“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
Angela Davis
A sunflower we grew.
As autumn descends on us, we, like so many others, find ourselves reckoning with the challenges we faced this year. We are still reeling from the losses that continue to be sustained by the failure of our federal government to take needed actions during this pandemic to protect its citizens. We are invigorated by the global mobilization around supporting Black lives while also heartbroken by the continuation of violence against Black people, including young Ayshawn Davis who was recently killed in our own community.
We are devastated by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a powerhouse in the Supreme Court who was devoted to equality and justice, made apparent by her phenomenal career advocating for marginalized groups of people. And we grieve the redwood trees burning in the wildfires on the West Coast, for the countless animal kin who have lost their lives and have been displaced from their habitats, and for the people in danger from the caustic smoke from the fires – particularly migrant farm workers who are forced to continue working in the fields, often without PPE, because of lack of labor protections.
During moments like this it can be easy to succumb to despair and hopelessness. But something we hold onto at Soul Fire Farm is the understanding that our ancestors never gave up on us. Despite being displaced from homelands, enslaved and exploited, and experiencing unthinkable conditions, they survived and persisted so that we can be here today. It’s in this that we can remember that we can always take steps towards liberation and justice, even when things feel futile.
Support farm workers in the West coast by donating to organizations like UndocuFund, Movimiento Cultural de la Unión Indígena, and the SCGGF Farmworker Resiliency Fund. Read our declaration in defense of Black life and check out the resources and opportunities we compiled for ways to get engaged. Continue wearing face masks and practicing social distancing to protect the most vulnerable members of our community. We are in this together.
Upcoming events and programs:
- Tuesday, September 22 from 6-8pm ET Naima will be presenting at the virtual NYC Nutrition Education Network on food sovereignty movements, followed by a panel discussion with a group of community gardeners, activists, and food workers.
- Friday, September 25 at 11am ET, Leah will join Barbara Damrosch and Winona LaDuke as a keynote speaker at the 2020 MOFGA virtual Common Ground Country Fair.
- Thursday, October 8 at 2pm ET, the Schumacher Center for a New Economics is hosting Leah and Winona LaDuke for a virtual conversation moderated by Nwamaka Agbo.
- Saturday, October 10, 2020 Naima is participating in the virtual Fort Collins Book Festival.
- How can we shift power in our communities to create a more just food system? What community capital and resources can help us create systemic change in the ways we grow, prepare and eat food? Join National Farm to School Network for a virtual Movement Meeting on Wednesday, October 14th from 1-3pm ET, featuring our board President food justice activist Karen Washington for deep conversation and action-oriented reflection on racial justice in the farm to school movement and wider food system. Register here.
- October 16th Leah will be part of the Food Tank/BCFN Conference. More info coming soon!
- Leah is a keynote speaker for the 2020 virtual American Herbalist Guild. On Saturday, October 17 from 6:30-8:pm ET, Leah will present on the “The Spiritual Ecology of African Diasporic Herbalism,” exploring the ways Black agro-ecological traditions inform a relationship of consent, reciprocity, and deep listening with the sacred earth and our plant siblings. We will also examine how our connection to plants contributes to our healing and liberation as a society.
- Ask a Sista Farmer: The first Friday of every month, experienced Black womxn farmers answer your call-in questions about gardening, livestock, agroforestry, plant medicine, and food preservation. If you are interested in being one, reach out to us. If you want to view the previous episodes, they are linked here.
- The 3D Virtual Skillshare series is a multilingual and multidimensional workshop series designed for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) to deepen skills in specific farming and homesteading practices in a culturally relevant, supportive, and joyful environment. The webinars are multilingual with simultaneous Spanish interpretation for Spanish speakers. Registration is open for our last 3 skillshares: Soil Health, Mushrooms and Carpentry!
- Our Liberation on Land Video Skillshare series reflects our peoples’ intricate, intergenerational care for the land as its own distinct source of power, and affirms that we’re here, our ways are not forgotten, and that tangible strategies for food sovereignty and climate resilience endure and can be carried forward. We have 8 videos posted and counting! Closed captioning and Spanish-English subtitles available!
Announcements:
- We are making vital shifts in our campus infrastructure to improve the well-being of our staff and the hundreds of visitors who participate in our programs yearly. We are so close to meeting our fundraising goal and we have so much gratitude for those who have already donated to and shared our fundraiser! We also invite you to join us in Fortifying Our Foundation at Soul Fire Farm.
- Help inform funding and policy making through the 2020 BIPOC Farmer Survey! This survey, developed by Soul Fire Farm, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, and the Black Farmer Fund is designed to gauge the needs and desires of current and aspiring farmers of color regarding land, access, and capacity in the region.
- Read about our decision to cancel all on-farm programming and in-person speaking events in 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Soul Fire Farms’ COVID-19 Response and our COVID-19 Press Release. We also want to remind folks that we are currently closed to the public so please do not visit the farm. Thank you for your understanding!
- Check out this Food & Land Sovereignty Resource List for COVID-19 compiled by Soul Fire Farm, Black Farmer Fund, and Northeast Farmers of Color with hundreds of resources to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) farmers in navigating the pandemic.
- Check out this ever-growing list of BIPOC-led “how to” videos, gardening projects, and online learning resources.
- Our online store is live with herbal products, Soul Fire merchandise, frozen chicken, and more!
- We have a limited number of other in-person volunteer opportunities available!
- Farming While Black 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.
- Black Gold, the dedication poem written and performed by Naima for Farming While Black, is now on YouTube. This poem tells some U.S. history of the food system and land justice through the voice of the soil.
- We are excited to announce that Leah Penniman is now a finalist for the Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award!
- Barbara Smith is a local (Albany, NY) organizer with a powerful analysis of racism and white supremacy. She is an author, activist, and independent scholar who was a cofounder of the Combahee River Collective in 1975 and of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1981, the first U. S. publisher for women of color to reach a wide national audience. We encourage everyone to watch her transformative webinar series “Understanding White Supremacy.”
- Learn more about our work by checking out our features in NPR, Departures, The Full Set, and The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Soul Fire Farm’s 10th birthday was on August 30th, the birth of this project marked by the day we registered our name at the county clerk. We’ve grown in so many ways since then – starting a non-profit in 2016 and most recently transferring the title to the land to the Soul Fire Farm Land Stewardship Collective in which the land itself itself also holds decision-making power, determined through divination. The shifts we’ve made as a project follow our own interrogations into Western conceptions of land ownership which are informed by the desire to accumulate capital and profit at the expense of the Earth and the many beings, human and non-human, who inhabit it.
As people not indigenous to the land we steward it has been integral that we also explore the ways we can be accountable to the land’s original stewards, the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation who were forcibly displaced to a reservation in northern Wisconsin in the 1800s. Part of our relationship building process has been establishing a cultural respect easement that would allow Mohican citizens to use the Soul Fire Land for ceremonies and wildcrafting in perpetuity, and we are pleased to announce that the Tribal Council recently passed and signed the easement! We hope that the models we are developing reflect our ongoing commitment and accountability to the land and its original stewards.
Over 70 acres of the land we reside on are covered in a wonderfully biodiverse forest, made up of species like beech, birch, spruce, multiple types of maple, and red oak. We conducted a forest ecology walk with biologist Kaylee Reesha to assess our forest and forest management plan. On our walk, we saw several oak trees that survived logging by the previous landowners and noticed many seedlings pushing their way up, demonstrating how resilient forests are – a poignant reminder as we pray for our siblings on the West coast. We were excited to see a limited number of invasive species on the main parcel – species include barberry, multiflora rose, and honeysuckle – which we are actively removing with the help of our goat, and to confirm that our forest health is indeed improving year after year.
Last weekend we hosted several volunteers from as far as northern Vermont and New York City who helped us process our chickens. Chickens were the first beings we raised on the land, grazing them before we cultivated it for vegetables. Chickens and other poultry enrich the soil through their nitrogen-rich manure and consume pest insects and parasites – indeed, we attribute the low numbers of ticks we have on the land to our poultry friends! Stewarding fowl has a long and sacred legacy in Black land stewardship, and we honor that legacy by raising chickens and our other livestock in humane ways, including the moment we transition them for meat, infusing the process with prayers of gratitude and using halal/kosher style slaughter methods. Justin, Arian Rivera, and Brooke facilitated the chicken processing and Naima led the opening ritual and closing reflection circle. It’s been wonderful to have small group, COVID-safe programs this autumn and we look forward to our upcoming volunteer days in the months to follow.
We are 14 weeks into our Solidarity Share CSA program, continuing to share a diverse bounty of vegetables, herbs, value-added goods, eggs, and chicken with members of our community in the Capital Region. We recently began distributing produce to the Free Food Fridge project in Albany, started by activist Jammella Anderson. The pandemic is exacerbating food access issues in communities that were and continue to be impacted by food apartheid so this project, one of many that have been emerging nationwide, are part of an effort to make fresh food more accessible to low-income communities. In anticipation of the end of the growing season, we’ve been busy processing hot sauce, herbs, and other value-added products. We’ve been humbled by the reception we’ve received from opening our online store. We’ve had over 2,000 people visit the site since we opened it in late-August! We have restocked some of our products, including our Sweet Dreams Tea, have frozen chicken for sale, and added our homemade, frozen tomato sauce to the list of products available for purchase.
In 2018 we began building our employee cabins during our Building Immersion programs so that all of our farm staff can have safe and comfortable housing. We are excited that Naima, Justin, and Brooke are now able to live on the farm full-time. We are committed to employing sustainable construction practices, utilizing practices like building timber frames and employing other natural building techniques, using locally sourced materials, and focusing on making energy efficient buildings.
At the end of August we hosted our Liberation on Land Youth Immersion Reunion. It was really heart warming for youth and facilitators to gather virtually to share how we are doing and support each other, exchange ways to manage stress and take care of our emotional wellbeing in this time of multiple pandemics. We had breakout groups to go deeper on topics like the Movement for Black lives, herbal medicine, dream interpretation, did live sketch mandala meditations, and even had some puppets on the scene! The 3D series continues and has been beautiful, with facilitators and participants sharing seed stories, healing plant practices and practical hands-on skills for growing food and medicine for our families and communities. We have three more workshops left in the series on Soil Health, Mushrooms and Carpentry. We also continue to host Ask a Sista Farmer, now on a monthly basis, and we were honored to recently bring Julialynne Walker of Bronzeville Agricademy onto the show.
The shifts most of us have had to make to pivot our lives digitally have really illuminated the many ways we can continue to connect to, work with, and learn from others virtually. Leah and Naima hosted our first ever virtual Uprooting Racism in the Food System training last month, where participants from around the country tuned in to develop action plans for how to dismantle oppression in the food system. We regularly welcome students from Williams College to the farm every year, and in lieu of that Cheryl gave a virtual talk on racism in the food system to incoming first year students at the Williams College Zilkha Center. We are also excited to share that Kiani is serving on a statewide workground around equity for farmers with the Commissioner of Agriculture and is joining the Agriculture and Markets workgroup to provide collective recommendations to the governor on supporting farmers and growers of color in the New York State agriculture sector!
wendelin, Larisa, and Naima collaborated on developing the Soul Fire Farm Language Justice Guide. We “understand Language Justice as an integral part of Food Justice, as our food system is built on the labor of predominantly Spanish speaking workers from North, South and Central America” and encourage you to check out and share our guide! Inside is a multilingual communications style guide, notes on virtual interpreting, and other resources. Special thanks go to Adriana Perrichi from the Hudson Valley Farm for her mentorship and to the work of Nayra Adriana Pacheco Guzman, Catalina Nieto, Center for Participatory Change, tilde Language Justice Cooperative, and the Babilla Collective.
This month we joined organizations like HEAL Food Alliance, Food Chain Workers Alliance, and Union of Concerned Scientists in signing a letter demanding the resignation of Secretary Eugene Scalia and Assistant Secretary Loren Sweatt. They have failed to investigate and enforce violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act as it relates to coronavirus exposure in the workplace for front-line workers and instead have opted to devote energy to passing immunity measures to protect corporations from COVID-19-related suits. Their inaction is endangering the lives of essential workers, many of whom are low-income BIPOC, as well as the general safety of the American public.
We also signed onto a COVID-19 response letter to Governor DeSantis and the Collier County Department of Health written by Immokalee farm workers. They are urging the Florida government to expand accessible COVID-19 testing in Immokalee, ensure effective contact tracing protocols and isolation options for farmworkers, and to require agricultural employers to provide personal protective gear to farm workers, and economic relief for Florida farm workers. We urge our readers to sign and share as well!
As so many of us grieve, condemn state-sanctioned violence, and experience the intersection of painful and disproportionate impacts on our communities, we want to uplift stories of hope, resilience, and dreams breathing into being by sharing the incredible work our alumni are doing. Larisa, Dayo, and Lytisha are collaborating with Look Studios NYC to share these inspiring projects on our social media.
Grow Roots Miami is a QTBIPOC-led, non-profit food justice collaboration between Finca Morada (an urban permaculture farm & community space in North Miami that our alum Christina Bouza founded), Plant Philosophy, and the Urban Oasis Project. They build free edible gardens & food forests for their Miami community members to provide healthy food, education, connection, resilience, sovereignty and joy. Grow Roots Miami is committed to families in need, impacted by food apartheid, and most harmed by Covid-19 and systemic oppression, such as Black, Indigenous, people of color, queer and trans folks, elders, survivors of incarceration, and people with disabilities. They are close to their fundraising goal! You can support their efforts here.
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. 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 us!
This month’s Love Notes was written by Lytisha Wyatt.