August Love Notes

i have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if i know anything at all, it’s that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down. i believe in living i believe in birth. i believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth…

Assatta Shakur

Beloved Community,

Today marks the closing of Black August, a month dedicated to the celebration of Black freedom fighters, past and present. Black August was first commemorated in the 1970s to mark the assassination of the revolutionary George Jackson during a prison rebellion in California. This month, we join our community in standing with all political prisoners and with the abolition movement. We know that our collective freedom depends on dismantling of the carceral state, and we lean on examples like the Haitian Revolution, Watts rebellion, and Ferguson uprising to remind us of the power we have when we stand in unity. Free the People! Free The Land!

We also know that, “to free ourselves, we must feed ourselves” and remain committed to the daily work of liberation through food sovereignty. The month of August was rich with FIRE (Farming in Relationship with Earth) immersion programs, community work-and-learn days, tours, youth food justice programming, and the steady labor of tending to the soil and crops. We welcome you to read on for insights into August’s abundance, and invitations to September’s offerings.

With Love,

Azuré, Briana, Brooke, Cheryl, Clara, Danielle, Hillary, Ife, Jonah, Kai, Leah, Naima, Ria, Shay, and Susuyu

Soul Fire Farm is hiring for two positions: Financial Manager and Interim Farm Manager.  The priority deadline for both positions is October 1, although we will continue to receive applications until the position has been filled.

More information and applications here.

The Financial Manager is responsible for maintaining financial health of the organization through principled bookkeeping and financial management, as well as contributing to team operations.  Position starts on November 1, 2022.

The Interim Farm Manager will oversee all of the farm’s operations and will be involved in everything from planting and harvesting crops to caring for livestock, purchasing supplies and providing support during educational programs. This position is from April 3 – December 8, 2023.

When our co-founders were living in the South End of Albany in the early 2000s, a community under food apartheid, their neighbors asked them to start a farm that would deliver food to their doorsteps. The idea for Soul Fire Farm was born, we threw our hearts and hands into the land, and Solidarity Shares commenced in 2010. There is beautiful poetry in the fact that an abandoned McDonald’s in the South End is being converted into a community-owned grocery store, and is one of the places where Soul Fire Farm delivers fresh food. 

We also want to uplift ancestor Booker T. Whatley for developing the concept of “Clientele Membership Clubs” which gave birth to the current conception of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture.) Our Solidarity Share CSA is built upon a long legacy of Afro-Indigenous farming and economic systems that prioritize people and the earth over profits.

“Soul Fire Farm has been a sanctuary space for all the layers of my being. It has been a vehicle to propel me into a future of further healing and organizing with those around me. I am eternally grateful for this life changing experience and all the blessings that will unfold from here.” ~ 2022 Participant

We just wrapped our profoundly powerful FIRE Immersion season! We welcomed 4 cohorts of aspiring BIPOC farmers to the land in July and August for FIRE = Farming in Relationship to Earth. 100 beautiful humans came from as far as Louisiana and Los Angeles to learn and grow together as part of our weeklong program that uplifts Afro-Indigenous brilliance. We skilled up on topics from seed keeping to sovereignty to soil, enjoyed delicious farm-to-table meals and danced free under the stars. 

Check out the dream facilitation team that held the container for all the magic to pour through.

Thursday, September 8th

We’re excited to host a BIPOC Hands on Introduction to Carpentry Workshop on Thursday, September 8th. This daylong deep dive will be an opportunity to learn safe hand and power tool use, layout, measuring, fastening, and some of the basics of working with wood through a beginner building project.

We are committed to reserving the majority of the spots for women and/or trans*/non binary BIPOC people. BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) who are beginners or advanced beginners are encouraged to sign up.

Learn more & register here

Escuchando La Tierra con / with Programa de Justicia de Lenguaje
23 de Septiembre / September 23rd

¿Eres una persona de habla hispana que trabaja con la tierra? ¡Te invitamos a pasar un día en comunidad Escuchando La Tierra!

Aunque trabajemos en colaboración con la tierra, no siempre tenemos el tiempo, ni espacios para sentarnos a escuchar los mensajes y enseñanzas que nos brinda. Éste será un espacio para compartir, contarnos historias y escuchar los mensajes que ella tiene para compartirnos.

Are you a Spanish-speaking person who works with the earth? We invite you to spend a day in community, Listening to the Earth!
Although we work in collaboration with the earth, we don’t always have the time or space to sit down and listen to the messages and teachings she gives us. This will be a space to share, tell stories and listen to the messages the land has to share with us.

23 de Septiembre, de 10:30AM a 4:30PM (En caso de lluvia: 7 de Octubre)
September 23, from 10:30AM to 4:30PM (In case of rain: October 7)
Aprende más y registrate aquí. / Learn more and register here.

Natural Dye Plants
Wednesday, September 28, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm EDT

3D skill share workshops return after our summer break! Opening our fall series, Sarah Gotowka of Luna Fiber Studio, shares her knowledge and passion about plants, cloth, cloth making, color, and land in Natural Dye Plants virtual 3D. 

Natural Dye Plants offers an in-depth look at pigment bearing plants that you can cultivate– such as indigo, cosmos, and coreopsis–and plants you can forage, find in a grocery store, and even in a compost bin. Sarah will map colonialist and violent histories of dye plants and provide space to think about natural dye processes as an act of healing and resistance.

Natural Dye Plants 3D participants will be the first to receive access to the Liberation on Land Natural Dyeing video which presents step-by-step instructions on two natural dye methods! 

This 90 minute virtual workshop is a BIPOC event. Register here. Learn more about 3D Skill Shares.

August Work & Learn Days were auspicious! Harvesting crates of potatoes, garlic and onions felt like uncovering buried treasures. We had aromatherapy while garbling the mugwort, lemon balm, mint, and bee balm we dried last month, and continued liberating our lowbush blueberries from tenacious grasses. We enjoyed delicious farm-to-table meals prepared by Ria Kitchen Magician around the pond and picnic tables and made new friends!

JOIN US!!! You’re invited to Soul Fire Farm to learn about some of our farming practices while supporting our food sovereignty work and getting your hands on the land.

• September 6, 2022, 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EST Registration Link
• September 20, 2022, 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EST Registration Link

In our last Ask A Sista Farmer, we were joined by the brilliant Dreu VanHoose, cannabis farmer from VanHoose Hemp Co. in Alabama. Listen to that insightful episode here.

Join us on Friday, September 2nd, 4:00-4:40 EST for our next episode on instagram live @soulfirefarm with Juliana Maria Quaresma from Viva Acres in NY. She’ll be dropping knowledge on raising sheeps for wool, education and regenerative farming including how to start up a flock and basic infrastructure with low budget while leasing a land. Tune in!

Check out past episodes here (IGTV) and here (FB). Full list of past episodes here.

Learn more or apply to present here

Our tours have been a blast, with the goats showing off their balancing skills and beholding the tall 3 sisters garden reaching for the sky.

Soul Fire Farm will host 3 more tours throughout the 2022 farming season so that our beloved community can experience some of the plants, animals and humans that grow here.

Final 2022 dates: September 16 & 30, and October 14. Learn more and register here.

The SOULstice party was overflowing with love and beautiful energy! Highlights included a gravity defying aerial trapeze performance from the tree tops by Neshima, a multilingual hip hop / Afro-Colombian folkloric set by Kombelisa Mi, and the mind-opening and masterful flows of Kala and the Lost Tribe. Taína Asili & Naima Infinity sprinkled their vocal magic throughout and DJ Trumaster, DJ AyO and AJ Jungle Punk kept us dancing until the wee hours. Hundreds of kindred souls converged and we elevated our JOY together. Check out these beautiful photos captured by Janhavi Pakrashi to relive/tap into the magic!

Late August marks our final farming immersion of the season! It has been amazing to see participants inhabit the spaces on campus for workshops, meals, play, and hanging out. The Sanctuary, Bathhouse, Shop, grounds, pond, and the Kitchen have lovingly held so much – from learning and joy, to cathartic tears and hugs. It is a great and unique experience as designers and builders to witness the spaces we imagine, and then create, full of energy and activity.

Today, we want to shout out the infrastructure that doesn’t usually get the glory: the tents! Temporary infrastructure such as tents are simple, yet so effective. For three seasons, we shelter our registration table, dining hall, some tools, and most of the immersion participants in tents. Tents are relatively inexpensive, simple to set up and take down, and quite effective at providing shelter. Not to mention, when sheltering in a tent you are still kind of outside. While you get some of the associated discomfort, you also get most of the benefit of being connected with the land! If you have a project where a full-on building is out of the budget, or you need something temporary or portable, chances are, a tent could be the answer.

With the final stage of our campus development already underway, in the next couple years exclusive tenting will be a thing of the past. We thank you for your service, trusty tents.

Thanks to the Cloud Mountain Foundation, this year Braiding Seeds has been able to provide 12 mini grants of $2500 each to the applicant runner ups of the 2022-2023 fellowship. Please help us congratulate the recipients below:

At Soul Fire Farm no one is too good to do the dishes! As part of our practice of collective care, every person in the organization has a chance to do some of the hands-on “dirty work.” We are so grateful that our staff, including those from out of state, come to the farm for at least one immersion program and roll up their sleeves with the rest of the team to work the land, wash dishes, haul compost, and do whatever else needs doing. In some organizations, the folks doing physical labor and those performing intellectual labor can be kept quite separate from one another. We do our best to have everyone doing a mix of work with our bodies, minds, and spirits. As a team rooted in the earth, we need to have our hands and feet literally connected to the ground in order to stay true to our mission. We also all need a chance to speak our minds to the media, weigh in on strategy, give high level feedback, and otherwise share our best thinking. What are ways that your team disrupts classist assumptions about who should be doing what kinds of work?

The Praxis series reflects on how our community can best put our values into action, sharing resources, ideas, and practice toward collective liberation. These will be shared each month in Love Notes and also on social media. 

Soul Fire Farm grown garlic, trimmed, cured and lovingly packed to add flavor to your meals. The variety is German Red Hardneck. This garlic is certified naturally grown using Afro-indigenous heritage practices.

And, you can plant it in your garden if you choose!

SHOP NOW

Youth FX is designed to empower young people ages 10-24 by teaching them the technical and creative aspects of digital film making and media production. Now Hiring! full-time staff position:
– Youth FX Administrative Coordinator

EcoFARM advances just and ecological farming and food systems through education. Now Hiring! full-time staff position:
– Administrative & Social Media Coordinator

Sign on Letter. Soul Fire Farm Institute signed onto a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan. It urges him to act on the EPA’s existing authority to provide federal oversight of factory farms (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs). The letter can be found here.

Ujamaa Seeds.  We are excited to join Ujamaa Seeds’ advisory counsel for a Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NESARE) grant they received. Ujamaa Seeds is a project of the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance.

Oppression underwrites our food system, and a tangible action to address food sovereignty in our communities is taking reparations into our own hands through the creation of the Reparations Map for Black-Indigenous Farmers. We recognize that the food system was built on the stolen land and stolen labor of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and other people of color. We also know that we cannot wait for the government to acknowledge that stolen wealth and land must be returned. Some farmers have already received funding through this project, and we want to provide that opportunity to other Black and Brown farmers. If you have resources you want to share contact a farmer directly to share them, or if you have a project you want to include on the map contact Northeast Farmers of Color!