Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
Coretta Scott King
Happy Strawberry Moon!
June is the month that the red heart-shaped berries ripen on the farm, a sweet gift of the earth In the midst of the big push of this time. As we transplant thousands of seedlings, charge ahead on the home stretch of classroom construction, and welcome community to the farm, we have so much to celebrate! Keep reading for highlights and invites to join us on this teeming path to freedom.
With Black and rainbow love, we offer you the Juneteenth edition of Ask A Sista Farmer about “The Plants of Black Freedom and Queer Liberation.” Leah and Naima share how our ancestors have used plants to resist the institutions of racism and how we are reflected in a multigendered universe.
Free the People! Free the Land! Joyous Juneteenth, Sweet Summer Solstice and Happy Pride!
In Love & Solidarity,
Azuré, Brooke, Cheryl, Dayo, Ife, Jonah, Kiani, Leah and Naima
Dear Larisa,
Those who know Larisa know that there are no words nuanced or ecstatic enough to convey their light. Larisa Jacobson dedicated 5 years of brilliance to Soul Fire Farm in several roles – Farm Manager, Partnerships Director, Co-Executive Director and is now graduating to advise the Braiding Seeds Fellowship and to work more closely with NEFOC.
Lala, we celebrate and appreciate you for helping us to be better versions of ourselves and to do our work with accountability and care. You taught us that the role of farmers is to call the carbon from the sky, back to its home in the soil. You taught us to “see in circles,” recognizing the multiple truths that exist in community. You taught us to go at the speed of trust in building out our language justice work and moving to be in deeper solidarity with the Mohican nation.
You taught us how to coax abundant harvests from this resistant mountain side soil. You taught us how to listen in stillness to the earth, and how to weave that knowing into stories that teach.
Your 5 years at Soul Fire Farm was on top of 20+ years as an herbalist, farmer, story booster, teacher, and agroecologist having worked with elders and youth in public housing, alongside farmers in Mexico and Guatemala, with students at University of California Davis Student Experimental Farm, and with migrant and refugee communities farming outside of Boston.
We see and honor your fierce commitment to land rematriation and doing what is right in this “Upside Down” world. Thank you Larisa for all you have done for Soul Fire Farm. We are excited to collaborate with you on these new endeavors.
‘“Listening to the Earth’ is a visual love song attuning to the voices of nature.
On this full moon, this human being who is all of us, is dissolving into the landscape. As she holds her ear on the rim of the horizon, her hair becomes roots reaching deep into the soil, her crown becomes water descending into tributaries, her chest opens to the midnight sky.
May we listen to the Earth as we would our beloved, to her uncontainable joy and her unimaginable wailing. At this crossroads of peril and promise, the Earth is our beacon and compass, offering models for metamorphosis, blueprints for symbiosis, and frameworks for evolution.
The creation of this piece was a meditation, crafted at the base of a tree, on the top of a mountain, by candle light and sunlight. May it inspire deeper listening.”
Made of acrylic, wildflower seeds, spring sapling roots, pollen and clay.
By Naima Penniman 2021
This painting is the visual embodiment of Black Earth Wisdom, a new book project by Leah Penniman that “weaves together the voices of today’s most respected Black environmentalists, those who have cultivated the skill of listening to the lessons that Earth has whispered to them.” Leah’s research and writing process is underway and the book will be published by HarperCollins in December 2022.
Follow the book on Instagram and learn more at Black Earth Wisdom.
Staff Highlights
Azuré Keahi – Business Manager
“This past month, I was able to share some of my experience living rurally with The Daily Yonder. I was unexpectedly moved by reflecting on my childhood, growing up rurally on a colonized and illegally-occupied island. It unearthed some of the reasons that have drawn me to food sovereignty work. It was an important reminder that we can offer the potent curiosity of our youth as a tool for sharing how we are connected to the land and the collective power it affords us.”
Brooke Bridges – Food Justice Coordinator
“Farming while pregnant has been such a blessing, but it has also been hard on my body. In the month of June, I’ll be getting specialized care from GardenFit – a new PBS series focused on helping farmers move their bodies in ways that are easier on our joints and muscles. They want to feature Soul Fire Farm and I get to be the focus of their physical therapy! Hopefully this episode will help other pregnant farmers, too!”