In 1996 a K’nyaw Karen family fled ethnic cleansing in Burma (Myanmar) for a refugee camp in Thailand, where they lived for nine years before resettling in North Carolina. Though separated from ancestral land, they held fast to their agricultural legacy and began farming at Transplanting Traditions Community Farm (TTCF), a nonprofit that supports food sovereignty in the refugee community through access to land, education, and opportunities for refugee farmers in North Carolina on land owned and stewarded by Triangle Land Conservancy. Taking their name from the place in Burma where they grew up and learned how to farm, they started Ternawtheri Family Farm, where they specialize in Southeast Asian produce, in particular crops familiar to Burmese and Thai immigrants.
Having built up a small CSA and selling at farmers markets in the Chapel Hill area, they eventually outgrew the less than one acre that TTCF could offer them and began looking to expand. But their interest in having their own land goes beyond their business plans: “In addition to having access to farmland to expand our farming operations, we would like this land to be a place of healing for our family and currently all the children are pretty excited about this opportunity. At TTCF, we have this healing space; however, limited access to land has put a barrier to expanding the farming operation and meeting our larger financial goal. The older we get, the more invested we are in farming and wanting to preserve our ancestors’ legacy. We would also like this land to be a place for our community to come and be in devotions with each other.”
We partnered with the Persimmon Collective Fund to provide the financing for Ternawtheri Family Farm’s acquisition of nearby farmland, our third such collaboration since 2023. Persimmon made a no-interest, no-payments loan that effectively reduced the purchase price to an affordable level, and we made the main mortgage loan through which the family will build equity in the land and work to achieve their farming and community-building goals. Persimmon’s loan, partially funded with a grant from Equity Trust’s Leave it in the Land Fund, won’t be due until (unless) the land is sold and will enable them to control the future affordability of the land by offering the same no-interest, no-payments loan to subsequent buyers.