“Sowing a seed is an inherently hopeful act. It sends a message to the universe that you believe that a delicious future is possible, even if the journey ahead looks uncertain.”
~ From Claire Ratinon’s beautiful newsletter, which you can sign up for here
Emet and Leah during a land ceremony.
This pandemic is a trying time for most of us, rife with concerns about physical health and mental wellbeing, economic insecurity, and uncertainty for the future. We find that during these times, the land calls to us to hope for new possibilities we can manifest when we allow ourselves to reimagine and dream of new systems and ways of being. The land nourishes us with both food and lessons about how to connect with our human and non-human siblings in dignified and reciprocal ways. A few weeks ago, team members Leah, Emet, Kai, Brooke, Jonah, Neshima, and Justin held a ceremony to honor the land and ask for a fruitful harvest. The Vodun deity of the farm is named Azaka and we honored that force with a machete dance, songs, offerings of maize, and an immersion in the frigid pond. Then, last week, we opened our season with our first direct seeding ritual of the season; we seeded peas while singing “thank you for this land, this healing land.” Chris Bolden-Newsome taught us that putting the seeds in your mouth for a moment before planting infuses the seed with your ase, your spiritual force, and connects you to the plant. Ritual and ceremony serves as a way for us to honor and give thanks to the land and our ancestors – our teachers – and opens us up to receive divine transmissions and lessons.
Resources related to COVID-19:
- Check out this Food & Land Sovereignty Resource List for COVID-19 compiled by Soul Fire Farm, Black Farmer Fund, and Northeast Farmers of Color with hundreds of resources to support BIPOC Farmers in navigating the pandemic.
- Here is a list of policy platforms from other food justice and food sovereignty-focused organizations, compiled by Larisa:
- Food Chain Workers Alliance statement about food workers
- National Family Farm Coalition Policy Platform
- Farmworker Association of Florida Statement on COVID-19
- Farm Workers Alliance / Food Chain Workers Policy Demands Letter
- United Farm Workers Policy Statement and Open Letter to the Agricultural Industry
- Via Campesina Member Statements
- BIPOC Farmers Community Skillshare on COVID-19 is a collaboration between Soul Fire Farm, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, Black Farmer Fund, HEAL Food Alliance, and the Castanea Fellowship. These virtual skillshares are every other Sunday and are streamed on Facebook live. You can learn more about these skillshares and how to join these calls here.
- Many people in our community have been asking for “how to” farming and gardening resources, including videos and online tutorials. We want to share this ever-growing list of BIPOC-led “how to” videos, gardening projects, and online learning resources.
- Ask a Sista Farmer! Are you ready to grow your own food and medicine for self-reliance and community resilience? Every Friday experienced Black womxn farmers answer your call-in questions about gardening, livestock, agroforestry, plant medicine, and food preservation. This event is FREE! And, if you have capacity, please donate to the farms of the presenters or a Black farmer near you. More info about the event and how to participate here. Linked here are recordings of episodes one, two, three, and four.
- Read about Soul Fire Farms’s COVID-19 Response and our COVID-19 Press Release.
Upcoming deadlines:
- Building Immersion applications are due by May 1! Join us for a weeklong, hands-on training at Soul Fire Farm for BIPOC folks and folks in the LQBTQIA community to level up our carpentry and building skills. Learn more here.
- Las solicitudes para La Inmersión Agrícola Soul Fire en Español del 6 al 10 de septiembre (5 días) se han extendido. Las solicitudes cierran el 1 de mayo. Todas las solicitudes recibidas después del mediodía del 1 de mayo se incluirán automáticamente en la lista de espera. Lea la descripción completa del programa aquí y aplicar al programa aquí.
- The application deadline has been extended for the Soul Fire Farming Immersion en Español. Applications close May 1st. Please help spread the word! Learn more here and apply to the program here.
- Soul Fire In the City: “To Free Ourselves We Must Feed Ourselves!” In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, it is essential that we grow our own food and medicine towards self-reliance and community resilience. Soul Fire Farm is offering materials, labor, and guidance to support folks in the 518 in establishing 34+ raised-bed gardens outside of their homes this spring. You can donate here to support this project.
Other announcements:
- 2019 was teeming with inspiration! Read our 2019 Annual Report, beautifully put together by Damaris Miller!
- Farming While Black is available for purchase on Powell Books, an independent bookstore in Portland, and Indie Bound, a website that connects consumers to local, independent bookstores in their area.
- All public gatherings on the farm are cancelled through May 15, 2020. Therefore we are pushing our first monthly community farm day to May 16th. Please watch your email for updates!
- Learn more about our work by checking out our features in Yes Magazine, The NY Times, Civil Eats, Grist, WHYY, this article written by Owen Taylor of TrueLove Seeds, and this Data For Progress memo co-written by Leah.
- And for folks who plan on visiting the farm, please drive slowly on our road. The speed limit on our road is 10 mph, and we request that folks do not turn around in a neighbor’s driveway out of respect for our neighbors. If you miss the turn, continue down Route 2 until you reach the next actual road from either direction, Josh Hall Pond Rd traveling West to East, or Taconic Lake Road traveling East to West. Thank you!
Cheryl spreading compost in our high tunnel.
The need for social distancing has certainly been challenging. Not being able to visit loved ones is difficult and many of us miss face-to-face interaction. A powerful lesson we are receiving from the land as we necessarily shift how we work together on the farm to complete tasks is that we can be creative with how we foster connection. We may have to work in separate parts of the farm to maintain distance but we can still play music and sing songs as we work. Even though we are limiting visitors to the farm, folks are still supporting our work from afar. We are incredibly grateful to our friend David Byrnes for mailing us ramps, or wild onions, to get a patch started in our forest, and to our friend Leah Wesselmann for donating the ostrich fern crowns to us to also grow in our forest. We have been blessed with assistance from neighbors and coworkers like Brooke and Cheryl in mulching, planting, and spreading compost these last few weeks. Emet and Neshima have also been integral to keeping to our seeding schedule in the greenhouse. We are excited about the hundreds of strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, and elderberry plants that are going into the ground this week.
Justin with his Kunekune pigs.
Justin has been raising pigs for years and introduced his pigs to our farm ecosystem a few weeks ago. Kunekune pigs are medium-sized and sweet-tempered pigs originally from New Zealand that are thought to be a cross between Berkshire, Poland China and possibly Gloucester Old Spots. Pigs thrive in forested areas as animals who do not sweat and need shade to keep cool also have access to insects, roots, and other plants and critters in the forest that can supplement their diet. Additionally, Justin is awaiting the arrival of our bees and our first batch of chicks, who will be living in our completed equipment shed brooder.
Kai, a member of our infrastructure team.
Jonah has been busy managing multiple crews, contractors, deliveries, materials ordering, research, quality control, design, architects, and engineers with Kai working alongside him, once a week every month. In addition to the completed equipment shed, other exciting infrastructure projects are underway. Our first septic system, originally built for the needs of four residents, is currently being updated to now accommodate the thousands of visitors we receive every year. The bath house we built for program participants is almost complete. Our west field high tunnel has new plastic, polycarbonate end walls, sliding doors and vents. And we hope that by May the duplex cabin we are building for employees will be ready for folks to move into.
We built a garden for Ronya Jackson and her family in Troy, NY.
At Soul Fire Farm we believe that “to free ourselves we must feed ourselves,” and the challenges the COVID-19 outbreak is posing to our communities exemplify the need for collective food sovereignty, particularly for Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities who were already impacted by food apartheid before the pandemic. Home and community gardening can fill gaps in food access while bolstering longer term community food sovereignty, so through our Soul Fire in the City initiative we are offering materials, labor, and guidance to support folks in the Capital District to establish raised-bed gardens. Last week we built a garden with Ronya Jackson and her family. This build also served as a training session for staff new to the program to learn how to site, build, and plant the gardens. Shout out to Kiani and Naima for coordinating Soul Fire in the City, to Larisa for reaching out to community partners, to Leah for training and fundraising for the program, and of course to Amani Olugbala for founding “Soul Fire in the City!”
Oppression underwrites our food system, and a tangible action we have taken for addressing food security and food sovereignty issues 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 us!
This month’s Love Notes was written by Lytisha Wyatt.