Small is good, small is all.
adrienne maree brown
Gentle Greetings Community,
Can you feel it? The shortening days, the shifting light, the fields giving over their abundance, and the quiet work of preparing the land for what comes next. This time of year invites us to pause and notice what has grown, what has sustained us, and what we are being called to carry forward.
We’re also reminded that sustaining meaningful work requires more than moments of collective action. It requires steady care, ongoing commitment, and people willing to nurture the work through every season. In a time when many institutions are retreating from justice work, our Soil Keepers Network is a group of people providing recurring support. When you join the network, you help provide the steady nourishment that helps Soul Fire Farm remain rooted through changing seasons.
As we move into this new season together, we invite you to continue tending—with us—to the land, to community, and to the movement for food sovereignty and justice. There is still much to nurture, and much to grow.
May your breath be your anchor.
With love and solidarity,
Briana, callie, Ceci, Cheryl, Christina, Crysta, Danielle, Hana’, Hillary, Jaz, Jonah, Leah, Maya, O’den, Ren, Ria, Shay, Taína, and Winter
 Meat Processing WorkshopOctober 9, 2026 9:00 am – 4:00 pm | Join us for an immersive, day-long workshop grounded in ancestral land connection and honorable animal processing. Registration |
 Farm TourOctober 9, 2026 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm | October 16, 2026 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm | Farm tours are an opportunity for our beloved community to 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. Register here |
 Black & Indigenous Solidarity Conference w/ Dr. Lyla June and Leah Penniman | October 11, 2026 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm | Black and Indigenous identifying relatives are welcome to join in learning from a stellar lineup of Black and Indigenous guest speakers and join facilitated discussions on important issues of our times. Register |
 Community Work & LearnOctober 13, 2026 10:00 am – 3:30 pm | October 24, 2026 10:00 am – 3:30 pm | Each One, Teach One. Many Hands Make Light Work. Register here |
 Ancestral Wilderness Skills 3DOctober 17, 2026 10:00 am – 5:00 pm | Join Soul Fire Farm staff for our Ancestral and Wilderness Skills Weekend Skillshare! Register here |
In the milpa, stately stalks of Oaxacan maize and Akwesasne corn reach for the sun, supporting tendrils of vining beans and the low creep of squash leaves.
Amaranth, tomatillos, chilis, tobacco, cilantro and epazote inhabit the between spaces. At the southern edge, a pollinator patch featuring hummingbird sage is abuzz with fall nectar collection. Milpa is a nahuatl word meaning, “the place we grow upon,” and represents a sacred Indigenous polyculture and cosmology. We are grateful for the origin stories and rituals Jehú and Petra generously shared with us that invited us to deepen our relationship with Maíz. The plants in the milpa support one another—sunflowers and maize offer structure, beans fix nitrogen, squash shades the earth. The ethos of milpa is one of sharing, leaving behind some of the harvest for the animals and ensuring the winged ones have their flowers. Ceci, Eustacio, Dani, and friends designed and tended this milpa all season, culminating in a bilingual Spanish-English maize cooking event. During the cooking workshop, Mari and her daughter Yiyi Mendoza taught us how to prepare tamales from fresh maize, the process for using the husks in cooking, and the method for grinding salsa with a traditional mortar and pestle. Cooking over an open fire, the full milpa circle of prayer to planting to tending to harvest to nourishment came round to close.
Meat Processing Program | Open to all |
Friday – October 9th, 2026 | 9am – 4pm
Registration open! Get your tickets: here!
Join us for an immersive, day-long workshop grounded in ancestral land connection and sacred stewardship. This training invites participants to be in relationship with the land and her ecosystems by honoring the lives of the animals that nourish our communities while learning the foundational skills of small-scale sheep processing. It is designed for aspiring livestock stewards, farmers, and community members seeking to ground their food choices in ecological connection and practical skill. No prior experience is required, but participants should come prepared for physical, hands-on labor and emotional engagement with the slaughtering, butchering, and hide preserving process.
In this workshop you will learn:
- Different methods for sheep processing (halal, stun gun, etc)
- How to skin a sheep
- Primal Cuts
- Preserving the hide
Community Work & Learns
The seasons are changing and so is the land. We have four opportunities to visit the farm including our gleaning day on October 24.
Join us for the last two farm tours of the season!
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.
Ancestral Wilderness Skills 3D
Saturday – October 17th, 2026
Registration open! Get your tickets: here!
Usher in the wisdom of the ancestors during our full-day Ancestral Wilderness Skills weekend Skillshare! Want to learn to build a fire in the woods, how to forage for edible plants? How about diving into the magic of mushrooms? This 3D is an opportunity to equip yourself with tangible survival and preparedness skills alongside other BIPOC folks in your community! What could be better?
Cultivating Resistance Quilombo at Soul Fire!
Thank you to the community of teachers, healers, musicians, spiritual leaders, farmers, workers, dancers, poets and freedom fighters who came together for Cultivating Resistance. Together we lived into what liberation looks and feels like. We are powerful beyond imagination when we are authentically connected to each other in solidarity across identities. We draw on the wisdom and lineages of freedom fighters before and root ourselves in the land as kin. She is not a place or thing, but our family, holding us tenderly, teaching us generously, and protecting us fiercely. We remember we are always connected. We are connected.
Thank you to Mestre Chorao, Taganyahu Swaby, Deise Costa, Baba Ifasanmi, Bana Enroue Halfkenny, Leika Suzumura, Leah Penniman, Ria Ibrahim, Merle Mcgee, Larisa Jacobson and Naima Penniman. We built our collective skills in foraging, farming, Capoeira Angola, Afro-Indigenous spirituality, reading the forest, spiritual herbal baths, and Afro Brazilian Samba. To the Soul Fire team who threw down so big with grace and generosity. To the volunteers who showed up to wash dishes, setup and cleanup, offer care for our youth, and so much more. For a fuller taste of the magic of the weekend checkout the album.
Uprooting Racism in the Food System
We all have a significant and intrinsic role to play in uprooting racism in the food system, and the good news is that there are many right answers to the questions, “What can I do to help?” We’ve been deep diving into this question and sharing solidarity strategies far and wide. Save the date for our upcoming workshops. We have both individual and group registration available.
November 12th, 2026 (6-9PM EST) ** evening option for PST and folks that want to join after work.
You can also check out our Actions Steps to uproot racism in the food system here.
The Braiding Seeds Fellowship was graciously invited to join Southerns on New Ground’s (SONG) annual membership gathering, Gaycation, that celebrates intergenerational, queer, Southern magic!
Co-Directors, Sarah Sohn and Lulu Moyo, joined current fellow, Olka Baldeh, and alum, Mars Mwenja! Both Olka and Mars led some programming and leadership at the event which was great to see them spread their gifts. The festivities were filled with skill shares, laughs, and community warmth. Deep gratitude to our hosts.
ANNUAL DIVINATION
Recognizing that we are the younger siblings among our ecological kin, we challenge human supremacy by giving the land and spirits a strong voice in our organizational decision-making. Each year, we invite a trained Yoruba priest to perform Ifá divination for Soul Fire Farm. The Ifá priest uses sacred ikin, a set of consecrated palm nuts, to determine which of the 256 Odu (volume of sacred literature) pertains to the moment. We then perform the ebo, an offering of food and drink to the spirits to petition their support.
This year’s divination was particularly moving, as we just turned 16 years old, and are at the crossroads of many transitions. Today marks 4-months since our co-founder, Leah Penniman, handed off her co-Executive Director role. We are also holding questions around our long-term strategic direction, shifts in the composition of our team, and attention to culture and accountability. We are grateful to know that the deity of the farm, Orisa Oko, is present to support us
Based on this divination, a few of our areas of focus in the year to come:
- Center the farm and farming as the core of our work
- Eschew all forms of infighting, pettiness, and revenge
- Be fiscally responsible and don’t go into debt
- Focus on devotion and good character, not growth and expansion
- Uphold our festivals of cultural and ancestral celebration
- Remember our origins and the sources of our blessings 16 years ago
- Embody balanced cycles of work and rest
Each year, we donate 100% of the proceeds of our seed sales to the Mohican Nation’s Keek-Oche From the Earth Farm.
They plan to use this year’s donation to purchase some corn drying and grinding equipment to make corn mush for their community. Maria and the farm crew sent us photos of their vibrant crop of Sehsapsing Blue Corn and Puhwem White Corn. They plant them in a three sisters mound alongside Munsee-Wampum Bean and Munsee Bear Path Squash.
The fall alumni continuing education grant cycle is now open.
Immersion alumni, please check your email for details and application. Grants range from $500-$1000 to support your food and land justice learning journey.
Thank you to everyone who signed up for a small group mentoring session this fall. There are 37 alumni signed up for these customized support sessions, bringing our total number reached by technical assistance this year to 96 alumni. It’s an inspiration to learn what our incredible alumni community is doing to build collective food sovereignty.
Everyday we continue to be reminded that we are so much stronger together than we are alone.
This is true for individuals, organizations, and communities. Our work is possible because of the many people, organizations, and foundations that demonstrate their belief in us through contributing to our work in ways that feel meaningful to them.
Earlier this summer we launched our Soil Keepers campaign inviting 50 more people to join in as recurring donors as a practice of stewardship and long-term investment in the futures we are trying to build together. A small monthly contribution can make a large impact in our ability to train the next generation of Black and Brown growers, steward land and culturally significant seeds, deliver food and herbal medicine to communities and continue building long-term movement infrastructure rooted in collective care.
Round up your spare change! Big News! Through Round Up, you can now support Soul Fire Farm by rounding up the change from any purchases you make on your Spending Card with a Visa or Mastercard logo. A few cents here and there adds up. It makes sense.