“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
~ Audre Lorde
“A big part of what gave me the courage was the community believing in this project [Soul Fire Farm]… Hearing from people that their experience here gave them a picture of what’s possible if they were free… that type of reflection, being commonplace, made me feel not only supported but this imperative to do the work I was put on the planet to do.” Leah shares these powerful, vulnerable words in Taina Asili’s music video documentary “Plant the Seed.” Watch the full video here, and check out the rest of Taina’s album “Resiliencia.”
Announcements:
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Farming While Black (highlighted by the Union of Concerned Scientists for Black history month!) is available for purchase on Powell Books, an independent bookstore in Portland, and Indie Bound, a website that connects consumers to local, independent bookstores in their area. Reserve your practical guide to liberation on land today!
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Farming While Black also may be coming to you! Check out the dates and locations for the book tour here.
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Read our 2018 Annual Report!
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Applications are open for BIPOC FIRE! Black-Indigenous-People-of-
Color Farming in Relationship with Earth is an immersion program designed for novice and intermediate growers to gain basic skills in regenerative farming and whole foods preparation in a culturally relevant, supportive, and joyful environment. Applications close on March 15, with the priority deadline being March 1. Click here to find out more information about the program. -
Applications are also open for BIPOC Builders Immersion: hands-on trainings designed for equipping and inspiring changemakers, community builders, farmers and food fighters to “level up” our hard skills in building and construction! One session will be on beginning carpentry and the second session with be an intermediate carpentry training focused on timber training. Applications are due April 1! For more information about the program, click here.
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Signups are open for our Ujamaa Farm Share CSA program for the 2019 season for those living in the Albany/Troy region!
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This year at least 14 refugee and immigrant families will receive FREE vegetable delivery with your support. Please pitch in for a Solidarity Share today.
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This year, we will be hosting two Uprooting Racism in the Food System trainings on our farm – on Tues, May 14 and Wed, May 29. We accept applications on a rolling basis, so apply now!
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Please join us for our Community Farm Days – monthly from April-October. We work the land and learn together followed by a potluck lunch and conversation.
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Get ready for our annual SOULstice party, June 22!
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Want to learn more about our work at Soul Fire Farm? On Sunday, March 3 we are hosting a virtual info session from 7-8pm EST. If you are interested in attending, register here.
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A dear friend and member of the Soul Fire team is looking for 2019 housing somewhere between Grafton and Troy that has a private bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen, wifi, and rent under $500/month for April-November. They are willing to work trade as part of rent. Email damaris@soulfirefarm.org with any finds. Thanks!
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Check out our interviews with the Slow Flowers podcast, Eater, Lunch Agenda, and Rootstock Radio, as well as this beautiful Yes! Magazine article Leah wrote.
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The National Young Farmers Coalition seeks an Executive Director, to be based at its national headquarters in Hudson, New York.
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And for folks who plan on visiting the farm, please drive slowly on our road. The speed limit on our road is 10 mph, and we request that folks do not turnaround in a neighbor’s driveway out of respect for our neighbors. If you miss the turn, continue down Route 2 until you reach the next actual road from either direction, Josh Hall Pond Rd traveling West to East, or Taconic Lake Road traveling East to West. Thank you!
In the Northern hemisphere it is wintertime, but winter looks different for all of us residing in different places. For Jonah in Grafton, where snow coats the ground in a thick, pillowy layer, “the stillness of winter has an intoxicating clarity that no other times of year have” where the “sacred land still pulsing in her slumber is like a secret between us.” By contrast, winter has been mild in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina where Lytisha spends her time enjoying the empty beach boardwalks, and for Damaris, in northern Thailand, where passionfruit and bananas readily grow, winter has been warm and tropical. While the land slumbers, Larisa has been ordering seeds and supplies for the upcoming season, refining some of our systems, and training Cheryl, our new Administrative Program Coordinator. At the invitation of the organizers, Larisa also facilitated community agreements at an all-day NY Winter High Tunnel Farmer to Farmer meeting organized by Cornell Cooperative Extension in partnership with Grow NYC, the Hudson Valley Farm Hub, and farmers throughout NY. Our friends at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub – Adriana, Eric, Jesús, and Raul – coordinated simultaneous interpretation from Spanish and English to make the event fully and fluidly bilingual and elevate participation by farmers who speak Spanish as their primary language.
“Foresight” is the beautiful portrait Naima created to pay tribute to the legacy of our ancestral grandmothers who braided seeds in each others’ hair before boarding transatlantic slave ships, believing against odds in a future of sovereignty on land. Farming While Black is another tribute to that legacy, in being a transcription of the wisdom of our ancestors and their sacred relationships to land. This winter has been been the height of the Farming While Black book tour season. Leah has spoken at Darrow School where she teaches, Yale University, University of Vermont, the Red Door Beauty Studio in Schenectady, Uncle Bobbie’s Coffee in Books in Philadelphia, the Pineapple Collaborative in NYC, and at the Pennsylvania Association of Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) and NOFA Vermont conferences.
At NOFA New Jersey, Larisa shared stories of Soul Fire Farm’s collaborative work to uproot racism and seed food and land sovereignty to an audience that included community-based scholars advocating for Black and Brown urban farmers and gardeners seeking to form cooperative land stewardship relationships. In Portland, Amani joined Rohn Amegatcher, Edward Benote Hill, and Melony Edwards on a panel at the Nightwood Society, where they shared their expertise and experiences from the perspective of Black farmers. Amani also hosted a workshop at the Organicology Conference and Evergreen College about how to build a food system based on justice, dignity, and abundance for all. Çaca, one of the new coordinators of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, spoke at “The Possibility of Land in Black Hands” about experiences, challenges, and victories in creating black-owned food and agricultural cooperatives and black-led community land trusts.
We also had multiple opportunities to engage with youth this month. At BroSis in NYC, Leah facilitated an interactive storytelling and discussion space, sharing her experiences as a Kreyol person in agriculture, followed by being gifted with colorful flags of affirmation like “don’t let anyone tell you who you are, do what you love” from the youth. In Olympia, WA Amani had a chance to hang out with high schoolers from the Freedom Farmers Project, a collaboration between GRuB and Olympia High School empowering the youth to grow their own food and find their place in their community. Amani also spoke with college students at Antioch and SUNY Potsdam about race and food justice.
High priority action:
Farm workers have been excluded from labor law that protect almost all other workers in the country. When labor laws were passed by Congress in the 1930s, farm workers were deliberately excluded from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which meant that they were exempted from overtime pay protections. The “The Fairness for Farm Workers Act”, introduced in Congress by Senator Harris and Congressman Grijalva, would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 with respect to agricultural workers, requiring employers to compensate agricultural workers for overtime hours. Tell your Congressional representatives that you support this bill!
Support these Black farmers! “The Provost family — some of the very last black sugarcane farmers in the United States… have raised sugarcane for over four generations, yet their once-vast farm has fallen victim to discriminatory loan servicing by unscrupulous lenders and unfair treatment by sugar mill executives… Shortly after the foreclosure of their personal residence, Wenceslaus (June) and Angela Provost moved in with his elderly mother. On December 12, 2018, just before the Christmas holidays, Mr. Provost’s mom was served a notices of seizure and sale by the Iberia Parish Sherriff’s department, this time for June’s childhood home. If seized, the family will effectively be homeless. The Provosts are currently fighting multiple lawsuits in order to dismantle the discriminatory and fraudulent patterns and practices committed against black sugarcane farmers, and need immediate assistance to purchase their ancestral home.” They are currently raising money to for legal expenses, farm supplies, and for living expenses.
Oppression underwrites our food system, and a tangible action we have taken for addressing food security and food sovereignty issues 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. Catatumbo Cooperative Farm 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 us!
This month’s Love Notes was written by Lytisha Wyatt.