Terry and Ramona Button
Terry & Ramona Button in “high cotton”
Sacaton - Pinal County
Inducted in 2017
From mission to thriving business,Ramona and Terry Button have brought back traditional foods to the Native American community. Started in 1974, Ramona Farms has become the leader in the growing and harvesting of seeds from traditional Native American food crops. In addition to tepary beans, black-eyed peas, garbanzo beans, producing white Sonoran flour and more, Ramona and Terry and their family grow cotton, hay, barley and corn on their farm at Sacaton. Daughter, Brandy, a chef, promotes the food using them as she caters to events around the state. Daughter Velvet is responsible for developing healthy recipes, which are available at the Ramona Farms website.
Their son, Edward, helps grow the beans From their mission of bringing back the traditional foods, their operation has grown into a 4000 acre farm and an on-line store, www.ramonafarms.com/, where they offer their products to the local community and surrounding areas. Their products include wholesome American Indian grown traditional, heirloom and non-traditional food products, all of which are grown naturally without the use of pesticides or herbicides. Ramona was born in Sacaton to a Tohono O’Odham father and a Pima mother. Her father. Francisco 'Chiigo' Smith was a farmer, a blacksmith, a veterinarian, horseman, cobbler and brick builder. Her mother, Margaret, was a herbalist and traditional healer. She learned the traditional ways of the Pima from her father and passed her knowledge on to Ramona.
Gathering the seeds was part of her father’s way of life. He would save them from one season and plant them the next. When he died Ramona and Terry discovered that he had left a few seeds of the white and brown tepary beans in glass jars in a trunk in the old adobe house where she grew up. Ramona was observing of the declining health on the reservation and at the urging of the tribal elders, bringing back the beans and traditional foods became their life’s mission. They started with the few seeds her father had put away.
Starting small they continued to grow by leasing land from the tribe and from her relatives. Soon the people were able to get the beans again and restore their healthy way of eating. Terry was born into a non Indian family in Connecticut but always felt an affinity with the Native American cultures. He met Ramona while she was working as a nurse in Rapid City, South Dakota and followed her back to Arizona when she returned home. The two were married and Terry soon became an important part of the Gila Indian Community. Although not a member of the Tribal Council he has been instrumental in agriculture on the reservation, fighting to improve water distribution to the Indian farmers and numerous other causes.
