What is CSA Signup Day, you ask? It’s our favorite thing, a made up holiday which celebrates farms and they way local food producers enliven the local foodscape and the economy. It seem that around the end of February is the time that most people are signing up for CSAs so why not throw a party?
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture which means community members invest directly in their local food producer up front before a seed is in the ground. The customer gets a steady supply of seasonal local veggies at a great price. The reason that this is so important is because farmers invest a lot into producing a highly perishable product and, without buyers up front, can face major challenges at harvest time. They buy seeds, mushroom spawn, baby chicks; they get the truck tires changed; they fix the greenhouse all before you ever set foot out the door to the farmer’s market. CSAs help spread the risks and benefits of agriculture out over the entire community keeping farmers afloat and bellies full.
What better time than now to mention the connection between CSAs and Black History?
That’s right, like so many things, CSAs have a black person to thank for existing. Booker T. Whatley, the American farm genius and professor, created and perfected the model that changed the game for small farmers. In his book “How to Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres” Whatley presented a blueprint to help the average farmer overcome the common obstacles of a notoriously harsh industry.
“…The clientele membership club is the lifeblood of the [farm]. It enables the farmer to plan production, anticipate demand, and, of course, have a guaranteed market. The farmer has to seek out people—city folks, mostly—to be members of the club. The annual membership fee, $25 per household, gives each of those families the privilege of coming to the farm and harvesting produce at approximately 60 percent of the supermarket price…one of these 25-acre farms should be able to support 1,000 member families, or around 5,000 people…[The farm] should be located within 40 miles of some metropolitan center; that’s pretty much a prerequisite for setting up one of these farms…” Booker T. Whatley
Those are the written words of an Alabama farmer published several decades before the European and Japanese farmers who are often given credit for making CSAs popular in the US…weeeeeeird. No, it’s not weird. It’s systemic but you can change all that!
Here are ways you can celebrate CSA Day’s Black History
1)Join a CSA Operated by a Black Farmer
The Legacy of Booker T. Whatley lives on at these DC area farms and you can join them today:
Good Sense Farm’s Wild Food CSA - Whether you are a CSA verteran or a newbee we highly recommend joining our CSA. The shares are made up of delicious veggies from local farms, cultivated mushrooms and foraged edibles. In yoru box, you get the makings of a delicious journey to the edge of the wilderness and back. Pictured above was the haul from our first month’s share with wintercress, baby greens, several types of mushrooms, heirloom fish peppers and turnips. Recipes included. Join here.
Rainbow Hill Farm CSAFarmer Gale’s CSA is wonderful and we love her strategy. Here’s what makes it unique:
Instead of bogging you down with more of the same old produce, we grow the stuff you won’t find anywhere else (think Asian greens like mizuna and tat soi, turmeric, ginger, and over two dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes) and our deliveries are always a manageable size. No more waste, no more monotony. And we promise we’ll never leave you hanging with a basket of mystery produce. Each week we’ll share recipes, tips, and tricks to help you make the most out of your bounty.
Community Farming Alliance Never fear, I have word that the farmers of CFA will announce their CSA plans soon! in the meantime, Three Part Harmony Farm is selling Veggie Shares! Get yours today.
5 a Day CSA - Farmer Vicki makes sure to put the most accessible healthy options in the weekly wellness box she puts together.
*If you are not in the DC area, this list might not be the most helpful but there are some resources out there for how to find farms in your area like Local Harvest.
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.
We’re delighted to be participating in these two great events about coops!
[Image Description: 2 Flyers. Flyer 1 describes an event happening on November 5th, 2015 called “Building DC’s Movement for Economic Democracy” hosted by Cooperation DC, The Black Worker’s Center and ONE DC. It is a discussion on the history and a basic overview of the current context for worker cooperatives. The event will take place from 6:30pm - 8:30pm at The African American Civil War Memorial, 1925 Vermont Ave NW.
Flyer 2 Announces “How to Start a Worker Cooperative” a workshop happening on November 7th, 2015 at 123 1-B Good Hope Road SE. The workshop will take people with a cooperative business idea through the process of starting and running a worker cooperative. The event requires a registration through the site tinyurl.com/dccooptraining]
“Food should be a right for all and not a privilege for some.”
— Karen Washington
Fresh food should not be out of reach due to racism.
As a physical therapist, lifelong NYC resident Karen Washington is more in tune with the needs of the body than most. In the early years of her practice, she noticed some of her clients were struggling with what she calls the “three food groups — fast, junk and processed.”
Washington spotted a vacant lot across the street from her Bronx home, where she’d already planted a backyard garden. She transformed the lot into the Garden of Happiness in 1988 and her journey into community gardening began.
All around the Bronx, Washington and her neighbors found throwaway spaces and turned them into gardens, eventually founding a farmer’s market. When Mayor Giuliani tried to wipe away their work in the ‘90s, Washington and other activists resisted, drawing on civil disobedience tactics — and they succeeded.
On the left, Karen Washington receives a 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Service along with Gregory Long, director of the New York Botanical Garden, from First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. Pictured to the right, Washington with her tools.
Their work laid a template for a broader urban ag movement, but for Washington community gardening is first and foremost about social justice. To continue her journey in urban farming, Washington attended UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) apprenticeship program in 2008. The “mothership of organic agricultural training,” in the words of executive director David Press, CASFS teaches cutting-edge techniques for healthy, sustainable food, and the education, in the words of Washington, was a “gift.”
Returning to New York, Washington not only co-founded Black Urban Growers, a volunteer-driven support network, but sought to replicate her experience at UC Santa Cruz.
“We found a lot of people couldn’t get to California, so we replicated a sort of CASFS program in NYC,” Washington said. Her Farm School NYC focuses on community-based activism and farming to encourage residents of low-income neighborhoods to embrace food sovereignty and disrupt a food system that does not serve them well — if at all.
While black households disproportionately struggle from food insecurity (1 in 4 experience food insecurity, compared to 1 in 7 overall and 1 in 10 white households) for those recently released from prison, food insecurity is nearly a guarantee — 90 percent report experiencing it. The need to feed your family can drive people to desperate measures, as Cathrine Sneed of the Garden Project knows well.
“In my 20-year history, I have spoken to too many young men who said ‘I started selling drugs because my momma couldn’t feed me, and I was hungry.‘” — Cathrine Sneed
“In my 20-year history, I have spoken to too many young men who said ‘I started selling drugs because my momma couldn’t feed me, and I was hungry,'” Sneed says of her work in urban gardening. A fresh young law school graduate, Sneed landed in San Francisco County Jail as a counselor, focused on helping prisoners live successful lives once released outside. But she found it wasn’t so easy to break the cycle of recidivism — they walk into the world with no money, no job, no home, and no food.
Sneed couldn’t fix all these issues — but she could lead prisoners outside, onto the jail grounds, to work on land that had once been a farm. Her wish was that they could derive hope from a connection with the land and by providing food for the community. Her results surpassed her wildest dreams.
Cathrine Sneed, left, keynote speaker for the 2014 Farm to Fork event at the UC Santa Cruz at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems (CASFS). Photo by Melissa De Witte.
In 1992, Sneed, another former UC Santa Cruz CASFS apprentice, began the Garden Project to meet the demand of former inmates connected to the work. The scope of the project expanded to include counseling, continuing education assistance and job training. The Garden Project has planted over 10,000 trees in San Francisco — and has cut the recidivism rate, nationally at 50 percent after two years on the outside, to 25 percent for its participants.
Sneed has now extended the program to at-risk adults and high school students, to break the cycle before it starts. “Gardening is the recipe for success,” said Sneed of the work. “This is how we stop crime.” Thanks to these two women, urban gardening is also a recipe for community empowerment, and longer, healthier lives.
“I’d just read about the Black Panther’s history in a new book, More Than Just Food. In it, the [Fordham professor] and activist Garrett Broad argues that food is a powerful tool, but that the food movement has mostly benefited well-to-do white people. Impoverished communities need food movements that rise up from within and champion their own priorities.
“Broad takes the Black Panther Party as one of his case studies. He traces the historical line from the Black Panther’s breakfast program to the anti-hunger efforts of an offshoot, Community Services Unlimited, a nonprofit that still operates in Los Angeles, to schools serving breakfast today. The fact that many children can get breakfast at public school may well be thanks to a revolutionary act that brought down the fury of Hoover’s FBI.”
Read more via Grist. Watch the trailer about Garrett Broad’s new book below:
I am so pleased at how many notes are some version of “I don’t fear the science, I fear the corporations who control it” because that is EXACTLY the attitude you should have. GMOs can save us. Monsanto will kill us.
what people fear about GMO- ‘theyre gonna make frankencarrots that crave human flesh and cause diarrhea ’
what GMO actually is- ‘we made rice crop that is both drought resistant and flood resistant which will prevent about 20% of major famine disasters, also it now makes vitamin A because vitamin A deficiency in poverty stricken areas is a major killer of kids as most vitamin A rich foods dont grow there’
what people SHOULD be upset about- ‘i made all crops sterile so all farmers have to buy the seed from me in perpetuity and i will sueanyone who tries to go back to crops that produce their own seed’
