Zachari was recently featured in the Allstate “Stories Worth Telling” Black History Month Campaign speaking about complex relationship to land and place shared by all black people, farmers and non-farmers. (via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbHXx_zb_VU)
Sometimes when you reach out into the universe something, or someone of similar composition reaches back. That’s happening a lot more these days. This is how I “met” Kai Wingo, mother, mycologist and founder of Kultured Mushrooms in Cleveland, Ohio. I searched facebook for other black mushroom farmers and found Kai. We’re never met face to face but Kai’s story is so compelling that I feel like I know her and have already learned so much from her example. Such is plasmogamy.
Kai’s entree into growing mushrooms and building a community run business came after she lost her job. Growing mushrooms is now her fulltime second career and passion. Along with it, came some community building wisdom and a love for outdoorsing. Our favorites. Kai was kind enough to take some time to answer our quirky questions and inspire us a little in the process.
KW: Yes. That’s probably what also makes them some of the strangest organisms known. I mean we all have a story to tell about a relative who is the most unique phenomenon anyone has ever met. They are excellent at being the most efficient primary digesters and reproduce like nobody’s business. At the same time, they can do it in a way that brings the least amount of harm to their environment and can restore balance when nature gets out of whack. If we could learn from them to use our “brain” to figure out how to use our resources around us in the best possible way, forming symbiotic relationships with trees and other plant life, we could learn how live a good life.
GSF: You’ve talked before about being the only mushroom farmer growing in your area or at your scale. I think I originally reached out super eager to meet another black person doing something similar. Since then, I’ve met two other black mushroom farmers and am foraging for more. What changes about your practice when you find out you’re not alone? Asking for a friend.
KW: We are the first and only mushroom farm in Cleveland, established specifically to market mushrooms. I am sure there are other black people out there enjoying the benefits of fungi but not many of us are vocal about it so it does sometime feel like we are alone. But I think it’s great to find others, we can swap techniques, spores or mycelium, increase awareness, and strengthen fungal partnerships to become a stronger mushroom community. Many of our people are unknowingly in a state of disparity and, I believe doors will begin to open, when and if it hits the mainstream black folks because the potential is so great. I can’t wait to see the results of what we will come up with, especially in the category of science and culinary arts.
GSF: You are/were an African Dance instructor! What are you choreographing on the petri dish dancefloor? What should we do when we hear the break?
KW: Ha! Well I am choreographing lots of different species on the petri dishes, we have a variety of shiitake, oysters, reishi and stropharia rugosoannulata or garden giants to name a few.
The break tells us when to start, stop or change: When you hear the break you should start learning all you can about mushrooms, leaving nothing out; stop hating on each other, respect yourself, the creator and everybody else; and then be sure to share the experience with friends and family and make a real change.
GSF: You involved you’re entire community and family into a mycelial network. Describe how you’re spawning solidarity?
KW: As the word spreads, we are connecting cells, in a way, creating fungal colonies by reconstructing the substrates available and forming mycelial hyphae knots that have potential to become fruiting bodies one day. These things grow by themselves one only has to cultivate it.
GSF: Tell us about Buckeye Mushrooms? What’s flushing?
KW: The Buckeye Mushroom Farm is home to many mushrooms growing outdoors and in our insulated seasonal high tunnel. They grow on woodchip beds, straw logs and on coffee grinds or newspaper in buckets, bags and on racks. We are a self-sustaining facility which is a model the community can use for local food systems. We also have big plans for the future, we will be using solar and wind energy as well as offering even more exotic mushrooms species.
KW: Well, I guess the best place for people to find me is on my facebook page Kultured Mushrooms. Also, we have a Buckeye Mushroom GoFundMe Campaign going on now if people like what we are about and would like to contribute. Thanks!
The inaugural edition of Good Sense Farm’s “Ask a Farmer” column begins with a familiar question and ends with a twist. First the question, sent by someone who found out about us on the internets :
Good morning,
I…am on the quest to find black owned business to support for my life needs and wants. I have been very successful as now I have several DMV black farmers to support; however, I am having a hard time finding animal farmers for chicken/eggs, pork, etc. Can you direct me to local farmers or a black owned butcher shop that sources from Black Owned farms?
Thank you for any guidance you can provide. I look forward to supporting you and the rest of the agricultural farmers in the area.
J
I read this question through once and thought to myself, “how do I break it to them?” Here’s myfirst answer, unedited, untouched by the gift of hindsight.
Hey J,
Thanks for your inquiry. This is a great question.
While I truly wish it was a matter of just pointing you in the direction of a directory or list of black farmers to meet your needs, unfortunately it’s not that easy anywhere in the country. Access to the type of land that it takes to run an animal operation is a major obstacle on the farming front and urban development which supports small businesses like that black butcher that we both so earnestly want, just aren’t there and require real work to bring those resources back to our community. DC, like the rest of the country, has a really rich history of innovative black food producers but also a really deep legacy of structural inequity and intentional discrimination that make maintaining a business very difficult for black farmers and food producers.
As a result, producers are largely small and unconnected to larger markets. When they do reach larger markets you can’t distinguish their products from white producers. There has only recently been a resurgence in interest in the distinction in a way that might make it profitable for the producer. That’s why I am so happy that you asked this question! It’s proof that people want to know their black farmer a little better and are perhaps willing to invest directly in the growth of black farms to turn the current trends around.
Though I’m not sure how you came upon my information, I hope that in your search you heard about our work building a network of supportive infrastructure for farmers of color and connecting them to markets. Good Sense Farm cofounded Community Farming Alliance for DMV farmers of color in 2013 which is steadily building a network of farmers of color and resources to help them thrive.
Currently, we run a Community Supported Agriculture Program which offers, veggies, mushrooms, honey, medicinal herbs and, yes, eggs to our members. We are always looking for more farmers to add to the network, particularly those with products that we know our customers want. We are also actively trying to mentor young farmers of color to get into the business and provide them with the resources to be successful. My hope is that folks like you will consider joining us and will spread the word that supporting cooperatives like ours is the best way to support the return of black artisinal producers outside of pushing for radical structural changes toward justice and equity in the food system.
I hope this information is helpful to you in your search and that, perhaps, we will meet soon. Your enthusiasm and earnest investment in our growth as food producers is appreciated and needed.
Best,
Zachari J. Curtis
I hit send, and didn’t think much more of it. J responded unsurprised. We shared hopes for a someday fix. We made pledges to meet real soon and that was that, or so I thought.
Nothing in my response was untrue but something kept bothering me about it. No, it wasn’t the self-promotional tone, though, you know.
In a recent email, my comrade in farming Gail Taylor, cofounder with me of Community Farming Alliance, lifted up an experience that made me reflect again on my response and the side of the story that doesn’t get told. Gail’s reflection on meeting Jahi Ellis, at a meeting of SAAFON: the Southeastern African American Farmer’s Organic Network.:
Like many of you, I had read the article about Ellis in [Civil Eats] that talks about how he’s in survival mode and struggling to make ends meet. What I think the article missed, which was clear when I met him last week, is how inspiring, capable, and determined Ellis is.
And there it is folks. Before you call it over for black farmers, we must all consider a few things. We have survived and come to thrive under tremendous pressures. We honor those who have not survived by keeping their names and their lessons in our minds and mouths. Our networks of resilience are not readily searchable and were not meant to be. We, like other folks, have resisted surveillance and traceability to create safe havens for our art, industry and livelihoods.
The world hasn’t changed that much since there was a need for mutual aid organizations and financial and business institutions that appeared on the outside like social clubs. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, community organizer and researcher, catalogs the atmosphere in which black communities fomented some of the most progressive economic institutions known in our history and our legacy of strategic collective resource sharing. Her book Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, remembers the practices and institutions which black communities cultivated for their collective welfare.
From collective manumission to black labor unions, these institutions and practices promoted economic solidarity and provided the financial resources for radical social change movements of the time. Black coops were not just doing business, they were bailing people out, raising money for land and creating jobs for disposed members of the struggle. Talk about #FUNDBLACKFUTURES. Hear Jessica talk about the dangers, toils and snares.
Nembhard also dedicates a significant portion of the book and her work to talking about current emergent strategies that are a part of that legacy of resilience. Translation: we’re still in the game today and visibility isn’t the only measure of value. These systems of protection are not unique to black communities but they are purposeful and driven by data. I thought about this, reflected on everything I knew and kicked myself for telling the old story–the one about complete eradication, forced subversion and invisibility the end.
So what does that mean for me, someone fielding a question about the existence of black farmers/butchers/artisans? It means that I was offered the rare opportunity to tell the whole story and so I must. Hence my revision of my answer to the “Where are all the black farmers/butchers?” question.
I honestly know quite a few folks who are leading the way and who have taught me a lot about the business. They have their own ways of engaging communities around their work. I will try to share what I know Here’s what I know about where to get some meat raised, slaughtered and sold by black sustainable farmers and leave space for what I don’t know.
Longtime vendors at the reknown year-round artisinal market, Market Poultry specializes in fancy poultry and game birds. When I called (because I had to) a lovely sweet sounding voice is what you hear on the voicemail line. Most likely, it’s someone’s favorite aunt who can probably give you a recipe for roasted pheasant that will make you cry. Just saying. More information about Market Poultry here.
Greg Thorne is a native of Howard County, Maryland. His family has lived there since at least the mid 1800’s. His great grandparents and other family members owned several small farms in the West Friendship area, so farming is in his blood. His grandfather was an avid gardener while Greg was growing up, and taught him well. After being born in Boston and spending my early childhood in Michigan, I grew up in the Maryland suburbs, but always wanted to live on a farm.
Thorne and his wife, Kris, raise sheep for wool and meat in addition to growing veggies. Greg’s specialty is “wool with character” which means it doesn’t look like the stuff you get at the big box craft outlet. They sell at farmers markets in their area so if you don’t live nearby consider taking a roadtrip and pick me up a side of mutton and some sweetbreads (kidneys - yeah that’s how I get down. #teamorganmeats). I met Greg at a farmer of color gathering last year and was so struck by his positivity and the legacy of his farm.
Farmer Gale Livingstone (different Gale than mentioned above) was born in Georgetown, Guyana and moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1981 as a child to live with her family. In 1991, Gale moved to the DC Metro area where she lived until 2010. Prior to owning Rainbow Hill Farm, Gale grew vegetables in containers on her deck and rented space with a community gardening program in Maryland to feed her love of farming. Gale’s passion for food motivates her to grow the freshest vegetables possible and stay committed to being self-sustaining and environmentally responsible.
Gale’s farm is certified organic and produces some of the best eggs on the east coast (yeah, I said it). We carried Gail’s eggs in our 2015 Cooperative CSA box and look forward to a long happy relationship with this super dedicated farmer.
Renard and Chinette Turner run Vanguard Ranch, as a family owned and operated farm committed to sustainable and organic agricultural practices. At the core of their operation is our commercial meat goat herd. The goats produce a great natural fertilizer as they browse and assist us in keeping the land open. The Turners have developed a line of natural gourmet goat meat products and sell their goat as prepared foods, capturing the value that is lost when farmers sell wholesale and preserving it to invest in their operation. Both Renard and Chinette are a fascinatingly brilliant people. Renard’s passion will get anyone believing they, too, should be a goat farmer (don’t get sucked in…or do, you’ve been warned). Chinette is the picture of quiet power. You’d be well served to listen closely when she speaks. It will be important.
for the farmers, ranchers and butchers who’s presence we’re not aware of but who aren’t “gone” or “disappeared” or “eradicated.” We lift up the ones who don’t have websites, the ones who don’t do social media, the ones who don’t have volunteer days and the ones who don’t deal with the USDA. We wish them prosperity beyond measure and encourage you, the eater determined to support black farmers, to hold them in your hearts, reach out respectfully and thank them for holding it down.
We also hold this space for imagination. Imagine what it would be like to live in the world where black farmers, butchers, ranchers and artisans are well supported and connected to the people who love them and want to see them thrive. Imagine what their food tastes like and what it would mean for the pedigree of your food to extend to the farmer. Imagine if “Cage Free” meant “grown by workers making a fair wage” and “Organic” meant “supporting environmental and economic justice in communities of color.” Imagine the taste and smell of that world? What is it seasoned with? What tools and resources do we have to create to support that vision? What of those things do we have already? Who among our kindred do we know that can help us put the pieces together to make it happen?
I hope I gave you a bunch to chew on.
Sincerely,
Ask A Farmer
Like what you’re reading? Want answers from Good Sense Farm? Email thoughts and questions to [email protected].
Our dancecard is so full this month. Hope you’ll tango w/ us at #blacklovedc #rootingdc #capitolcannashow #wildfoodcsa
Here’s a rundown of where you can find us in February.
All Month: Know your farmer, know your food
This Friday, we’re starting a blog series called “Ask a Farmer” where we pick our own brain about the answers to frequently asked questions on food, ecology and social justice. Expect serious reflection on identity, quirky witticisms and our classic amateur expertise. It will be fun! Join us here or on social media at #GSFAAF. Send questions to [email protected] and have your answer featured on our blog.
There’s still time to signup for theWild Food CSA. February 18th will be the first pickup and we’ll be aiming for a mix of blizzard-proof wild greens, mushrooms, and warming spices. It goes all year but why not start now? Click here for information and signup.
Double Header Weekend: Capitol Canna Show and The Black Love Experience, February 20th
On Saturday, February 20th, we will be performing an act of quantum afro-futurism.
We will be serving fungal funk in parallel universes. First up is the Capitol Canna Show where we will have new and improved Shiitake Mushroom Kits and our new product, Mycomulch. Previous kit purchasers get a 5% discount on any purchase over $20. There may also be some day-of surprises.
We’re really excited about the opportunity to help growers of all types grow better. We will be joined by our partners at Mycosymbiotics,Medicate Better DC, and Hood Hippies blogging and dishing out helpful tips on the symbiotic partnership between fungi and plants. Get your tickets and follow us on the #Mycomulch hashtag.
THEN, that same evening, we’ll be at the Black Love Experience offering some of our classic warmth to thaw the winter chill. Use the discount link #BLKLVGOODSENSE to register and come by our table for handmade local lotions, salves and balms. The Experience overall will be cocktail party meets craft fair meets concert. Definitely unmissable.
Much like you, we know that neither blackness nor love are monoliths so we’re really excited to be helping create a space that welcomes all vintages and varieties of black love. Get ready!
Rooting DC - Annual Gardeners Forum February 27th
Rooting DC is something of a yearly tradition around these parts. This year, we’re taking our relationship to the next level and will be presenting 2 workshops called “Building Your Fungal Fortune.”
Building Your Fungal Fortune: Beginner & Intermediate Mushroom Cultivation
Zachari Curtis, Good Sense Farm & William Padilla-Brown, Mycosymbiotics
Rm 317
Take the plunge into the world of mushroom cultivation with Zachari Curtis of Good Sense Farm & William Padilla-Brown of Mycosymbiotcs. Learn basic fungal biology, type of mushrooms you can grow yourself and how, and discover the potential of mushrooms for helping you grow more food, and improve the health of your garden or farm. This is a 1-hour intro to a weekend-long intensive Zachari & William are teaching this spring. This workshop is hands-on. Participants will try several cultivation techniques and leave with a fungi starter kit.
Register for Rooting DC here and find us in the workshop space or at our table!
I met Aleya Fasier hunched over sweet potatoes growing stubbornly in hard-packed earth under a sky that held history. There weren’t many words exchanged that day–mostly just weeding–or that fall–just digging, weighting and sighing. What I did pick up on was that Aleya was a person who did everything with intention. Since that day, Aleya has poured her heart into that same soil, left her mark on the historical record under that same sky and the results have been remarkable. And that is where we’ll start.
Prepare yourself and give thanks for the words of black, queer, womanist, futurist, ecologist, artist, educator, farmer Aleya Frasier–co-founder of Black Dirt Farm and a revolutionary warrior for black food security.
GSF: Who are you and what is your superpower?
AF: I am one of many queer, biologically active, radical molecules of melanin chilling on your amygdala guiding your primal instincts. And our superpower is activating your superpower. This is done through hormonal and vibrational synchronicity with other radical melanated molecules. I was formed under libra skies so by definition my vibration brings balance to different sides of the equation and works to bring organic and inorganic reactions to equilibrium. Our superpowers activate at the intersection of entropy and equilibrium which is pretty much at all times and space continuums, but they are strongest when connected to the land as space and now as the time. When people step foot on the farm the serotonin in the soil mixed with the ancestors in the air and UV ray excitation of my electrons and my subtle vibrations in their cells allows caverns in the mind to open that have been previously filtered and neurons to connect in ways that they haven’t before. Mitochondrial dna is stirred awake and its knowledge from your uterine having ancestors that has been passed down since the beginning of her story is realized. Through black dirt under fingernails, melanated work under the sun and calloused hands peoples superpowers and ancient rhythms are germinated approximately 3 weeks after the last frost. so you see all with melanin possess this ability at varying frequencies. and then we do it again.
AF: Afroecology is a form of art, movement, practice and process of social and ecological transformation that involves the re-evaluation of our sacred relationships with land, water, air, seeds and food; (re)recognizes humans as co-creators that are an aspect of the planet’s life support systems; values the Afro-Indigenous experience of reality and ways of knowing; cherishes ancestral and communal forms of knowledge, experience and lifeways that began in Africa and continue throughout the Diaspora; and is rooted in the agrarian traditions, legacies and struggles of the Black experience in the Americas.The nature of the Black Experience in America, and in the Americas, has always been and will be, intimately, tied to the land and our agrarian identity. As said by Harry Haywood in Negro Liberation in 1948, “The Negro Question in the United States is Agrarian in Origin.” To draw upon this agrarian legacy, we, at the Black Dirt Farm Collective, felt it was important to introduce the concept of Afroecology – not as a definition but as a place to stimulate discussions on the intimate connection between us as people and the land. Far too often, people of color and Black Folk succumb to using words, theories and concepts that do not directly speak our language nor speak to our experience of reality. All the while, these very concepts, like organic farming, permaculture, etc. come from and stem from our ancestry, and current practices as people of the land and our organizing legacies. As part of the liberation struggle, we recognize the need to create political ideologies, and cultural theories, concepts and practices to help clarify certain aspects of reality, so as to transformation the material and social conditions of reality. We present Afroecology as part of that process. Afroecology is a call back to the land that is awaiting our return. It is a living breathing process of decolonization that is built upon the black experience of the indigenous (africans) becoming indigenized(diasporic africans). Our indigenous reality cannot be recreated but it can also not be forgotten because WE as indigenized peoples have the unique ability to create and determine our reality using our wildest imaginations and ancestral knowledge as fuel. Afroecology is above all else a process of reclaiming our identity as communal beings connected to every aspect of our ecosystem and about reclaiming knowledge from the base!As a practice, afroecology builds from agroecology in its way of teaching how to work in harmony with nature to feed people. On the farm, we try our best to recycle nutrients, biomass and raw materials to achieve a balance in the flow of inputs and outputs. We promote diverse microcosmic and macrocosmic relationships from soil bacteria and fungi to the people who visit the farm and we ultimately treat the farm as an extension of our beings ,nurturing its recovery and decolonization much as we do our own, through natural inputs, spiritual practices, art and balance.
GSF: Describe a mythical seed variety that you would cultivate if you could.
AF: I like to think that every seed variety is mythical in the magical sense and I play out their magical path in my daydreams. If you truly tell the story of a single seed from its origin to your farm, the story would be as colorful as any spiritual text. I will share about a seed variety that to me epitomizes myth and magic and the power of mitochondria. Sorghum is a grain indigenous to Northeastern Africa with earliest known records from the Egypt/Sudan border region from 8000 BC. It is a BEAUTIFUL monocot; its got strappy leaves, a bamboo like shoot and parallel veins; with as many powers as your imagination can handle imagining. Its seed pops sizzles and cracks in your cast iron and its cane can be pressed for sweet juice. Its seed can be threshed pounded and kneaded into nourishment for your baby or boiled and baked into your favorite recipe. It body has the powers to convert sunlight into energy in unique efficient ways and its roots go deep to ensure it survives in drought too. It’s powers allow it to serve as money in the common market place, more valuable than cattle at times for the women selling their beers made with sorghum strains specific to their mitochondrial lineage. Strains that have in a way co evolved with the women and families who cultivate them, the people who bear its callouses, the people who could not part with it when captured and stripped away from their own gardens. Strains that survived in afros across the middle passage that were planted and transplanted and harvested and sowed and reaped and seeded and then again and again until yesterday, today and tomorrow when I harvest our sorghum from seed given to us by friends. 10 seeds now 1000 to share with them. Sounds mythical, right?
GSF: Magical, indeed! So tell me, what’s the dirt on Black Dirt Farm? How can people support? Winter plans?
The dirt is not even black on Black Dirt Farm haha we are frontin! We have this kind of cool light brown sandy loam texture that grows amazing root crops but turns into cement when baked under the hot sun. But on the flip side, a farm is very rarely the effort of solely one or two people.Thus, Black Dirt Farm is collectively cared for by a strong network of farmers, friends and families.A core group manages the day to day operations of the farm, the distribution and marketing as well as coordinating and participating in trainings and events around agroecology, food sovereignty and regenerative economics with black and brown folks from all over the diaspora. We LOVE to gather with folks on the farm and to share black agrarian images and voices and to learn from our elders who are supporting the journey!
People can support by eating their veggies and by supporting our friends like you at Community Farming Alliance and Chris Bradshaw with Dreaming out Loud and Xavier Brown with the Green Scheme and Natasha Bowens author of The Color of Food and the list goes on! We will be hunkering down this winter and hopefully going to some warm places to collectively energize and create our vision for the next few seasons. A wish list of support would be a website designer, a logo designer, a farm truck or station wagon, and a yurt to serve as an agrarian library, but thats all haha.
Ya’ll heard that? If you’re feeling in a do-gooding mood, do something for a farmer. They’ll make sure you eat good.
