Sometimes the most profound acts of discovery come not on a trip or an adventure but in your backyard.
That’s been the case for Kamaria Gray and Dakarai Carter. The couple purchased a home in the Osborn neighborhood last year and diligently restored the place, lovingly referring to it as their Detroit Hoodstead. The goal, of which there are many, is to transform their near-acre of land into a self-sustaining farm.
It’s a bit of a homecoming for Kamaria, physically
and spiritually. She grew up nearby and returns to the neighborhood after moving to and attending high school in Shelby Township. She would then come back to Detroit and live in Midtown, where she met Dakarai.
Kamaria and Dakarai recently took our readers through their journey as part of an Instagram takeover for the
Model D Explorer Series. We can’t recommend it enough.
Model D: Did you know going in that this is what you wanted to do, to have a big plot of land to work on? Or were you more just looking for a place to live?
Kamaria Gray: This was definitely intentional. I just find gardening to be a therapeutic kind of hobby. And I also know the importance of growing your own food as a Black person and getting that connection back to the land.
So it was very intentional. Right before we got this house, the last place we were scheduled to look at had an extra plot of land next to it that we had planned to use for gardening purposes. It's intentional because it's rooted in the liberation of Black people. But it's also rooted in our own personal joy.
Both of us are tired of this traditional capitalist mindset where it's like, you wear yourself into the ground in the name of being productive and of working. And I feel like working the land is a different type of work that we don't appreciate. And so I want to get back to that, because I don't find a lot of work environments, in general, to be healthy. But especially as a Black woman, I feel like there's a lot of excess pressure that's put on us, a lot of excess supervision. All of these things can attribute to having an unhealthy mindset and living in fear mode or scarcity mode. And that's not what I want to do.
So I'm hoping that with us learning to tend the land and tend to this house, we can not only build a platform that we can monetize from but we can build a small farming business that we can create an income off of so we don't have to be stuck in this shitty rat race.
Dakarai Carter: I definitely want to shout out the different programs and different people who planted that seed in my own mind, so that when I'm looking for a house, I'm looking for a plot of land because of Detroit Summer exposing me to gardening programs and Feedom Freedom Growers, who are also an organic garden on the east side, and D-Town Farm, people who are really good stewards of the land. And so I think that's just been instilled in me, and I'm grateful for that.
MD: What was it about this particular house in this particular neighborhood? Why was this the right place?
KG: I mean, it's gorgeous. It’s a beautiful-ass house. And the neighborhood is — where I'm going with the storytelling portion of our takeover is that I had a lack of appreciation for where I grew up. It's real easy to get sucked up into what professionalism looks like when you're out here making money, and what it means to be a Black person in a professional world. And it's real easy to change the way that you talk and the way that you look and the way that you show up. But, you know, underneath, there's this hidden personality that only comes out when you’re at home, or in a certain area. And I feel like the Red Zone, this area gets a bad rap. This idea that nobody wants to go to the east side — you see all the memes that it’s dangerous and you don't get out of your car to get gas and all of these things. And we already know how the media portrays Black people. So they're not portraying this area with the sense of beauty and appreciation that it deserves. I really want to use our platform to highlight that it's not just crime and gangbanging here. Our neighborhood is beautiful, and it's full of children and like, dudes sitting on the porch.
DC: And I want to say shout out to the neighbors, because I think that's another beautiful part of the neighborhood, just the people in it. Walking up and down the street, walking our dog — there's so many people who just automatically recognize that we're always around and want to interact with us. And we're grateful for that. We really like that part, that we have neighbors we can stop and say, Hey, how's it going? And chat with.
KG: Not to say that there’s a lacking of that in other areas, but it's just the reputation that this place has and the worthiness that society oftentimes places on Black people who are from the hood or ghetto or whathaveyou. It's something that we're looking to change. There's beauty in Detroit outside of the industrialization of downtown and the gentrification and all the new shit, there's beauty that exists right here in the hood, in the fast cars and the Black people on horses in the middle of the street. It's the Wild Wild East. And there's a beauty to it.
MD: What are some of your favorite spots you’ve discovered since moving in?
DC: The guy a few houses down is a really good pitmaster, a barbecue guy. And he sells his barbecue there every Wednesday. He said he has a restaurant or something like that, but because of COVID and things, I think they’re shutdown. That's one that we've gone to a few times and he's really good at the barbecue. Like, we love it. You can lean on the whole block.
KG: As far as other businesses, there's the beauty supplies stores and the boutiques, though we don't know who owns those. We don't know if they're Black-owned or whatnot — not to say, you know, that the things we recommend have to be Black-owned.
DC: Or community-owned.
KG: But yeah, the east side, as beautiful as it is, there is a scarcity and lack of access. There's a lot of friend shops around here, which are like liquor stores and gas stations. In our general area, it’s kind of like slim pickings. And we do have to grocery shop outside of the area because, I don't know if you're aware or not, but some of the local grocery stores, the things that they are selling aren't up to par. But we've only been here you know, six months, we haven't explored, like, deep-deep. So there could be other places that we don't know about. Oh, you know, there’s Capers. Capers forever. But I think most people know about Capers.
MD: What do you want the Hoodstead to look like in ten years? What do you hope to build and grow?
DC: We’re definitely wanting to grow a family. As far as the outside setup, I'm really thinking about things like chicken coops. This outdoor fireplace situation needs some repair; I want to build it out for entertaining people. We definitely want more space for garden beds.
KG: We want to be a fully functional farm. We're looking into ordinances and codes. We've read that you can have goats if you have over 24,000 square feet, which we do. We want to do the whole shebang: chickens, goats. We have a large-breed guardian dog that we got specifically for herding chickens and protecting the ducks. At my previous job at DFA (Detroit Food Academy), I had set up a situation where the kids went to visit a farm on the east side, the duck house farm, and they had a Great Pyrenees who was guarding the ducks and I thought it was the sweetest thing. So I mimicked that after I visited her.
We want to be a fully functioning farm. We want to make our own goat cheese and goat milk and grow our own food, for the most part, and barter those things with folks in the community.
The big-time goal and dream is that there is a building, like a block down that we pass all the time, and I would love to have a small market for the neighborhood where we're just selling our goods, and maybe making sandwiches or something.
MD: What are some things you’re discovering through this process?
KG: Since I left my job, I've gotten a deeper understanding into how I feel about work culture. And I’ve taken a step back in terms of what I do career-wise; I work part-time now. And I have found that when I'm at home, even though I'm working around the house and doing things that are just as valuable — my friend, Marguerite, she said this in the perfect way: I'm struggling with firing the boss in my head. I feel guilty for being at home. I feel like even though I'm working in the garden — and I'm outside, and I'm enjoying myself — I feel guilty that I'm not behind a computer screen doing shit or something as though that was more valuable. So I'm rediscovering how to relax within myself and kind of be comfortable in the work that I'm doing now. And even though I know and can talk about the value, my brain is like, Go get a real job, what are you doing? So that’s something personal I’m dealing with.
DC: As I grow and mature, I'm constantly learning more about myself. And, you know, unpacking a lot of personal things about what it takes to put my all into a project, how you creatively integrate these things to make your dreams come true. So I think there's a lot of lessons on the horizon that I'm just looking forward to, just personally about myself and trying to get my skills up.