I tell the story of how I came to be engaged in a cooperative study with Black farmers, the discoveries we made as we improvised our way through a relational approach to interviews, and the theoretical and practical contributions our discoveries make to literature about interview methods in qualitative research. This study is more than just conducting interviews for a dissertation. It’s a way of being in a community. The promise of qualitative research is that it positions the scholar as human. This dissertation will lend its voice to humanize social science research by way of telling the story and key discoveries from the often-unheard voices of Black farmers to offer recommendations to practitioners. How do we invite everyday voices from Black farmers to offer clues to enhance qualitative research? As we humanize research and decolonize scholarship, we can make space for overlooked voices to share their purpose for the benefit of community and the academy. Then, I explored the pursuit of purpose and the role of race in working with Black Farmers in New York State. This work has led to a few surprises. One thing that the Black farmers and I did was take our research relationships seriously, and this plays out in the methodological choices, the meaning-making activities, and how we explored their sense of purpose. Therefore, this work becomes significant because the methodology allows us to engage in deeper relationships with audiences we have not heard from. This process also begins to better balance space for practitioners and scholars to come together in the field of purpose studies. The sense-making of the stories that emerge delineates a relationship between meaning and purpose. As a result, the lived experience can be integrated into professional domains. This creates space for participatory research and even has the potential for policy and community development. Finally, I applied the lessons we were gifted from the Black farmer’s reflections. We noticed our agriculture-based youth programs don’t currently seat trauma as a vital aspect of the work. I interviewed Black farmers from across New York State and was surprised to uncover insights on healing trauma and engaging youth. In this paper, I will anchor my more than twenty years of lived experience as a Youth Development Specialist in the field and as a researcher. I will also use my research with a set of research partners to propose changes to agriculture programs that center on healing trauma.