Melvin Parson: From Prison to Farmer to Changing Lives

“The same thing applies to human beings. It’s all about our soil.”

When Melvin Parson tells you that farming saved his life, he means it literally. Not because he grew up with a green thumb. He couldn’t even spell “lawnmower.” But after 13 years cycling through prisons and jails, after countless rehab stints, after losing everything he built to crack cocaine, a 3-by-15-foot vegetable bed he never asked for became his pathway to a purpose bigger than himself.

Growing Up in Detroit

Melvin was raised by his grandparents on the streets of Detroit. His grandmother was as close to an angel as he’s ever encountered. They sent him to private school while every other kid in the neighborhood went to public school.

“By the time I got around to eighth grade, my neighborhood started having more of an influence on me than my home life did,” Melvin told me. It was the era when young kids in Detroit were being exploited to sell drugs. He got caught up in that mess.

His grandfather was paying for Catholic high school, but Melvin’s first semester he got all Fs. He’d started smoking weed. His grandfather said he wasn’t throwing away good money after bad and sent him to public school. That’s what Melvin had wanted all along. A year later, he dropped out. By 17, he was incarcerated and addicted to crack cocaine.

The Prison Cycle

Melvin spent 13 years total in the system. Three years combined in county jails. Four years in Michigan Department of Corrections. Then six more. In and out, over and over.

“In hood culture, going to prison is like a twisted rite of passage,” Melvin said. “It gives you this badge of honor. You don’t really feel all those psychological effects and trauma associated with being incarcerated until later in life. I didn’t know how much damage I was doing to myself.”

How did he survive the hard days inside? He stayed to himself. Read books about his culture that had been kept from him in school. Exercised. “You just kind of plow your way through it. You can’t go to your bros and say you’re feeling fearful. You just gotta suck it up.”

Building and Losing Everything

When Melvin got out for what he thought would be the last time, his son was only 60 days old. That became his motivation. He wanted to put as much time into doing something positive as he had done doing negative.

He started small, working at a gas station for dollar tips. Then something in his mind told him to go rake leaves in Sherwood Forest, a nice Detroit subdivision. He borrowed his son’s mother’s car, got some rakes and bags, and knocked on doors. Next thing he knew, he had 10 people wanting him to cut their grass.

“I couldn’t even spell lawnmower,” Melvin laughed. “Never cut grass before.”

He went to a pawn shop, bought a lawnmower and a leaf blower. Within two years, he had a company. Accounts with institutions in downtown Detroit. Subcontracts with Detroit Public Schools. Five McDonald’s. A hundred residential customers. Employees working for him.

But he couldn’t stop smoking crack.

“That same voice that told me to go rake leaves would say, ‘If you stop getting high, I will continue to bless you abundantly. If you don’t, I’m going to take it all away.’ And that winter, everything was gone.”

The 13th Rehab Facility

Melvin floundered for years after that. Battling drugs. Battling homelessness. On May 8, 2004, after leaving his 13th substance abuse facility, he ended up in Washtenaw County and finally got into recovery.

Even then, the first five or six years were a struggle. “Everywhere you go, there you are,” he said. But something happened. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what. Part of it was the people who showed up to surround him with what he didn’t have: confidence, inspiration, motivation, determination, love.

His goal became simple. Keep a job. That’s it. He was collecting SSI, living in subsidized housing, trying to stay employed. He was a terrible employee and couldn’t hold down work.

The Garden He Never Asked For

Then someone at his housing complex told him about a vegetable bed. A friend had passed away, and now it was his.

“My instinct was to say I don’t want that damn vegetable bed,” Melvin admitted. “But I said okay, let’s see what this is about.”

They gave him some seedlings. He planted them. They started coming up. He watched a documentary called Food Inc. and got curious about where his food came from. A friend kept sending him pictures of white farmers, knowing it would get under his skin as a champion of social justice. He went to a farmers market in Ann Arbor and noticed nobody there looked like him, neither the shoppers nor the sellers.

“It felt like the skies opened up and yelled down to me: ‘Hey Melvin, this is where I want you to sit.’”

We the People Opportunity Farm

The soil analogy clicked at the end of his first real farming season in 2017. He’d sold vegetables to a restaurant. The chefs loved how fresh and nutritious they were. But Melvin realized his intention hadn’t been the produce. His intention had been the soil.

“I thought about what was my intent, and it was the soil. And I made the connection to human beings based on my education in social work. Put a plant in good soil, work with it, feed it, and it does well. Put that plant in bad soil, and it gets sick. Same thing applies to people.”

He founded We the People Opportunity Farm in 2015. Today they run a paid internship program for formerly incarcerated men and women. But it’s about much more than farming.

“Farming is just the vehicle. It’s the tool for building trust with people enough for them to allow us to come alongside them and help change some soil in their lives.”

Interns spend time at the farm, but they also go through an eight-week financial literacy course, nonviolent communication training, and volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity. They work with Michigan Works on job training. At the beginning, each person does a “soil assessment” to identify their individual needs.

The Most Important Conversations

The connections that move Melvin most aren’t always with his interns. He told me about two kids, ages 9 and 11, who would climb the fence to play basketball on the driveway near the farm. He asked them to help one day. They did. Next time, they wanted to see the farm.

Then the 11-year-old asked: “Hey farmer Parson, you ever been to jail?”

The other kid got excited: “Oh, what’d you go to jail for?”

Melvin recognized what was happening. The boy was trying to normalize prison because he sensed it was his future. That’s what he saw all around him.

“I said, ‘Hey kid, it don’t really matter what I went to jail for. What matters is you get the best education you can, so you can drive a car you want, eat food you want. Treat yourself with kindness and dignity, and treat others the same way. But the most important thing is you come over here periodically and check if I need some help.’”

Jane Fonda Came to the Farm

Melvin’s story has gotten attention. PBS Newshour covered him. And just before our interview, Jane Fonda visited his farm, along with historian Douglas Brinkley, chef Alice Waters, and people from the Henry Ford Museum.

“Not quite a few years ago, all I wanted was to be on SSI,” Melvin said. “This life I’ve got now is just as impressive to me as it is to anyone else.”

His biggest takeaway from everything he’s been through? “Forgive yourself. Make peace with yourself. Don’t blame others. And know that one person can do a lot.”

You can find Melvin’s work at wtpof.org or on social media (Instagram: @wtpof, Facebook: We the People Opportunity Farm).