To free ourselves me must feed ourselves!
Since Soul Fire Farm opened in 2010, we have primarily operated out of the living room of a single family farmhouse. While this was appropriate in the early years, we now have thousands of program participants attending courses each year in a makeshift campground scenario with an outdoor kitchen, porta potties, canvas tents, and bucket showers. The drinking water well, septic system, and family home are groaning under the impact of this excessive use.
Our County Health Department recently notified us that we are no longer operating as a residential site and need to comply with commercial facility guidelines. We need to comply or cease operations.
In order to keep offering our farmer training and food sovereignty programming, Soul Fire Farm is building a Program Center, Guest Lodge, Classroom , and Commercial Drinking Water and Wastewater Systems. All buildings will be energy efficient, accessible, fire-safe, environmentally sustainable, and bring us up to code.
Participants in Soul Fire Farm’s Builders Immersions will have the opportunity to learn hands-on building skills during the construction, including basic carpentry, straw bale panel construction, and natural plasters. Once the buildings are finished, we will no longer be confined to the short tent camping season for our overnight programs and will be able to offer spring and fall courses. This will help with our multi-year waiting list by more than doubling the number of people who can attend farmer training.
We invite you to join us in Fortifying Our Foundation at Soul Fire Farm! These campus improvements are quite literally essential for the continued food sovereignty work of the organization. It’s about investment in the long term future of the farm and our community.
***
Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered training farm committed to ending racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. Our food sovereignty programs reach over 10,000 people each year, including farmer training for Black and Brown growers, reparations and land return initiatives for northeast farmers, food justice workshops for urban youth, home gardens for city-dwellers living under food apartheid, doorstep harvest delivery for food insecure households, and systems and policy education for public decision-makers.
Soul Fire Farm Alumni (BIPOC FIRE, Black Latinx Farmers Immersion, LOL Youth Immersion) we need your clay soil! We hope that you will send us ~1 cup of clay soil from a place that is special to you. We will mix the soil into natural plasters for the new program center. In that way, you, and your sacred lands will be forever part of Soul Fire Farm. Please mail your soil to 1972 NY HWY 2 Petersburg NY 12138. Thank you!
Photo credit: Aresh Javadi