If you get, give. If you learn, teach.
Maya Angelou
Beloved Community,
This month we wrapped up farm season by tucking the growing beds in with a thick blanket of straw for their slumber, and getting the goats, chickens and honey bees’ homes winterized for the cold season. We celebrated our final in-person community building days and the last Uprooting Racism trainings of the year.
We are beginning the season of turning inward. Just as sap is flowing down to the roots of the trees around us, we are harnessing our energy to invest internally.
Please note, Soul Fire Farm offices will be closed from December 17, 2022 through January 22, 2023. Emails sent to love@soulfirefarm.org between those dates will not be read nor responded to. Online store orders must be placed by December 19th for a final pack and send date of December 20th, or they will not be fulfilled until late January.
Today is Giving Tuesday and Soul Fire Farm is proud to participate this year! We are honored to come together with people all over the world to harness the power of human connection to change our world. Will you join us? You can support us this Giving Tuesday through a contribution to Soul Fire Farm’s food sovereignty work or by spreading the word with your friends and family about what our mission means to you.
Read on for some exciting November highlights and upcoming offerings!
Thank you for all the ways you have fed the flames of Soul Fire with your love and oxygen this year. Wishing you softening, nourishment, connection, reflection that honors the warm glow of your heart.
May everyday be a practice of gratitude,
Azuré, Briana, Brooke, Cheryl, Clara, Danielle, Hillary, Ife, Jonah, Kai, Leah, Naima, Ria, Shay, and Susuyu
Cheryl Whilby – Please join us in congratulating Cheryl Whilby in her new position as Soul Fire Farm’s Co-Executive Director of Communications & Development! Cheryl joined the team in 2019 and has contributed immensely to our communications, development, and operations work over the past four years. Simultaneously, Cheryl served as Market Manager Schenectady Green Market and co-author of the Anti-Racist Farmers Market Toolkit. Cheryl’s promotion was unanimously affirmed by the full staff and board. We are honored to walk with you, Cheryl!
Azuré Keahi – We offer hearty thanks and a warm send off to teammate, Azuré Kauikeolani Iversen-Keahi, who has been a member of the Soul Fire Farm Team since 2018. She takes care of the finances of our organization as the bookkeeper and business manager, and brings a unique decolonial perspective to the work. In emphasizing budgets as moral documents, Azuré works to weave financial transparency, participatory budgeting, wealth redistribution, and accountable storytelling into Soul Fire Farm’s resource stewardship. Azuré, we thank you for your service and wish you the best in your next steps as an earth artist and seed steward.
Late autumn is the season for fermentation and preservation. Under the leadership of “Kitchen Magician” Chef Ria, the farm team is busy turning the harvest of the year into value-added products that will nourish local community and program participants. Depending on which day you enter our barn kitchen, you may smell the aromas of peach sauce, green tomato confit, berry jam, elderberry-chaga-reishi syrup, red tomato sauce, fermented hot sauce, kimchi, peach sauce, or the gentle aromatherapy of garbled herbs. Food preservation is a delicious way to extend the life of the harvest into the cold winter months.
This season, we served 2,900 meals out of the farm kitchen with over 75% of that food being grown right on site. We also created over 1500 units of value-add products that went to ~225 people weekly for solidarity shares plus our online community. We are excited to continue sharing this abundance of the land by offering our WINTER CSA BOX, an assortment of the highest quality value-add products from the season offered 1-day only at select sites. Try it out and let us know what you think! If our community loves the concept, we will evolve it next season.
We don’t just grow food, we grow farmers!
What a profoundly meaningful programming season we just wrapped, reaching 51,053 participants in 2022.
We are committed to equipping our communities with the land-based skills needed to reclaim leadership as farmers and food justice organizers, and sharing tangible methods for dismantling racism in the food system and increasing community food sovereignty.
We are sharing some highlights below, including lots of educational resources for you to enjoy this winter.
Each One, Teach One. Many Hands Make Light Work.
We held our last Community Work & Learn Day on November 15th, hosting a total of 16 events this year! Each one was capped at 25 participants so we could truly center the learning while accomplishing big farm tasks we couldn’t do alone. This document explains all of the practices we learned by doing, full of great tips: Work and Learn Day Handout.
Check out the 2022 Work and Learn Day Photo Album here.
FIRE Immersions
We welcomed 4 cohorts of aspiring BIPOC farmers to the land in July and August for FIRE = Farming in Relationship to Earth. 64 beautiful humans came from as far as Louisiana, London and Los Angeles to learn and grow together as part of our weeklong program that uplifts Afro-Indigenous brilliance. We skilled up on topics from seed keeping, to sovereignty, to soil, enjoyed delicious farm-to-table meals, and danced free under the stars.
Check out the dream facilitation team that held the container for all the magic to pour through.
Workshops & Tours
We hosted a total of 6 youth & intergenerational customized programs on the farm, 6 Farm Tours open to the public, as well as day-long workshops on topics including Carpentry, Mycology, Miso Fermentation, Kimchi Making, Propagation and Preserving the Harvest.
SOULstice Party & EQUILIBRIUM
We honored the summer solstice and fall equinox with joyful gatherings that brought together our alumni and local communities to dance, play, enjoy music, eat delicious food, fellowship and participate in rituals to praise the land.
Soul Fire in the City
We established 10 more household gardens and 3 community garden beds this year through “Soul Fire in the City.” We additionally provided resources to 20+ returning gardeners in the Capital District with supports including crop planning, seedling deliveries, follow up visits, workshops and gatherings for gardeners.
This year we hosted virtual 3D skill shares on Farm Business Planning, Natural Dye Plants, and Honoring the Land facilitated by SFFI team members and guest experts for BIPOC participants. Check out the resources here including accompanying videos, slides and resource lists to support continued learning.
We also produced 2 additional Liberation on Land skill-share videos that you can watch here.
We broadcasted 11 live episodes of Ask a Sista Farmer featuring expert Black womxn identified farmers, taking the total to 44. You can view them all here (IGTV) and here (FB)
We completed 9 Uprooting Racism in the Food System trainings in 2022, reaching 1086 participants this year alone.
And our public speaking events reached thousands more!
The cold can be such a daunting force of nature. With dramatically dropping temperatures, outdoor work takes on a whole different quality. As the team responsible for building and maintaining our infrastructure, we inevitably find ourselves tending to outdoor repairs, construction, or simply moving snow in brutal cold. However, we’ve learned a few precious lessons that allow us to embrace this time of year. We wanted to uplift a few practices for those of us who find ourselves working outside this winter.
- Prepare! And warm your core! Merino or fleece under layers, plenty of wool, and a solid shell can make the difference between misery and triumph. Synthetic is good too, but avoid cotton! If your hands get cold, warm them up a little and then go back out, but don’t warm them all the way. Think of it like an ice cream headache in your hands.
- Movement is life. Getting to a nice steady state of movement through your task can turn your body into the only heat source you need. This is why shoveling can be so rewarding–it is a good full-body workout.
- Remember to eat and drink. Staying warm burns calories, so stay fueled. You may also sweat without noticing especially if you have a moisture-wicking under-layer. Time to crack open one of those cans of greens and gumbo from your autumn harvest! #FannieLouHamer 🙂
- Breathe. As always, but a special reminder when cold, as our bodies’ inclination may be to tense up. This is my favorite part: let the crisp air awaken your spirit and give thanks!
During this beautiful fall season Sarah Sohn and Lulu Moyo, the Co-Managers of the Braiding Seeds Fellowship, were able to visit with many of our fellows in upstate New York and northern Vermont. Those fellows included Naomi Moody from SUSU Community Farm, Dioganhdih Hall from Iron Path Farm, John Bonaparte from Bare Bones Farm, and Justin Butts from Butts Bros. Farm.
They were also able to connect with a couple fellows in the southeast which included Angie Comeaux from Hummingbird Springs/Hvrnrvcukwv Ueki-honecv Farm on Msvkoke land, and Dominique Villanueva from Fountain Heights Farm in Birmingham, Alabama.
They spent time with each fellow and their loved ones on the land of their projects where we were able to meet their animals, help with ceremonial corn, clear plots for garlic planting, meet with various Mohawk farmers on Akwasesne land, share meals, and celebrate the journey and transformation of these incredible projects. Our in-person site visits have been such an invaluable component of the fellowship program.
GENERATIVE CONFLICT
We believe that honest feedback is essential for accountability and growth, and have several systems in place to encourage those conversations. Our team uses a peer-to-peer “real talk” process to give one another direct feedback on a monthly basis. When conflict arises, we use a Courageous Conversation protocol, which we learn and practice during our annual staff orientation. A witness or mediator is present if desired by anyone involved in the conflict. Our team creates and upholds safe space agreements that call for nonviolence and a trauma-informed response to harm. We are committed to transformative justice, and have a professional facilitator available for meditation and healing as needs arise.
We are inspired by the work of adrienne maree brown “we will not cancel us” and are committed to giving and receiving constructive feedback in ways that uphold our precious comrades, collective work, and institutions. We also welcome community members to offer us feedback at any time using this form. Having these systems in place does not mean that transforming conflict is easy – it’s work that can test us to our core. How do your organizations and communities handle feedback and growth? Please share your ideas so we can grow together.
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.
“Dear Mama Violet”, Bifold Door #2, 2022, Mixed Media Length: 15” Width: 1” Height: 79”
Thank you for nursing me through change. Thank you for holding me so I can let go. Thank you for arriving so abundantly when I need you.
“After The Storm” 2022, Acrylic, 24×26
We are the ones who survived. I give thanks to my peoples and grand peoples, whose song colors the sky. I give thanks to my folks that swam to the bottom of the ocean and gave me a piece of earth that I now call home.
Mercy Viola is a Black and Indigenous non-binary femme from Brooklyn, NY. They are an interdisciplinary artist, passionate about land/food sovereignty and Black/Indigenous cultural technologies. Mercy’s art is made in tandem with their community organizing and community education initiatives. Their art is a commitment to exercising freedom by meeting and sharing more of themselves, and their ancestral and cultural heritage. Mercy’s commitment to being more of who they are is grounded in remembering where they come from and the guiding Akom principle, Sankofa, which means to look back and remember. It is Mercy’s belief that to create is to look back, remember and further grow forward.
In Mercy’s art they share their relationship with their ancestors, plant relatives and cultural legacy of creative resistance. In Mercy’s vibrant bifold door piece titled, “Dear Mama Violet”, they honor their Grandma Vi’s namesake, the flower, Violet, that arrives abundantly in the spring to nurse allergy symptoms, clear skin related problems, support lymphatic systems and dissolve cancer nodules specifically in breasts. Mercy’s grandma Vi was a practicing nurse much like the flower and is honored in this art of gratitude, prayer and respect for plant allies. “Dear Mama Violet”, also honors Mercy’s other grandmother, who at first considered Violets to be weeds taking over, until Mercy shared how Violets were reaching out to support her grandmother through a recent breast cancer diagnosis and could be an ally.
Mercy is based in New York, Ohio and Indiana where they continue to teach, study and practice cultural blueprints and the healing possibility of relating to ourselves, each other, the earth and our ancestors.
LIFE: Since releasing An Open Letter from BIPOC Leaders in Food & Agriculture to Food Systems Funders in 2020, the Liberating Investment for the Food and Farm Ecosystem (LIFE) has moved over $1 million Black, Indigenous and People of Color-led organizations. We recently participated in a retreat during which we aligned around a mission, vision and core set of values. A website that showcases this information, as well as highlights agreed upon strategies for 2023 is currently under development.
Ujamaa Seeds: Our Managing Co-Director Ife attended the Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance Fall Convening in Accokeek, MD. There we learned from and shared with Black and brown growers, seed savers, herbalists and other land stewards from around the region about such topics as sorghum pressing, seed cleaning, farm start up, herbal medicines and so much more. Though our relationship with Ujamaa is long, Soul Fire Farm was invited this year to serve on the Ujamaa Seeds Advisory Committee for the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NESARE) grant under the Research for Novel Approaches program. In this role, and alongside other committee members, we will provide guidance relevant to the planning and implementation of grant activities, as well as support the development of an Ujamaa marketing strategy.
Soul Fire Farm signed onto a public letter to members of the House and Senate Ag Committees demanding a Farm Bill that prioritizes addressing the impact of chemicals to workers and communities, a sincere commitment to reducing climate change, and justice for impacted communities, workers, land access, and food sovereignty. The letter was drafted by the Chemicals, Food/Agriculture and Climate Working Group housed under Coming Clean. The letter was sent on November 16, and you can find the text for it here.
At Soul Fire Farm we are focused on training up the next generation of farmers. In the spirit of teaching, this month we are launching our first ever DIY Healing Salve Kit, that supplies you with what you need to make your own herb infused oil and salve.
This makes a great holiday gift for someone dabbling in herbalism and medicinal remedies!
BFEN Director Position: Working alongside F4tS’s Co-Founding Director, the BFEN Director will fulfill a leadership position on the ground in Buffalo.
CISA – Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) is a nonprofit organization that strengthens farms and engages the community to build the local food economy.
Please complete applicant questions and attach your resume via our online application form. Questions can be directed to jennifer@buylocalfood.org. Writing samples and references may be requested.
University of Vermont College of Agriculture and Life Science The Production Coordinator will provide management of specialty crops (primarily vegetable) production in support of on-farm educational programming.
Magnetic Fields Farm: Land and housing available on queer farm in VT! This farm has 1+ acres of land available for a work trade. The land is well suited for vegetable and small fruit production. For more information or to express interest, email Ike (they/them) at isaac.s.leslie@gmail.com. Please include a little bit of information about yourself and what you are looking for.
- Future of Food Summit Interview with Leah Penniman
- Article in YES! Magazine with Leah Penniman
- Interview in Refinery 29 – How Black Farmers are Freeing Themselves & Preserving our Culture with Leah Penniman
December 6, 2022 | 10 AM – 3 PM EST
Virtual
Creating Equitable, Sustainable, & Resilient Food Systems / Uprooting Racism and Seeding Sovereignty in the Food System
The Fall 2022 Honors Colloquium at the University of Rhode Island, “Just Good Food: Creating Equitable, Sustainable, and Resilient Food Systems,” will explore ways to reconnect with our food systems through topics including: food history and culture; social-ecological impacts and planetary limits; food, race, and gender; political economy of food systems; indigenous foodways and food sovereignty; agroecology; and urban agriculture, innovation, and social entrepreneurship.
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!