Wearing many hats isn’t new to entrepreneur, wellness brand owner and former music tour manager Dreka Gates. In fact, this woman of many talents is adding one more to her collection: a farmer’s hat.
It’s an unexpected lifestyle shift for the glamorous mother of two and wife of rapper Kevin Gates. It all came about when the opportunity to purchase a small family farm in Mississippi presented itself. Dreka’s instincts told her it was the right move to make—and along the way, she not only created a sanctuary for herself and her family but also found a way to share the land’s bounty with others.
Finding the Small Family Farm
“I spent a lot of time in Mississippi because I had family there…And my dad is the one that actually found the property for us,” relates Gates about the small family farm she and her husband purchased located just 15 minutes away from her parents’ property.
“It was previously a 60-acre blueberry farm way back in the day, and it had mature bushes and all that good stuff.”
Prior to purchasing the property four years ago, Gates and family lived in Calabasas, California. With her husband’s work in the entertainment field and her career as a lifestyle entrepreneur, it just made sense for them to make their home in the Golden State.
“Never, ever, ever in my life, had I any intentions of actually spending more than maybe a month at a time there,” she says about the small family farm in Mississippi.
But life has a way of nudging us toward change and the entrepreneur’s instincts told her that it was a good time to put down new roots and move to the blueberry farm in Mississippi.
“People thought that I was absolutely crazy, but my husband, kids, they were all on board. So we were getting rid of stuff in California, closing that chapter, and then lo and behold, COVID hits.”
Finding Her Authentic Self
During pandemic lockdown on the farm, Gates sensed change blossoming within her. “I’m on the farm, and something magical happened to me while I was there. I call the property my sanctuary [and] it completely transformed me,” she shares.
“My life prior to [living] on the farm—being outside, with animals, in a garden—that was not me at all. But just being there [on the farm], I literally started to commune with the land and it brought me back to what I call my authentic self, to the root of who I am.”
A Family Bond
Gates’s innate love for the land can be traced back to summers spent with her grandmother, who owned property in Mississippi. There, her grandmother raised chickens and pigs grew blackberries and a variety of vegetables.
She shares, “The majority of the foods that she [my grandmother] prepared for us to eat were grown by her…It was beautiful for me to remember that because I had completely forgotten about it. It was almost like I had reclaimed a part of my history by purchasing this farm, by being on the farm and building it out.”
The Gates Family Farm consists of 43 acres (from the property’s original 60 acres). “It’s not super isolated…There’s civilization very close by,” describes Dreka about the small family farm she transformed into a personal Eden.
By Jocelyn Amador
