Minga Farm is my heart and soul and I am so glad you are here. I’m Patty Lawson, owner of Minga.

My childhood was charming. I grew up in Gainesville, Georgia on a small farm, next door to my grandparents. My first job was picking blueberries to sell at the farmer’s market. I spent time with my grandpa feeding the cows and a lot of time playing outside.

I studied agriculture at the University of Georgia and then joined the Peace Corps, where my job was Linking Income, Food, and the Environment. I loved spending time in a community discussing how to grow more food for families in a way that was economically and environmentally sustainable. We did a little bit of everything including tailoring, and we were able to acquire two sewing machines that the community still uses.

Since returning to the states, I have felt drawn back to the farm. It is a beautiful thing to cultivate life where so much of my own life has been cultivated.

I have always circled the balance of science and art, and I have been falling into art more recently. Growing up, art was something that I thought wasn’t for me, I couldn’t draw or paint so I must not be artistic. However, during my time at UGA I learned about floral design, and I have loved spending time diving into what it means to create arrangements of flowers.

This balance shows itself in my other loves, pottery and yoga. To me, flowers, pottery, and yoga fit together as the things that keep me grounded and breathing. To me, you cannot throw a pot on the wheel without being centered, growing flowers brings be back to the earth, and yoga helps me move through all of this with mindfulness.

I am so grateful that you are here, on this website and for this process. Growing a business is hard, and I am so grateful for those cheering me on.

The name Minga Farm comes from the community that I lived in in Zambia. It was the name of my local town and it means “thorn” in Nyanja. It brings me back to a time in my life that was about cultivating community and trying little by little to make life a little sweeter. The balance of the meaning thorn brings the complicated, hard parts of life into the balance. You cannot have only good, and life doesn’t exist in just sunshine and rainbows, but rather the good is made sweeter with the thorns.