March ’25 Love Notes

I think we’re just figuring out how to survive a world on fire… that it’s okay to be alive.

Akwaeke Emezi

Blessings Beloved Community

Welcome to spring dear ones! With our bodies mirroring the body of the land, the changing season brings internal shifts for us as well. This seasonal transition ushers in renewed clarity and expanding perspectives, like a rainbow prism refracting light and bending angles. May we soften into these changes happening in and around us with grace. Soon it will all be reborn into explosions of vibrant blooms, luscious greenery, and sun drenched berries. 

We’re so excited to indulge in the vitality of this season with you! We hope you’ll join us for upcoming offerings like Work and Learn volunteer days on April 8 and April 24, and 3D Skill Shares on Kingian Nonviolence (April 18 – in person) and Climate Resilient Farming Strategies (May 27 – virtual). This beloved community is made greater by your presence. 

May your breath be your anchor.

With love and solidarity,

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

Jaz (they/them) is a Genderfluid, Afro-Caribbean, farmer and heart-centered grief herbalist. Jaz is our new Administrative Program Manager. 

They are warmed by deep belly laughs, altars, dirty hands, fireside gathering, wild berries, sowing seeds, and all things food.

Their life’s work is a love letter to The Land, Transness, Queerness, Blackness- and will be forevermore!

Their passion for land tending was a seed planted by their ancestors that was found under a canopy of old growth trees in Oregon, 10 years ago. Since then they have harvested those fruits as an offering of heirloom love for their communities. Those offerings have come in the form of being a farm and garden educator, a community herbalist, a food systems program manager and more. They are elated that these offerings can continue to bloom at Soul Fire Farm.

Alongside their passion for stewardship, Jaz currently runs an Herbal Medicine Shop and platform called Heart Space Healing. The free medicine shop provides free grief medicine to folks that hold marginalized identities across the country.

When not farming or making medicine, you can find Jaz on a snowboard, in the woods looking for mushrooms, dancing to reggaeton/ dembow, sitting by a river, or cooking a cozy meal at home with their partner. 

When the VP family first wed themselves to this land in 2006 there was no infrastructure of any kind. Together with friends, they hand-built the first dwelling on the land over the course of four years – hewing timbers, mixing adobe plaster, stacking straw bales, and wiring sockets. For a decade it was the watering hole for all of our programs, a place to sleep, eat, and learn, all while serving as a (not-so-private) family home. This month, after 15 years of living in this beautiful dwelling, the VP family is handing the keys over to the wider Soul Fire Farm community. This first house, now known as the “Lodge” will allow program participants to experience safe, comfortable overnight accommodations. In Yoruba tradition, home is not just a building, but an orisa unto itself – Ile. We bow to the divine spirit of this home and intend to continue to honor it as a place of peace, learning, and collective care. 

On the land, the spirit of nonattachment and distribution is also vibrant. We just kicked off a season with the highest level of shared leadership and decision making yet, with each member of the farm team holding authority for a crucial sacred bundle. From livestock care to orcharding, seedkeeping to harvest, we are working to clarify SOPs and support one another’s learning rather than concentrating knowledge and power in just one or two people. It’s wonderful that the entire farm team has returned, some for several seasons, making this type of leadership development possible. 

We have our first community Work & Learn Days coming up! You’re invited to join us to learn about some of our farming practices while supporting our food sovereignty work and getting your hands on the land.

April 8
April 24 
May 6
May 13

Group registration may be offered on select days to groups with participants 16 years and older. Complete this form if you’d like to request to register a group.

May 27, 4pm – 5:30pm ET

Addressing the climate crisis is an act of survival, adaptation, and hope for the future. In our farming practices, it requires us to center ancestral knowledge to build a more resilient ecosystem and to prepare for changes and extreme events. Together we will explore strategies for adapting to climate impacts, hear first-hand experience moving through climate disasters, and share preparedness tools that can help us plan for extreme events. This workshop will provide space for participants to share their own experiences and emergent strategies related to farming in a changing climate. 

Learn more and register here!

Save the Date: May 30 – Soil Health 3D Skill Share (In Person) – registration coming soon!

For spring, check out our skill share videos on Greenhouse Propagation, Building a Planter, and Holistic Orchard Spray. You can find our entire library of videos, including past 3D workshop recordings, on our YouTube channel https://bit.ly/LibOnLand

In this podcast, rich in storytelling, history, and ritual, we explore what it means to be sovereign. With Black land at the center, this series brings together prominent activists, artists, weavers and the rising generation of Black land stewards. Crafting inspiring conversations that honor the past and create blueprints for the future.

Monthly IG Live series @soulfirefarm with audio later shared on podcast streaming platforms. Hosted by Clara AgborTabi and Crysta Bloom

Check out Episode #1 Invisible Ties – Junauda Petrus and Ysanet Batista Here

Episode #2 ASAASE YAA April 29th – Joshua Kwaku Asiedu and Bailey Hutchison
In this episode we’re exploring land stewardship with indigenous wisdom in modern day. Merging ancestral practices with emerging understandings and new challenges. 

The land was alive with love, laughter, and learning as we spent time with Angie, her family and friends, and, of course, the animals! From grounding ourselves with the earth to sharing stories and healing together, every moment was magical. A highlight of the weekend was the delicious homemade gumbo prepared by Angie and her bestie Sasha, filling our bellies and hearts alike. We also want to give a huge thank you to one of our founding partners, Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and selection committee member, Intertribal Agriculture Council, for joining the fun. The weekend was not only about community and connection but also about new beginnings– We’re excited Angie is welcoming bunnies as the newest additions at Hummingbird Springs Farm: Bibb (buck), Mizuna (doe), Endive (doe), Arugula (doe), and Radicchio (buck), all adorable Blanc De Hotot and Californian hybrids. They’ll be raised for meat production for the farm and community. Bibb and Arugula are friendly, Endive is shy but irresistibly cute, and Mizuna, with her perfectly winged eyeliner, is truly a diva!

We are in perilous times, dear ones. We are witnessing the cruel and unlawful detention of beloved community members born outside of the borders of this nation. We are seeing funding freezes on essential programs run by the USDA, FSA, EPA, and NRCS resulting in major disruptions to our important community work. The hard-won debt relief for farmers in the Inflation Reduction Act is frozen. Free speech is being muzzled in the backlash against “DEI” and climate healing. Many of us are so overwhelmed or fearful that we are stuck in a freeze response. We want to share a few ideas for ways to get unstuck and continue to persevere. Remember under the horrors of enslavement, our ancestors braided seeds into their hair believing in a future on the land, and so we must emulate that fortitude and foresight. Here are 7 things we can do to resist. 

• Deepen your mindfulness and spiritual practices in community – pray, meditate, shake, sing, cry, and dance together with others. We will get through!
• Follow accounts that tell the truth, and heed their action alerts: @aclu_nationwide @naacp @splcenter @brennancenter @propublica @humanrightswatch @factcheckdotorg @civilrightsorg
• Call your representatives. Check out @5calls for issues, scripts, and guidelines. 
• Are you a farmer impacted by POTUS executive orders? Fill out this form to be connected to resources that can help you. 
• Protect your neighbors from ICE. Check out this know your rights resource. 
• Participate in and support coordinated boycotts, strikes, tech activism, and other forms of civil disobedience. Noncooperation is key to disrupting authoritarianism. 
• Do not comply in advance! Root deeply and continue to do your important work. 

Much love and gratitude to the wonderful Soul Fire team and all those whose hearts they have touched. The 2024 Farmer Immersion program changed my life and I will carry that magic with me from this day until my last days.

I’m Miles Wood and this is what’s been moving for me:

I’m currently one of the Farm Managers at Keep Growing Detroit. 

Michigan Food Sovereignty Collaborative Network is something that I am so blessed to be a part of. I get to work with incredible Black food system leaders across the state of Michigan. Our Mission is to create a Black food ecosystem which promotes self determination + cooperative actions that influence people to make educated + equitable choices within the food systems. 

The challenges faced by melanated farmers are numerous and interconnected. My mom always told me the best way to change things I don’t like is to get involved. Thus Free the Land Farm was born. 

Stewarding Anishinaabe land in Detroit, Michigan  
The Prophecy of the Seven Fires of the Anishinaabe 

They are also in search of a Land Stewardship Coordinator, Seasonal Land Steward, Admin and Community Engagement Steward and Ecological Restoration Consultant for their Red Fox Ravine preserve. Application deadlines are approaching and full details can be found at https://kingstonlandtrust.org/opportunities

Community Work & Learn Day April 8, 2025 @ 10:00 am – 3:30 pm & April 24, 2025  10:00 am – 3:30 pm Volunteer at Soul Fire Farm to learn about some of our farming practices while supporting our work and getting your hands on the land. Each One, Teach One. Many Hands Make Light Work. Register

Berkshire Community College Presentation & Workshop w/ Leah | April 10, 2025  2:00 pm – 3:30 pm | The Earthseed Speaker and Skillshare honoring Octavia E. Butler at BCC is an inspiring, accessible, and engaging event that brings experts from a variety of fields and experiences who provide unique insights into overcoming local and global challenges. Register

Kingian Nonviolence Training w/ Kazu Haga | April 18, 2025  9:30 am – 4:30 pm Soul Fire Farm (in person) Join Kazu Haga to learn how to practice Kingian nonviolence, conflict transformation, and radical love in this time of societal collapse. Register

• Soul Fire in the City Hudson Mohawk Magazine
• Black Farmers Cultivating Change GOODEE

Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Sower

“Seed to tree, tree to forest; Rain to river, river to sea; Grubs to bees, bees to swarm. From one, many; from many, one; Forever uniting, growing, dissolving— forever Changing. The universe is God’s self-portrait.”