July ’24 Love Notes

we need a r/evolution of the mind. we need a r/evolution of the heart. we need a r/evolution of the spirit. the power of the people is stronger than any weapon. a people’s r/evolution can’t be stopped. we need to be weapons of mass construction. weapons of mass love. it’s not enough just to change the system. we need to change ourselves.
Assata Shakur

Joyful Greetings Community

With the radiance of the sun transforming our skin and harvest into richer tones of roasted umber and emerald, we’re arriving into August with our hearts fortified by July’s gifts. This month we welcomed a sprightly group of youth to the land for the return of the overnight LOL Youth Immersion, as well as hosting several Community Work and Learn volunteer days.

It’s with resounding joy and comradeship that we share upcoming events and opportunities, including a new social media series that uplifts the wisdom of our alumni network.

These offerings have been lovingly crafted with our wholeness and liberation in mind.

May your breath be your anchor.

With love and solidarity,

Briana, Brooke, Cheryl, Christina, Clara, Crysta, Danielle, Hana’, Hillary, Jonah, Leah, Maya, Naima, O’den, Ria, Shay, and Susuyu

Staying cool was the least of our concerns when we wed ourselves to this elevated, forested plateau eighteen years ago.

Known for its harsh and snowy winters, and slow-to-ripen-tomatoes in the summer, this seemed a suitable climate refuge for our community. And yet, here we are – day after day breaking record temperature highs, wearing ice packs under our straw hats, and harvesting at dawn before the sun’s smile widens.

As climate justice advocates, it’s crucial to do our part in the realm of advocacy, policy, and resistance. It’s also prudent to sequester our share of carbon with Afro-Indigenous agricultural practices like mulch and polycultures, and to burn less fossil fuels in our buildings and farm operations. We also need to think about how to mitigate and adapt when the heat and floods arrive anyway.

Designed into the very structure of our buildings are passive cooling systems. For example, the program center includes a root cellar tucked into the corner of the basement, insulated against the building but thermally open to the 55 degree ground – it keeps our storage crops fresh for up to a year without electricity. Similarly, the super insulated straw bale walls of the PC trap the night breeze and keep the building cool. On the farm, our agroforestry systems introduce shade and evapo-cooling into its microclimates, and the heavy mulch invites infiltration of precipitation, rather than run off. Climate uncertainty is deeply unsettling, and we are doing our best to adapt in the short term while working toward a longer term climate healing solution.

Community Work & Learns

Big thanks to everyone who came out for our Community Work and Learn Days in June. We brought our hands and hearts together to harvest for the CSA, weed blueberries and the greenhouse, woodchip mulch trees and bushes, stack firewood, and garble herbs.

Join us for a day-long on-farm opportunity to learn more about our growing practices and contribute to our mission! We’re offering group registration for most Work and Learn days. Check out our website for more information. Click on the dates below to register.

July 30
August 13
September 3

Building & Infrastructure Tour

Our site team has worked really hard to bring to life the campus vision. Join us for a building tour on August 1st led by our Site Director, Jonah Vitale-Wolff. You’ll learn about the design and its impact on cooling and heating of buildings, materials including the straw bale system, and construction of our ecologically-sustainable campus design.

Learn more and register here.

Farm Tours

Come experience some of the plants, animals and humans that grow at Soul Fire Farm. We will guide you through the growing fields and agroforestry gardens, take you up close to the building projects, share whole-hearted stories, and answer your questions.

Our next tour will be August 2. Learn more

Tour de la Granja y Cena en Español

(Bilingual Farm Tour and Dinner ENGLISH HERE)
16 de agosto, 3:30-6:30 PM

Están invitados a un programa especial en Soul Fire Farm con interpretación entre inglés y español. Acompáñanos en un recorrido guiado por la granja, seguido por una cena y micrófono abierto. En el espíritu del intercambio y la convivencia, reunimos a nuestra comunidad para una tarde de aprendizaje mutuo. ¡Obtenga más información e inscríbase aquí!

Cultivando Resiliencia con
Microorganismos de Montaña y Cempasúchil

Con Ceci Pineda y Diana Arellano
27 de septiembre, 9:30AM – 3PM
En persona en Soul Fire Farm

Este taller se realizará en Español // This workshop will be in Spanish only
(English description here)

Mientras entramos en la temporada de otoño, que invita tanto a la tierra como a nuestres cuerpes a descansar, invocamos a las enseñanzas y la sabiduría de la tierra para nutrir los suelos que nos alimentan y a nuestres cuerpes. Este taller se enfocará en la brillantez de los microorganismos de montaña (MM) y queride cempasúchil (flor de muertos) para cultivar la resiliencia de nuestros suelos y para nuestra salud.

Juntes, a través de una mezcla de actividades prácticas grupales, aprenderemos los diversos beneficios de los MM y el cempasúchil para la tierra y nuestres cuerpes, cómo cultivar MM de nuestros bosques locales, diferentes aplicaciones agrícolas de los MM, y cómo hacer tinturas y aceites de cempasúchil.

Es necesario inscribirse. ¡Obtenga más información e inscríbase aquí!

Liberation on Land Youth Immersion

What a transformative time we had for the LOL Youth Immersion! An amazing group of teens and facilitators came together on the land for three days saturated with the sacred.

Highlights included recording original songs in the brand new Youth Creative Den, learning chef skills, eating farm fresh food, making herbal balms, dying fabric with flowers, crafting poetry and political theater, exploring the forest, starting a fire with friction, devising strategies for making positive change in our communities, farming to the beat, learning how to stress less and love more, stringing garlands of bright marigold blossoms, harvesting berries, and dancing in the rain.

3 of the facilitators graduated from the program in 2017 and it was a joy to have them back in a leadership role.

We are thrilled to have revived this program and will offer it again next summer.

Add your name here to be the first to be notified when dates and applications are available.

You are looking at land that has officially been rematriated back to our alumni, Utē Petit, and her family!

These particular parcels of land have had at least 4 generations of connection with the Petit’s. Sandwiched between Juneteenth and the summer solstice Utē officially closed on these lots, auspicious timing. Utē has successfully blocked an international non-profit from trying to steal this land! This has been a 5 year long fight that she’s been at the helm of. She will finish building the structures of the mounds this month and begin filling with soil. And the first planting will be this fall, just in time to enjoy flowers in the spring. Then they will start to work on the temple component of the project filled with art and sculptures, offering libation gratitude, spirit and love.

ECOLOGICAL HUMILITY

While I was studying traditional farming and ecospirituality in Ghana with the Queen Mothers of Kroboland, they offered a teaching which has been seared into my soul ever since. Manye Nartike asked: “Is it true that in the United States, a farmer will put the seed into the ground and not pour any libations, offer any prayers, sing, or dance, and expect that seed to grow?” Met with my ashamed silence, she continued, “That is why you are all sick! Because you see the earth as a thing and not as KIN!”

Indeed, this uniquely Western (and white) non-kin thinking is what leads to both racialized oppression and earth ravaging. It is the severing of family and the relegating of others to “nonperson” status that make possible the enactment of violence and oppression on “the other.” Embedded in the theory of white supremacy is the theory of human supremacy over nature.

The dangerous philosophies and practices of colonial conquest, subjugation, extraction, and commodification mutually reinforce each other, and simultaneously exploit racialized people and the Earth. Any hope of solving the environmental crisis will require an examination and uprooting of the white supremacist ideologies that underpin the crisis. Read more here.

What are ways that you practice ecological humility in your 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.

The Stockbridge Munsee Mohican Language Program is offering weekly online classes in the Lenape Language, Munsee dialect to Stockbridge Munsee community members, as well as Delaware, ON, and Munsee-Delaware.

Eligible participants can enroll at any time. Details here.

Soul Fire Farm is located on unceded territory of the Mohican Nation. We remain committed to working in solidarity with the Mohican people and other Indigenous communities in our region.

Alumni Spotlight: [2022] BIPOC FIRE 1: Jaritza Rosario

Hola! My name is Jaritza Rosario. I started a rural farm called Mother Roots Farm in 2022. Mother Roots is in its very early stages, and the mission of the project is to transform the lives of BIPOC single mothers experiencing every-day oppression.

Mother Root was born out of a desire to take single mothers that are oppressed by a failed system that has them in a cycle of working to sustain the bills and not having time to be present with their children or cook nourishing meals, leading to depletion, depression, and even suicide –which further affects the children. The goal is to gather such mothers on this land, nurse them, and support them via reconnecting with the elements of nature to reclaim and heal their true identities.

We do this by: providing housing in a healing and rural environment that focuses on reclamation and reconnection of our true identities; feeding our bodies with nutrient dense food; communing with plant medicine; growing and raising food; and learning how to steward the land.

By reconnecting to the land, mothers will gain knowledge and experience to nourish themselves and their Children ensuring our future is strong in building a resilient future for our BIPOC people. If you would like to learn more and/or get involved, please reach out to me at jaritzarosario@gmail.com

At Soul Fire Farm, we think it’s important that we pass the mic and leave space for other folks in this work to share their stories and expertise.

Join our team in creating educational video content for the Each One Teach One Video Series – This social media series offers culturally relevant, informative skill share reels from our beloved staff and broader community. Our intention is that members of the Speaker’s Collective will use this opportunity to create content around the work they hold further amplifying their stories.

Application Deadline: We will receive applications from July 30th, 2024 and close the application cycle on August 20th, 2024.

Northeast Farmers of Color’s (NEFOC’s) Black Land Stewardship program’s Black farmers x Black farms On the Way tour

Black farmers are joining forces on a tour to uplift Black farms in the Northeast! We’re still seeking farms that need help executing fall projects. Want to be part of this amazing journey?

We need your help!

Since 2020, @RootworkHerbals has faced relentless racial harassment and threats by a neighbor. To continue providing a safe space for BIPOC & LGBTQIA+ communities, we must relocate. Support our mission by donating or sharing our fundraiser.

Every bit helps! Donate: bit.ly/savepms

PARTNERSHIP UPDATES

Institutional and Private Market Access for Black Farmers in NYS

Wednesday, September 11th, 9:30am-4:30pm
**Register here**

Community Food Advocates will lead a one-day, in-person skillshare on institutional and private market access for Black farmers in NYS atVassar Barns in Poughkeepsie, NY, on Wednesday, September 11th, 2024. The training will be held from 10 AM to 4:30 PM, but we ask that participants arrive at 9:30 AM.

Topics that may be covered during the skillshare include: the types of local and statewide public and private institutions/markets that conduct food procurement with NYS producers, certifications/licensing required to conduct public/private procurement, and procurement tools and approaches used by public institutions (e.g., Requests for Proposals and Requests for Bids) and how to connect with procurement opportunities and build potential relationships.

This skillshare is being hosted by a coalition of organizations including Black Farmer Fund, Buffalo Go Green, Farm School NYC, Food for the Spirit, and NEFOC Land Trust and funded by USDA SARE. These skillshares aim to increase financial and social sustainability, improve mental health, well-being, and community connections for Black Farmers Statewide and beyond.

Transportation reimbursement will be provided for traveling to the skillshare, and lodging support is available on a case-by-case basis. A light breakfast and lunch will also be provided.

Please register here. Once you register, we will follow up with a calendar invite and event details. Registration will close on Friday August 23rd, or until filled (registration is limited to 25 people).

Interested in growing your sustainable agriculture community network?

Join the American friends of the Asian Rural Institute on October 5, at Quiet Creek Farm in western Pennsylvania, for a day of planting, harvesting, conversation and connection. ARI is a training center in rural Japan that brings together grassroots leaders from the Global South–to exchange insights and ambitions, and imagine a peaceful and sustainable future for all. On October 5, former ARI participants, volunteers, and members of our domestic supporter network will come together to recreate the unique feeling of ARI for one day here in the United States.

If you are interested in learning more or getting involved, sign up here to attend and get ready to experience the magic of ARI for yourself.

2024 AFHVS-ASFS Conference Right to Food – Food as Commons – Leah Penniman – Keynote
Why The US Food System Needs Agroecology
Momentum for agroecology in the USA, Nature Food
Soul Fire Farm’s Danielle Peláez & Brooke Bridges, The Herbalist Hour Podcast
Uprooting Racism & Seeding Sovereignty | Featuring Leah Penniman & Lulu Moyo, Herbal Radio by Mountain Rose Herbs

The food system was built on the stolen land and stolen labor of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian and people of color. Our ecosystem partners, Northeast Farmers of Color Network and National Black Food and Justice Alliance are claiming our sovereignty and calling for reparations of land and resources so that we can grow nourishing food and distribute it in our communities. The specific projects and resource needs of BIPOC land-based projects are listed on Northeast Farmers of Color Network and National Black Food and Justice Alliance’s respective maps linked above. We are so excited about these powerful opportunities for people to people solidarity.

CLOSING STAFF REFLECTIONS

REMEMBER

do you remember

when you would simply sit by a river

and let time pass

“how pretty”

you would tell her.
and sometimes, you would cry.

you would cry SO loudly,

and her rapids would echo your wails. and that felt right.

do you remember

the childlike joy

when you found a flat boulder in the sun

and you’d bravely tread the cold water for that sunny destination

you’d often accidentally fall asleep

letting the sun burn the darkness out of you.

thinking, how sometimes,

i enjoy being a little lizard-like.

for to be human….

can simply be too much.

atleast, until you remember these things.
and i remember how when i’d hear the water,

the pull would begin…

and i’d laugh

“sometimes, it is about the destination”

and i’d try to out trick complicated paths

meandering out and over

i’d injure myself, hearing

“the best way, is to go straight through”

and i packed my journal

because I remembered

how all I wanted to do was write.

but it seems like i can’t anymore

it hurts? unclear? no one will hear me?

what’s the point.

but really,

what we are doing in this life,

is trying to remember who we are.

little things can draw my remembering out of me,

as much as drinking cold mountain river water can.

i crave it.

deeply.

something about waking up, and the forest trees are the first thing to greet you.

so i greet them, a sweet good morning, and introduce myself.

i remember you,

we both seem to say

as stare back at one another.

then I turn around and start to shuffle.

i turn my phone off

“you don’t have to get up and moving”

i remember.

be still.

exist, watch, observe.

read, stretch, eat.

take care of your body, shower, brush your teeth.

head out for a walk. write.

remember.

– Hana’ Maaiah

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