"I feel proud of the impact and legacy we will collectively leave behind as farmers who transformed an industrial food system into a holistic one." - Farmer Yon

Yonette’s Story

Yonnete Flemming, lovingly referred to as Farmer Yon, is an urban farmer and global SEED who transplanted to the U.S. at 16.

Farmer Yon celebrates a familial agrarian lifestyle from birth, studied agricultural science in high school, and worked as a city farms trainer and master composter helping community gardeners around NYC build a relationship with the land. Farmer Yon has been involved in farming and entrepreneurship all her life.

After following the traditional path to "success" working for many years in financial services, she reinvented a synergistic green pathway, building upon her ancestral past and demonstrating how sacred and fulfilling agriculture can be in cities.

Farmer Yon recommitted herself to Sacred herbalism and Sacred Ecology work. As a practitioner of raphaology, Farmer Yon has received advanced training in a few healing modalities and has been helping others on the Green Path. Those liberatory practices are at the forefront of her food justice leadership work at Hattie Carthan, where she serves, providing innovative leadership to a diverse ecosystem in Bedford Stuyvesant.

Farmer Yon has contributed to the incredible curriculum and provided guiding resources to FSNYC since the beginning.

Her hands, heart, and mind are still in the work to this day as she continues to instruct food justice for upcoming cohorts. Farmer Yon helps our students with a practical, grounded experience in urban agriculture and lessons in somatics and cultural embodiment.

Students are immersed in the various seasons with equinox gatherings at the Hattie Carthan foodways, which consists of a traditional community garden, an herb farm, and two community-based markets designed and operated by Farmer Yon and a growing food justice collective.

Farmer Yon recalls consistency and self-determination as key to the sustainability of our school. She remembers leaving Bedford Stuyvesant and going to the city for planning meetings every Wednesday evening after work to create Farm School NYC. That work required agency and a decision to create something different than any founders experienced as city farm trainers and gardeners.