference in other sections.
In the plan, agricultural workers are urged to “minimize adverse impact on the community due to noise, odors, dust, smoke, dirt, vibration and/or glare,” putting them in the same category as miners.
Under the hot Florida sun, Fisher pulls stalks of mustard greens out of the ground. This specific group of mustard grew greener and larger than his second group, which was planted a few sections away. Fisher attributes the difference to the crops being grown under different astrological signs, although he won’t say what signs they were. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
Alachua County’s Comprehensive Plan from 2019-2040 says one of its goals is to separate urban and rural areas while keeping construction mostly in urban circles. But Fisher’s property is right on the edge of a developmental area for residential homes, according to the plan’s 2040 map.
This process has already been happening for years now, Meredith said. The woods she used to play in as a child are now being razed to make way for concrete and mortar.
“They think the monsters live in the woods,” she said. “The monsters are in the buildings next to you. Ain’t no monsters in those woods.”
The hot weather likely isn’t going to relent, either. Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, published a 2019 study that broke down estimated temperature rises in America — and the future is grim for Florida.
The study’s predictions show that by 2050, Gainesville could be seeing at least 50 days in a row in which temperatures top 100 degrees. Near 2099, that could double to 100 days in a row.
“Even if we do [reduce emissions], within the next 50 years or so, we will see the frequency and the intensity of extreme heat increase,” Dahl says. “We’ll need to be preparing for a hotter climate.”
Fisher isn’t sure whether his farm will last that long. While his grandchildren and great-grandchildren help out on the farm sometimes, he worries that they won’t maintain it after he is gone.
“You may not be living in no mansion, but you can eat good,” he tells them.
Fisher sits on his favorite armchair in his living room, where he sits to catch up with the news. He’s concerned with the state of the country right now, and was especially horrified to see children separated from their parents at the U.S. border. It made him cry. (Carly Blum/Atrium)
Meredith could easily sell the farm. If she fixed the home and property up, it could be worth $1 million, she said.
But she would never do that. It’s her home.
One of her grandsons loves the farm and wants to stay in the county. But after him, the future is uncertain, she said. Meredith sees the family farm lasting 50 more years at best.
“You can build as much stone around everything as you want. But at the end of the day, we all got to eat,” she said. “As that farm and those farmers die, we’re really gonna be in trouble.”
Fisher also worries about the lack of young blood in farming as a whole. The 2017 U.S. Census of Agriculture shows that farmers over the age of 65 outnumber farmers under the age of 35 by 6-to-1. Since 2012, farmland as a whole has decreased by over 14 million acres.
But Fisher doesn’t let the future rule his life. For now, he keeps on tending his fields, bent under the sweltering Florida sun with his hands buried in the earth.
“Mother Nature know how to take care of herself,” he says, wiping the dirt from his fingers with a grim smile. “We just won’t take care of ourselves.”
Hope Dean is Atrium's co-Editor in Chief and Web Editor. She has written for several news outlets, including Fresh Take Florida and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In her free time she enjoys reading, running and making too many Spotify playlists.
Thanks for this human story.
Carolyn Andrrson