I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Happy Solar and Lunar New Year Beloved Community!
What a time to be alive!
We hope that you have been staying healthy and connected with all we are facing from the personal to the planetary.
The Soul Fire Farm team has been focused internally: tending our flames, growing our team, developing curriculum, designing an office, writing a book, ordering seeds, developing new recipes, and taking care of each other!
Read on for January updates and February invitations.
If you missed our December thank you letter, you can read it here.
Blessings for healing and justice to grow with us,
Azuré, Brooke, Cheryl, Dayo, Ife, Jonah, Kai, Leah, Naima and Ria
In our early years on the farm, we grew vegetables year round. In the sub-zero temperatures of January, we would be out in the high tunnels peeling back the crusty layers of row cover in order to harvest dormant salad greens. On one particularly cold, crisp day I emerged with my full bin and frozen fingers and took stock of the natural environment around me. The trees were sleeping, holding their sap still in their cambium. The bears, squirrels, and coyotes were bedded down under the snow. Even the birds had paused their singing to find shelter. And here I was, silly human, bustling about as if it were summer. I was not in sync with the way of things.
Since then, we have adjusted our farming cycle of the year to more closely mimic the mountain environment. This means winter is a time of planning, learning, desk work, and a slower pace. For the farm team, much of the winter is dedicated to crop planning, seed and supply ordering, chicken and goat care, and repairing equipment. In the coming year, Brooke and Ria are taking more managerial leadership on the farm, and so Leah has been organizing internal workshops on farm planning, Solidarity Share CSA management, and the like. Brooke is diving deep into an improved seed organization system and Ria is designing delicious, inspiring recipes for our value-add products. Our soil is safely resting under a generous layer of straw mulch and fresh-fallen snow, and when the spring melt comes at last, we will be ready with our intentionally-chosen crop seeds and prayers. ~ Leah
Winter has arrived, and we are deeply appreciating the thoughtful heating systems in our buildings. Most importantly, we strive to build with maximum efficiency to conserve precious natural resources. In the winter our highly insulated roofs and walls conserve the heat generated by wood stoves, masonry heaters, and radiant heating in the floors. The wood stoves burn locally harvested firewood, much sustainably harvested from directly on site. While it’s hard to beat the incandescent glow of the wood stove when it is frosty outside, we also find immense comfort in the climate resilience of our systems. If the electricity goes out, or if there is a fuel shortage, all of our buildings could remain functional and comfortable.
Some of the infrastructure we’ve been working on includes much welcome organization projects. Our heavy duty storage shelves in the equipment shed, built with repurposed pine boards retired from their use as scaffolding, will house our inventory of parts, pieces, supplies and materials, resembling a catalog of 15 years of building here. Our buddy Simon, of Build Smart with Simon, has been putting together some funky fresh drawers for the wood shop to better and more safely organize all kinds of tools and other gizmos we use regularly in the shop for building and teaching.
Finally, as we prepare for the next phase of the campus build, Jonah is digging deep into design, meeting weekly with our friends over at New Frameworks and Regenerative Design Group as we prepare for breaking ground on our next two buildings later this year. This will be the final stage, though an ambitious one, of our campus expansion. More to come!
We kicked off our first Uprooting Racism in the Food System training of the new year on 1/20 and have 5 more coming up this winter!
Through storytelling, interactive exercises, lively discussions, and poetry, we interrogate both our roles of complicity in and resistance to systemic racism, and have the opportunity to develop tangible action plans rooted in fierce love, courageous self-reflection, and healing connection to land.
Spots still available in February and March! Learn More
Ask A Sista Farmer
After 33 Episodes, Ask A Sista Farmer is on winter break until March 4th 2022! On Friday March 4th at 4 PM EST join Leah and our guest Mama Muhjah of Nature’s Garden for Victory and Peace. Until then, you can watch past episodes here.
Abundance
For the first ten years of our existence, Soul Fire Farm operated out of the living room of the single-family farmhouse that is also the home of the founding family. We have had thousands of participants attending programs in a makeshift campground scenario with porta potties, bucket showers, and an outdoor temp kitchen. While tight quarters led to a cozy intimacy, it also meant compromises to health, safety, privacy, accessibility, and employee well-being. In 2019, the Department of Health stated the obvious in notifying us that we were no longer operating as a residential site and needed to comply with commercial facility guidelines. Commercial buildings are always expensive, and even more so in a pandemic with supply chain shortages and overbooked tradespeople.
We needed to build a parking lot, commercial well and wastewater system, bathing facilities, commercial kitchen and dining hall, employee housing, participant lodging, ADA compliant classrooms, fire safe egresses, and more – with a total price tag of $4.8M. You all SHOWED up for us. In just over a year, we were able to raise the full amount of our capital campaign, which will allow Soul Fire Farm to build a campus that will serve as a community resource for generations to come. We have already built the beautiful Sanctuary classroom, and are in the design stage for the program center and lodging building.
Most of our team was raised poor or working class, and it has been an emotional journey to understand that we as Black and Brown people “deserve” spaces that are safe and beautiful. It has been a journey to understand how to raise funds at this scale, how to be transparent and accountable to our community, and how to trust that folks will celebrate our steps forward just as we commit to celebrating theirs. We believe that abundance is vacuous if not shared, and we are honored that we will be able to share these facilities with movement partners for their retreats and workshops in the years to come. We are also excited that we are building deep relationships with democratic, Black-led, community funding vehicles that will help us move any unspent funds after the buildings are complete. We are so grateful for your donations which have made “Fortifying our Foundation” a reality, and pledge to use these resources with immense care and alignment to our shared values.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT:
Kai Delgado Pfeiffer and Agroecology Commons
This month we’re celebrating TWO SFF alums who helped to form Agroecology Commons Collective. Will (all pronouns, 2019 alumni) is a founding member of the collective and Kai (they/them, 2021 alumni) is a current member. Born and raised in New Jersey, Kai is a steward of the Earth, a seedkeeper, and an educator rooted in liberation and healing. Kai’s ancestry reaches back to the Philippines, China, Ireland, Germany, and Lithuania.
Their work is rooted in Indigenous, peasant, and community organizing lineages, that for time immemorial have defended and protected agroecological practices. They honor all who steward and protect this ancestral knowledge, while simultaneously rooting it in their own diverse ancestral land-based practices.
There are so many exciting new things on the horizon for the collective! We would love to help them harness the true power of community by sharing their crowdfunding campaign. They seek to raise $50,000 to uplift their organizational wellness, support the start of their cooperative educational farm and agroecological land commons for beginning farmers on 3 acres in El Sobrante, CA, and to continue their farmer-to-farmer educational programing. You can learn more about the campaign and watch a video here.
Inno Powell, Abundance Farm:
Inno has a GoFundMe fundraiser of reaching $100,000 between March 2022 and March 2023.
“These funds would allow us to build infrastructure on the new leased property, purchase tools and supplies, and be able to create a few jobs for BIPOC farmers in the area.”
Photo of Inno surveying her new land in winter 2021.
Naomi Moody, SUSU Community Farm:
SUSU launched their #GiveBlack fundraising campaign in the beginning of November 2021 to raise $100,000 by January 2022. Prior to the fundraiser they were able to purchase their dream farm in the West River Valley. The new funds would help to develop their project by hiring a second farmer, building up healthy soil on the land, establishing gardens with culturally relevant heirloom crops, and increasing their CSA operations into 2022.
A photo of Naomi doing their winter ceremony
Queen Hollins, Earthlodge Center:
You can still help Earthlodge Center’s continued efforts to bring nature-based healing, wellness and support to individuals and communities. They have already completed a sacred earth pit, outdoor compost toilet and sustainable shower, renovated Earthlodge south, hosted youth rites of passage program, monthly drum circles, grief ceremonies and workshops, distributed over 200 black care and wellness packages, and more!
Pictured is the farm with a bird perched atop a fence post
Dominique Villanueva, Fountain Heights Farms:
The Farm Heart $100,000 fundraiser is mobilizing resources towards adding an ADA accessible bathroom for the farm, building a post-harvest wash station, building neighborhood learning spaces, creating a shared office for their team, opening a neighborhood Farmers Market, and adding a commercial kitchen where community members can prepare meals, learn new recipes, and safely prepare value-added foods that can be sold in the neighborhood Farmers Market.
Our online shop reopened on 1/17 and it’s loaded with handcrafted items from the abundance that the land has gifted us. Today we are featuring our Healing Salve – a nourishing and healing blend for dry winter hands. This salve bath is a soothing blend of olive oil, beeswax, calendula, red rose, chamomile, and vitamin E. To learn more and purchase, click the link below!
The Federation of Southern Cooperatives / Land Assistance Fund Partners with Brandeis University on Black Farmers Lawsuits Research
East Point, GA– The Federation of Southern Cooperatives/ Land Assistance Fund and The Institute for Economic and Racial Equity at Brandeis University are thrilled to announce a new partnership. Over the next two years, they will be communicating with Black farmers and their descendants across the nation to understand better the impact of the Black farmer lawsuits, Pigford v. Glickman and In re Black Farmers Discrimination Litigation. This project will be the first nationwide effort to understand the impact that these historic cases had on farmers and their families. Learn More
Rock Steady Farm is excited to announce the launch of their POLLINATE! Program to all interested queer and trans beginner farmers. POLLINATE! Is a paid two-week training program focused on RSF’s cooperative farming model and operations. Applications open February 1st.
Decolonizing Wealth Project is an Indigenous and Black-led racial justice organization that envisions a world where racial equity has become a societal norm.
Their fund, Liberated Capital, is excited to announce a funding opportunity in partnership with Jubilee Justice and New Communities Inc. to redistribute $1 million to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) -led efforts for food and land justice and sovereignty in the United States. Learn More
Corbin Hill Food Project is hiring!
– Communications Associate
– Logistics & Procurement Organizer.
Hudson Valley Farm Hub is hiring!
– Program Coordinator: Applied Farmscape Ecology Program
– Administrative Assistant: Front Desk
– Assistant: Executive & Leadership
– Vegetable Production Team Member: Full Time and Permanent
Future Harvest is Hiring an Executive Director. The executive director is responsible for managing all aspects of the organization and will report to the board of directors.
Black Farmer Fund is currently seeking a full-time Administrative Associate to support across the organization with administrative tasks connected to coordination, operations, and finance. A qualified candidate will be expected to have experience with performing administrative tasks for a small team at a non-profit organization. A full description can be found here and questions can be directed to careers@blackfarmerfund.com
- Virtual panel with the Agricultural Justice Project on How to be a Fair Farm Employer with Leah Penniman
- VICE Media feature Munchies Segment with Brooke Bridges, Ria Ibrahim, Leah Penniman, Azure Keahi, and Cheryl Whilby (pictured)
- Naima Penniman performs the opening poem, “Miraculous,” filmed at Soul Fire Farm for this one hour tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr produced by by NYS & PBS
- Stepping Into Truth podcast episode with Leah Penniman
Upcoming Events
January 28th, 2022 – 2:30 PM EST
Pasa Sustainable Agriculture Conference
Leah Penniman – Sowing Seeds of Racial Justice
The dominant systems in U.S. society are based on exploitation of the Earth and her peoples. As sustainable farmers, we are well versed in challenging these systems as they relate to agroecology, but how do we extrapolate our values into the human and societal sphere? Learn More and Register
February 3rd, 2022 – 7 PM EST
Trumball Library System
Ife Kilimanjaro – What is Food Security?
What is a food desert? What is food aparthied? How does access or lack of access to fresh and nutritious foods affect a community?
Ife Kilimanjaro, Ph.D. and Co-Executive Director of Soul Fire Farm and Melissa Spiesman of Food Rescue US will discuss historical practices that have led to our current food systems and how local communities can help to change the system by working with and for their neighbors. Understanding historical policies and practices is a great step in creating space for a new conversation regarding food security and a healthy future for all. Learn More
February 17th, 2022 – 1 PM EST
The University of Kansas
Leah Penniman – The Power of Food Sovereignty Climate change is often discussed scientifically, but the work of responding to the urgency of climate change requires many voices. Leah Penniman joins Cody Haynes – Douglas County Grower and Food Policy Activist to weigh in on the conversation. Register
February 24th, 2022 – 6 PM EST
Soil Builders – NYS Growers of Color
Briana Alfaro
The Soil Builders story-sharing event will provide an opportunity for growers of color in NYS to learn how turn a personal story into compelling testimony that can be used to advocate for equitable agricultural policy at the local, state, and national level. We will have time to workshop stories, individually and in pairs. There will also be time for story-sharing with the entire group. No pre-work is required, but we have offered some prompts to spark some reflections. Register
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!