May Love Notes

I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.

Rosa Parks

Beloved Community,

We hope you are basking in the abundant sunlight that has finally reached our curve of the Earth, and finding your center in these destabilizing times.

Our hearts and hands extend in solidarity with our siblings in Buffalo NY who are impacted by the recent murders. It is a moral outrage that the single most sacred and fundamental human duty – to feed our families – was exploited in this act of white supremacist terrorism. Learn more about how to support the Buffalo Black community here and here. We also share in the mournful rage of the Uvalde TX community in the wake of so much senseless loss. Support the Uvalde victims here.

When despair for our world, for our waters, our wombs and collective safety grows in us, we listen all the more closely to the guidance of the natural world. This month has been about befriending native wild plants, establishing urban gardens, sharing propagation techniques, and deepening our commitment to be in reciprocity with the land and her people.

Read on for May updates and June invitations below.

With Love,

Azuré, Briana, Brooke, Cheryl, Clara, Danielle, Hillary, Ife, Jonah, Kai, Leah, Naima, Ria and Shay

Alongside our commitment to growing familiar fruit and vegetable cultivars, we are excited to make space for native wild plants on the land. We include fungus in this cornucopia as well, and recently inoculated our raspberry beds with spent substrate of edible mushrooms. Our friends Edible Acres, Wellspring Forest Farm, Collar City Mushrooms, and Russ Cohen donated hundreds of native edibles and fungi to us that we planted during our recent volunteer days. 

The farm team together with the entire Soul Fire Farm farm-ily would like to make you a special offer from our hearts. As you know, nearly one million people have died from COVID-19 in this country alone since the start of the pandemic, with Black, Indigenous, and Latine communities disproportionately impacted. As we continue to plant our east field fruit and nut orchard, we would like to dedicate the trees and plants to our beloved ancestors who have been lost in this upending time. If you would like a tree dedicated to your loved one, please let us know by filling out THIS FORM. There is no cost for dedicating a tree to a loved one. The deadline to sign up is June 1. 

We established 13 gardens this month! After hauling a yard of compost and soil for each one, we tucked in sweet pea, arugula, and cilantro seeds and transplanted early season crops like sage, collards and rainbow chard. We’ll be back in June with the hot crops like peppers, okra, tomatoes and squash.

It makes us so happy knowing that these gardens will provide nourishment and joy for these beautiful families. Our final garden beds were built adjacent to the South End Grocery, a new Black-owned spot in the shell of an old Mcdonald’s in the very neighborhood where the idea for Soul Fire Farm was born. Previously there were no fresh food options in this part of town, deemed a “food desert” a.k.a food apatheid neighborhood. 

We are thrilled to establish these community gardens in partnership with this new community institution, in addition to offering some of Soul Fire’s harvest to stock its shelves.

Special shout out to Zak Sollomon, our MVP volunteer, who has helped with more than 10 garden builds since 2020, including construction, soil delivery and recruiting other volunteers to join us. Click here if you would like to volunteer to support the effort.

May’s Work & Learn Days were lit! We transplanted over 140 perennials (including many unique native edibles), spread mushroom inoculated wood chips on the raspberries, and shelled some colorful and sacred indigenous corn. We are so grateful for the magic that’s possible when our love and labor come together. 

JOIN US!!! You’re invited to Soul Fire Farm to learn about some of our farming practices while supporting our food sovereignty work and getting your hands on the land.

• June 7, 2022, 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EST Registration Link
• June 21, 2022, 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EST Registration Link

In our last Ask A Sista Farmer, we were joined by the brilliant Kimberly Haynie, founder of RivahView Farms and The Lavender Noir! Listen to that episode here. 

Join us on Friday, June 3rd, 4:00-4:40 ET for our next episode on instagram live @soulfirefarm with Beatrice Kamau, from Multiple Harvest in Chicago, where they keep bees and grow vegetables that are popular among African immigrants. She’ll be dropping knowledge on connecting diaspora farmers with farmers in Africa. Tune in!

Check out past episodes here (IGTV) and here (FB). Full list of past episodes here. 

Learn more or apply to present here

Soul Fire Farm will host 7 tours throughout the 2022 farming season so that 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 whole-hearted stories, and answer your questions.

We have in-person tickets and virtual tickets available beginning June 10! Learn more and register here.

Learn more about the 3D Skill Share series

View Liberation on Land: Honrando la Tierra // Honoring the Land video with Leah & Ria

Our 3D Skill Share spring season is complete. Thanks to all who joined us! We’ll return later this year with virtual and in person workshops on topics including Farm Business Planning, Soil Health, Miso Fermentation, and Natural Dyeing with Plants. Look for registration to open in late summer!

On May 1st the 2022-23 Braiding Seeds Fellowship applications closed. We received almost 300 applications! The selection process has begun and by June 15th we will announce our newest cohort. In addition to the 10 fellows, 12 runner-up applicants will each receive a $2500 mini-grant. 

The budding trees are obscuring the views of the mountains and we’re feeling the anticipatory energy of this year’s programs. We’ve been busy prepping – turning on the bathhouse, hanging lights in the dining tent, and have begun landscaping the campus with native edible plants. This has been an exciting shift from our predominantly indoor winter work of construction, renovation, and design. We missed being outside!

We recently acquired a small neighboring property, abundant with highbush blueberries and apple trees, though in need of restoration work from its overgrown state. One predominant species on the site are hawthorns, which form a cluster of gnarly stems with 2-3 inch thorns. Ouch! The hardiness of hawthorns is uncompromised.

They were once commonly used as rootstock for propagating apple trees. In contrast, apples are susceptible to many diseases, and have died back, leaving the hawthorn roots in the ground. After years of minimal management, the hawthorns have grown into a dense understory.

While capitalism encourages people to hoard and protect their “intellectual property (IP),” Soul Fire Farm freely gives away our collective knowledge to hundreds of inquirers every year. When people reach out to ask to use our youth curriculum, language justice guide, staff handbook, salary and benefits tables, accounting procedures, bylaws, cultural respect easement, courageous conversations protocols, food justice policy platform, equity rubrics, crop plans, etc. – we say YES! For alumni and partner organizations we have also been able to hop on the phone for technical assistance calls. We share in the spirit of “each one teach one,” acknowledging that our cumulative experience is the result of the generosity of others in our community. In what ways do you and your organization share knowledge freely? Your thoughts and strategies are welcome.

The Praxis series reflects on how our community can best put our values into action, sharing resources, ideas, and practice toward collective liberation. These will be shared each month in Love Notes and also on social media. 

Greetings and abundant goodness to all reading this, and especially to our illustrious alumni!  The transitions from winter to spring have ushered in big changes and even bigger plans that  bring renewed energy and excitement. Check out the Alumni Reunion Campout announcement below, as well as highlights of the great work of our alumni! 

Clara Agbor Tabi, our new Alumni Coordinator, would love to chat briefly with our amazing alumni to learn about your latest projects and hopes for the future. Send an email to alumni@soulfirefarm.org so that they can schedule a time to meet with you.

Alumni of any weeklong farming or building immersion are welcome to join us Friday, June 24 through Sunday, June 26 IN REAL LIFE for a weekend of reconnecting to one another and to the land. We will enjoy shared meals, hands-on-the-land, workshops, sacred play, and rest. The weekend culminates with our SOULstice party, which welcomes hundreds of community members to the land for one of the most lit dance parties upstate! Due to capacity limits, the year’s SOULstice is invite-only for our volunteers, program participants, alumni, and friends. If you are part of the SFF community and did not get an invite, please reach out to programs@soulfirefarm.org. 

⇨ REGISTER HERE ⇦

“We have plans to expand to a farm share/community farm,” she shares. “Currently, the jobs assigned are as follows: Christopher Sr, Christopher Jr, and Christen will be in charge of the marijuana enterprise, Chris will be in charge of the dog breeding and goat herding enterprises, Bless’n will be in charge of the chicken and goat herding enterprises, Trust will be in charge of the beekeeping and goat herding enterprises, Zion and Reign will be in charge of the vegetable and herbal garden enterprises. I will be managing the farm along with soil care, vegetable, berries, flowers, and herb growth. Later on down the line, we will have fruit and nut trees as well. Making this decision to take this farm journey is one of the best decisions I have made. Although I’m not as profitable as I would like to be, I am still a lot more knowledgeable and skilled than I was 5 years ago.” 

We celebrate the 50 recipients of the Young Farmer small grant award and give a special shout out to Soul Fire Farm alumni in this list. We see you!!! Here is the list of awardees.

• Article in Fix Solutions Lab – Outdoors Issue with Leah Penniman
• IG Live with weINSPIRE Movement with Brooke Bridges
• Recipe Contribution of Soup Joumou to The Cookbook in Support of the United Nations: For People and Planet
• Article contribution in Angi with Brooke Bridges

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!