“Decolonization is releasing ourselves from all harmful behaviors towards ourselves and the planet learned from the European occupation of our lands. It means being in companionship with nature so we grow our food and we let the land rest. It means the release of excess of any kind. Decolonization is coming back to balance with ourselves, with nature, and with our Creator.”
~ Walks on Water
Beloved Community,
This is a time of transition.
The day Neshima left for college, newborn baby Lyris arrived at the farm. The treetops are bronzing, and the sunflower seeds are bent over with the weight of their seeds. The seasons are changing, as we feel the stirrings of the great transition we are facing as humanity.
This is a time of unrestrained climate catastrophe, unimaginable violence, and unmistakable signals to reorder our world to value the sanctity of all life. This is a time of endless abundance from the land, and limitless labor harvesting, distributing and preserving food, saving seeds, and drying herbs.
As we welcome autumn and the Shmita year, we recommit to collaborating with the Earth and our communities to create a more balanced and livable future.
Read on for updates and invitations from this bountiful time.
With love & solidarity,
Azuré, Brooke, Cheryl, Dayo, Ife, Jonah, Kiani, Leah, Naima and Ria
HAPPY 11th BIRTHDAY SOUL FIRE FARM!!!
On August 30, we celebrated 11 years of Soul Fire Farm! We are jumping for joy, leaping for liberation, stewarding for sovereignty!
Soul Fire Farm began in 2010 from the collective desire of Black and brown families to feed ourselves. We soon came to realize that being able to feed our families depends on healing the entire food system. Read more about the journey here.
Ria Ibrahim – Farm to Table Manager
I am so excited to be joining the staff as Farm-to-Table Manager, after 4 years of working at Soul Fire on a contract basis. I grew up cooking with my Mom and Grandmother, and learned all about farm-to-table cooking while helping out with my family’s catering business and farm in Indonesia. I am excited to keep bringing international knowledge and flavors to Soul Fire!
Cheryl Whilby – Communications Director
Getting to spend a little more time on the land this month hosting a work and learn day and co-facilitating a farm tour. It’s great when I have these opportunities to be more involved with programming at the farm because it helps me to authentically communicate the impact of our work to community and funders.
This is the season of abundance. Solidarity Share bags bulge and rip open under the bulk of cabbage, potatoes, melons, eggplant, and fennel. The shiitake logs burst forth with 30 lbs of mushrooms in one day, to be followed by 30 pounds just a few days later. The apple trees groan under the weight of their fruits, and garden carts full of their harvest are too heavy to pull uphill alone. The raspberry canes that were plucked just yesterday look untouched this morning, and the birds dive and swoop feasting on what the humans don’t have time to attend to. The barn is piled high with bunches of dried herbs waiting to be garbled into medicinal tea, and Plate de Haiti tomato seed ferments in buckets ready to be rinsed, dried, and shared.
Autumn is both a season of gratitude for the offerings of the Land as well as our human community. We are so grateful for the dozens of folks who consistently show up for our community work and learn days, and for our Solidarity Share members. One member remarked, “We appreciate each of you. Last year and this year have been rough. Having access to nutritional foods makes a world of difference. My household lost income and wouldn’t be able to afford as much without the help from you all. Thank you.”
In the Hebraic agrarian calendar, we are starting the year of Shmita. During Shmita the land gets to rest, people in bondage are freed, and debts are forgiven. This means there is an area of this land that will rest completely, and all parts of the land and organization will enter a period of reflection, release, and honing in on our purpose.
If you would like to offer ideas about Soul Fire Farm’s next steps, you can do so here
Such a blessing it has been to fill the physical spaces here with the joy, vibrance, and enthusiasm of all the people who came through the farm this summer. With programs happening, our infrastructure work became more streamlined as we squeezed it in between groups to preserve the sanctuary of the campus for participants. Final details such as shoe racks, benches, caulking, touching up paint, tweaking the sound system, fixing roads, have been happening behind the scenes.
And with all the work and love that goes into these structures, we still understand that the building is but a container. It is not the experience. Each event, each song, each poem, each tear shed, each eruption of laughter saturates the walls and floors with the blessings of your presence. As time moves on, as the wood patinas, as finger marks stain the doors, as dings start to show on the trim, as the siding grays, the building becomes less and less a container and more a story.
All of YOUR stories. Stories that generations to come will be reading and living into, as a genealogy of memory vibrating with collective history.
We had a very timely 3D workshop last week on soil health and soil carbon sequestration, led by the brilliance of Rafael Aponte (Rocky Acres Community Farm) and Briana Alfaro (Soul Fire’s Soil Carbon Field Researcher). We learned about how the living ecosystem of soil impacts the quantity and quality of what we can grow on our farms and gardens, as well how much carbon gets stored in the soil or released into the atmosphere.
If you missed it, GOOD NEWS, Briana drops an immense amount of knowledge in these 2 super informative videos that are part of Soul Fire’s Liberation on Land Video skill-share series. She teaches us multiple ways to test our soil for indicators of soil health and soil carbon.
Watch Part 1 and Part 2and check out this stunning in-field soil health test guide in Spanish and English:
¿Qué tan vivo está mi suelo? Guía de Soul Fire Farm para los protocolos de medición de la salud del suelo en el campo con estrategias para construir la salud del suelo y devolver el carbono a la tierra
How Alive is My Soil? A Soul Fire Farm Guide to In-Field Soil Health Measurement Protocols with Strategies for Building Soil Health to Call Carbon Back to the Land
FREE IN PERSON WORKSHOP!! Did you know that chickens can be part of a healthy urban backyard ecosystem, consuming food scraps and insects, and producing eggs and fertilizer. They are also relatively easy to raise and great fun to observe.
This Thursday, 9/30 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT, Leah Penniman and Azuré Keahi will share their knowledge on raising chickens in the city during an IN-PERSON workshop in Troy, NY. We will learn the basics of raising chickens, including housing, feed, equipment, regulations, and health.
Folks you complete this workshop are eligible to receive 2 laying hens, 18-month Red Sex Link, at no cost!! Pick up at Soul Fire Farm the first week of November. Register here
Food Preservation Workshop
Ria Ibrahim Taylor “Kitchen Magician” is the Farm-to-Table Manager at Soul Fire Farm, responsible for much of the delicious cuisine that our community has enjoyed since 2017. Join this virtual presentation and Q&A to learn tips on preserving the harvest, including fermentation, drying, freezing, canning, and creative seasonal recipes. Ria will share information that you can’t find in a book or through an internet search. For example, are you interested in using a wild apple and sweet rice paste to jump start your kimchi fermentation process? Do you want to learn how to waste nothing the earth has given from the garden? Then join us! Register here.
Work + Learn Days
During our September community Work & Learn Days we were able to accomplish so much through collective effort, mulching the perennial polyculture and fruit orchard, taking care of the goats and chickens, and saving seeds from sunflower, calendula, bee balm and blue coco snap beans.
Our next Work and Learn Days are October 5 & 19 if you want to get your hands on the land with us! Registration required. Learn more here
Uprooting Racism in the Food System (VIRTUAL!)
The Uprooting Racism training is a theory and action workshop for environmental and food justice leaders to uproot systemic racism in our organizations and society. We delve deep into the history and structural realities of racial injustice and develop an understanding of the movement strategies of frontlines communities struggling for food sovereignty. We will examine our personal and societal roles of complicity in and resistance to the system. Much of the time will be spent developing tangible action plans – to use our sphere of influence to uproot these oppressions. True to Soul Fire Farm’s values and culture, this work will be rooted in fierce love, courageous self-reflection, and healing connection to land.
Wed, October 20, 2021, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDT. Register here.
We Make Circles: On Feeling, Tracing, and Writing Non-linear Landscapes
Soul Fire Farm is hosting 3-part poetry workshop for BIPOC land stewards led primarily by poet, performer, and educator Jo Stewart, with drop-in visits by writer, editor, publisher, and shamanic healer, Janice Lee, as well as writer, co-director and farm manager of Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman. November 5, 12, 19 – 5:00-7:30 PM Eastern.
All three sessions are required. Register here.
Ask a Sista Farmer
On September 3rd we were joined by the brilliant Gail Meyers, offering up tips on how to set up a grassroots farmers market and the different ways we can ALL do the work of decolonizing our local food systems. You can watch that episode (#31) on Soul Fire’s IGTV here.
Check out other past episodes here (FB) and here (IGTV) & catch the next episode October 1st (4:00-4:40 ET) with Amirah Mitchell on Instagram live @soulfirefarm
“Ask a Sista Farmer” is a free online show that supports people who want to grow their own food and medicine for self-reliance and community resilience. Each show features experienced Black womxn farmers dropping their knowledge about gardening, livestock, agroforestry, plant medicine, and food preservation.
Last Farm Tour of the Year!
We have one final tour this growing season October 8, 3:30-5:00 PM ET so that you, our beloved community can experience some of the plants, animals and humans that grow here. We will guide you through the growing fields and agroforestry gardens, take you up close to the building projects, share, and answer your questions. Register Here.
LIFTING EACH OTHER UP AS EXPERTS
Capitalism would have us worship scarcity. It would have us think that there is not enough attention, resources, or expertise to go around and so we should view our comrades as competitors. We reject this thinking and do what we can to share our platform with the myriad other brilliant, committed, and caring BIPOC growers in our networks. We have been compiling a library of videos and online learning resources created by BIPOC farmers, in addition to welcoming comrades as expert teachers in our 3D skillshare series, LOL video series, and Ask a Sista Farmer show.
According to the Akan people, “Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it.”
We are committed to the practice of uplifting one another’s genius for the long haul. What are some ways that you do this in your community? Who are the skillful BIPOC growers in your network that we can all learn from? How can we do better at embracing wisdom together?
The Praxis series reflects on how our community can best put our values into action, sharing resources, ideas, and practice toward collective liberation. They are shared each month in Love Notes and social media.
Survey time!
Illustrious alumni, we are so honored to have learned and shared together in various programs and events. Your presence and authentic participation in programs has been critical to our vision of uprooting racism in the food system. We are currently in a process of assessing your experience as an alum and planning for the future and would love to invite your voice. Completing this survey by October 13 will enter you in a raffle to win a freshly made batch of hazelnut butter (from this year’s harvest), a poster and special tea blend.
During the past three months, alumni Eustacio has lost three family members. He is an essential worker. He grows food with care and compassion for his community. He graciously shares his ancestral knowledge when facilitating cooking workshops for Soul Fire Farm Immersion Programs in Spanish. His leadership and voice are present in peer-to-peer support networks for farmers in the Northeast. We ask you to please give back to Eustacio by donating whatever you can to ease the burden of Eustacio and his family during this difficult time. Thank you for your contribution. Blessings to you and your loved ones
Juniper, a land steward and alumni of Soul Fire’s BIPOC FIRE Immersion based in rural VA is in search of someone to join them on their farm. They are hoping to find Black or Native queer/GNC folks with farming experience interested in accessing land. If you are interested please fill out this form. Instagram: @wetland_maroon
- Chapter by Leah Penniman in The Organic Farming Revolution: Past, Present, Future
- Essay in Black Food: Stories, Art, And Recipes From Across The African Diaspora, Edited By Bryant Terry
- Cheryl Whilby, Soul Fire Farm and Creating Regenerative Food Systems, Podcast on Lift Economy
- Leah Penniman, Portrait, Americans Who Tell The Truth
9/29 – Reckonings | Naima Penniman: A Poetic Response to Toni Morrison: As part of “Dismantling Eugenics” a free, online convening that reckons with the history of eugenics and dares to imagine an anti-eugenics future. Full agenda and registration here
10/1 – Sowing the Seeds of Change: Food Sovereignty in the Berkshires: This program will explore the impacts of food sovereignty practices on communities through resource access, production methods, agricultural policies, commercial markets, and the impacts on individual mental and physical health. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of how local food producers and support organizations are advocating for people to determine where their food comes from, how it is produced, and how they can take action to support these efforts. Register here
10/1 Ask a Sista Farmer: 4:00-4:40 ET Instagram Live @soulfirefarm
10/5 Community Work and Learn Day: 10:00 – 3:00 ET Register here
10/8 Farm Tour: 3:30-5:00 PM ET Register here
10/15 SNCC 60th Anniversary Celebration (Panel with Leah Penniman): Sixty years ago, in 1960, young activists gathered at Shaw University in Raleigh North Carolina to begin planning their generation’s obligation to continue a struggle that began long before they were born: the freedom and empowerment of Black People. They named their new organization the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), then the only youth-led national civil rights organization. Now at this important time in our history, you’re invited to honor and carry this struggle forward. More info and registration here
10/19 Community Work and Learn Day: Register here
10/20 Uprooting Racism in the Food System: 1:00-3:00 ET Register here
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!
October is the month to plant garlic!
(& everyday is a good day for eating it)
Soul Fire Farm grown garlic, trimmed, cured and lovingly packed to add flavor to your meals. And, you can plant it in your garden if you choose!
The variety is German Red Hardneck. This garlic is certified naturally grown using Afro-indigenous heritage practices.
Proceeds from sales go toward our food sovereignty programs. Thanks for your support!