Values and Mission
Values are the core beliefs and philosophies that guide your life and change very little over time. Your project needs to be firmly rooted in your central values, whether those be family, environmental stewardship, thrift, or hard work. To get in touch with your values, a helpful exercise is to draft your own obituary. While this may seem morbid, the reality is that all of us will transition from this life, and taking time to reflect on how you want to be remembered can put the big picture in clear focus. From your list of values, you can draft a mission statement. A mission statement describes the specific purpose of your business and its guiding principles. See the “Soul Fire Farm Mission” and “Soul Fire Farm Goals” sidebars for ours.
Way of Life and Personal Needs
Consider aspects of your quality and style of life that are important to you. To what extent do you want your personal life and work life to be separate? Do you prefer to work alone or have a lot of interaction? How much time do you need for rest and for being with family and friends? Do you enjoy marketing and interacting with customers? What are your favorite tasks on the farm? Are you comfortable with uncertainty and risk? What does financial security mean to you? What other time commitments are you juggling and how does this farm fit into those responsibilities?
Existing Resources
What assets do you currently have that can be leveraged toward the manifestation of your project? Consider not only your financial resources, but your existing knowledge and prior experiences. Who in your social networks might contribute skills or labor to your vision? Do you currently have access to land or infrastructure? Is there a ready market for your harvest?
Strategic Goals
What would you like to accomplish within the first three years of your farm project? Strategic goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Accountable to Community, Realistic, and Time-bound. Consider writing goals related to what you will produce, your impact on the ecology of the land, your financial sustainability, and your quality of life.
Farmers work together on their whole-farm business plans during the Black Latinx Farmers Immersion. Photo by Neshima Vitale-Penniman.
Soul Fire Farm Mission
Soul Fire Farm is a people-of-color-led community farm committed to ending racism and injustice in the food system. We raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the Earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.
Income and Expenses
Investigate markets in your area to determine how much income you are likely to generate from your products. At Soul Fire Farm we convened a group of our neighbors to gauge interest in vegetable delivery and determine a reasonable price point. Next, calculate your start-up and operating expenses. Start-up expenses include land, equipment, tools, and infrastructure. Ongoing operating expenses include seeds, compost, mulch, utilities, supplies, transportation, veterinary expenses, feed, insurance, certifications, labor, and maintenance. A sample operations budget for Soul Fire Farm is provided in table 2.2, which demonstrates how a farmer can make a reasonable living intensively cultivating less than 2 acres (0.8 ha) of land.
Table 2.2. Sample Annual Expense Budget, Soul Fire Farm
Soul Fire Farm Goals
Train and empower aspiring Black, Latinx, and Indigenous growers so as to reverse the dangerously low percentage of farms being owned and operated by people of color and to increase the amount of good food being grown by and for marginalized people.
Advance healing justice for individuals and communities impacted by racism and other oppressions, by engaging land-based and ancestral healing methodologies, so as to uplift hope, resiliency, agency, and efficacy in the movement.
Train and empower young people, especially those targeted by state violence, to build relationships with the land, shift to healthier diets and self-determination around their bodies, and learn organizing skills to correct injustice in their own communities.
Offer popular education workshops, lectures, and publications to activists and community members to increase awareness and skills on environmental justice, food sovereignty, ending racism, transformative justice, and other concrete tools to increase the impact of movement work.
Provide affordable weekly doorstep deliveries of in-season, farm-fresh, naturally grown food to families living in food apartheid neighborhoods. Focus especially on the needs of people criminalized by the injustice system—incarcerated people, those impacted by police violence, immigrants, and refugees—to uplift the right of all to access life-giving food regardless of social or economic status.
Refine and share our model of a just and sustainable farm that stewards biodiversity, captures carbon, pays its workers a living wage, uplifts community wholeness, dismantles racism, inhabits sustainable structures, and achieves financial solvency.
Collaborate with regional, national, and international networks for Black land justice and community food sovereignty to advance structural changes necessary for a more just food system.
In line with our work to advance healing justice and liberation in the wider community, commit to an organizational culture that cares for the well-being of its workers through ample rest, compassionate communication, distributed leadership, and investment in personal and professional development.
Production
Will you produce annuals, perennials, livestock, and/or value-added products, and what varieties of each? Annual crops include vegetables, grains, herbs, and flowers and require intensive labor during the prime growing season. Perennial crops include nuts, fruits, hops, and grasses and take several years to earn a return on investment. Livestock systems include raising animals for meat, dairy, eggs, or honey, and involve daily chores for the entire year. Consider your personal needs and existing resources in deciding what to produce. Think about whether you will use organic, conventional, or other production techniques and what the certification requirements are for your selected method. Consider what culinary historian Leni Sorensen terms “home provisioning,” the act of growing and preserving food for the nourishment of your family as a priority over market sales.
CHAPTER THREE
Honoring the Spirits of the Land
Blefono ke; ena ni hluu, se yomoyo ngo tovi kepa le.*
The white man says he is rich, but the old lady with her black bead surpasses him.
—KROBO PROVERB, Ghana
Rue, hyssop, yarrow, and other fresh herbs wilted in the steaming pot of scalding river water. Eighteen vulnerable hearts gathered on rough wooden benches around the nearby fire. There was quiet and reverent trepidation in their muted conversations. This was the midpoint of the Black Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program at Soul Fire Farm, marked by a spiritual bath rooted in Vodou tradition. Earlier in the day, many participants had taken life for the first time, transitioning 50 chickens from field to freezer. As is the custom of our people, we marked the boundary between times of aggression and times of peace with a ceremonial washing. In this optional, all-gender space, people brought with them an intention about what they wanted to release and what they wanted to invite into their lives.
We began by thanking the spirits of this land and our ancestors with song and offerings of cornmeal and water. Believing that the universe is governed by laws of reciprocity, we sacrificed just as we hoped to receive. Then, two by two, people came to the rock at the edge of the pond to be gently and reverently washed with the herbal mixture. My sister Naima and I, matching in white clothing, poured the warm bath over the heads of our people, calling to Legba to open the gate, calling to Ogou to fortify our agency, calling to Ezili to
fill our hearts with love. We brushed the bath downward, head-to-toe, willing burdens and negativity to be released into the earth and composted there. Others witnessed tenderly as glistening droplets accented the black and brown hues of their friends’ skin. They held towels ready to envelop their peers as they finished and resisted the urge to pull bits of clinging fern and flowers from one another’s hair. Two by two, until all were bathed, and then we sang and reflected by the fire.
In African cosmology we believe that there is no separation between the sacred and the everyday. Just as we punctuate BLFI with a spiritual herbal bath, so do we mark our days and seasons at Soul Fire Farm with ritual. Each spring, before breaking ground with the hoe or planting the first seed, we ask permission from the Spirit of the Land and make offerings of gratitude. Each fall we celebrate the yam festival to give thanks for the harvest and spiritually refortify ourselves with the strength of our ancestors. In between these bookends of the season, we maintain an intimate connection with the Divine through singing and dancing in the fields, making food and drink offerings, and asking permission before new enterprises. We are guests and stewards on this Earth, not owners, and need to behave as such.
Ewe (herbs) and omi (water) are infused with prayer and used for spiritual cleansing.
To acknowledge that we as humans are not the most powerful force in nature and to act accordingly is not always roses and sunshine. For example, when we first came to this land, we were very excited about the potential for renovating an existing overgrown swamp into a pond for swimming and irrigation. Intuitively, we could tell that the swamp held a concentration of spiritual energy, so we felt that we needed to ask permission before moving earth and disturbing the ecosystem. We used a simple divination tool taught to us by elders in the Yoruba Ifa tradition to determine whether the spirits of the land wished for the pond to be dug. The response was a firm no. We honored this boundary and waited another 10 years until the spirits gave us a conditional yes. In order to have their blessing for the pond digging, they required us to put certain safety features in place to protect children and also to make regular offerings to Nana Buruku, the grandmother of the universe whose energy dwells in forest wetlands. We now have a beautiful pond as well as the good graces of Spirit. We half-jokingly say that the relative scarcity of ticks, poison ivy, and biting insects is a sign that we have a harmonious relationship with the land.
New World obi obata are one of the divination tools used to communicate with the ancestors and orisa (deities, forces of nature).
Our spiritual practices at Soul Fire Farm are informed by our specific lineages while making space for everyone to bring their own belief system to share with the community. My personal connection to nature-based religion began when I was a small child inventing praise songs with my sister in the forest. This connection was formalized in my young adulthood during a five-month visit to Ghana. There I was initiated and enstooled by the Manye of Odumase-Krobo in Ghana in the Vodun/Vodou religion. Manye (Queen Mothers) are spiritual leaders in the community, arbitrators of conflict, and keepers of the genealogical knowledge of our people. We are responsible for upholding ethical standards of behavior in our circles, especially in terms of the protection of women, children, and the vulnerable. Our role as clergy is both secular and spiritual. As custodians of cultural-religious traditions, we take leadership in ceremonial rites of passage marking birth, puberty, marriage, death, and honoring of ancestors. As spiritual activists, we work for economic justice, social welfare, and environmental protection. As Manye, we carry the ase (spiritual force) of the Orisa-Lwa Nana Buruku, the primordial grandmother of the Universe. She is envisioned as an ancient dark-skinned woman, energy healer, defender of justice, protector of children, guiding light of the moon, dweller of forest wetlands, and source of all waters.
While my practice is primarily rooted in Vodou, my spirituality is as diverse and complex as my family’s mixed ethnic heritage: Haitian, Black American, Hebrew, French, English, Cherokee, Taino. I am Manye, yes. I am also a Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Haitian Vodouisant, initiate of Oya, and worshiper of Ifa. I make spiritual herbal baths, chant Torah in synagogue, dance to orisa, divine with shells and bones, and receive dream messages from the ancestors. For me the Truth (capitalization intentional) is at the intersection of our multiplicitous ways of knowing the Sacred. Haitian Vodou instructs us in this, as our ancestors made space in the religion for the practices of the Ewe, Fon, Kongo, Ibo, Yoruba, Taino, Catholics, and dozens of others in an elegant and integrated whole, without diluting the integrity of each lineage.
In this chapter we explore how to honor the spirits of the land, primarily through the lens of Vodou (Haiti, Ghana, Benin) and Yoruba Ifa (Nigeria, Benin, Togo), since those are most practiced at Soul Fire Farm. We will explore how verses of Ifa guide us as farmers, learn how to honor the Yoruba agricultural spirit of Orisa Oko and the Haitian Vodou farmer spirit of Azaka, discuss how to prepare a cleansing herbal bath, explore how to celebrate planting and harvest rituals, and learn how to enliven our days on the land with ancient and contemporary work songs.
Vodou and Ifa, however, are not the only indigenous African religions that persist. Even as we focus this chapter here, we acknowledge and shout out the myriad spiritual paths curated by our ancestors and relatives. Mojuba, we pay homage to: Bushongo, Lugbara, Baluba, and Mbuti (Congo), Dinka (Southern Sudan), Hausa (Chad, Gabon, Niger, Nigeria), Kotuka (South Sudan), Akamba (Kenya), Maasai (Kenya, Tanzania, Ouebian), Kalenjin (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania), Dini Ya Msambwa (Bungoma, Trans Nzoia, Kenua), Lozi (Sambia), Tumbuka (Malawi), Zulu (South Africa), San (South Africa), Manjongo (Zimbabwe), Akan (Ghana, Ivory Coast), Dahomey (Benin, Togo), Efik (Nigeria, Cameroon), Edo (Nigeria), Odinani (Igbo people, Nigeria), Serer (Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania), Vodun (Ghana, Benin, Togo, Nigeria), Dogon (Mali), Kemet (Egypt, Sudan), Berber (Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Niger), Waaq (Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea), Candomble, Umbanda, and Quimbanda (Brazil), Santeria, Palo, Vodu, and Abakua (Cuba,Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Panama, Colombia), Obeah, Kumina (Jamaica), Winti (Suriname), Spiritual Baptist (Trinidad and Tobago), Louisiana Voodoo and Roots (southern US), and all other spiritual practices and religions created by African people.1
The author is initiated through the Dipo ritual and enstooled as a Queen Mother in Odumase-Krobo, Ghana.
Babalawo Onigbonna Sangofemi (Enroue Halfkenny) consults Ifa through divination. Photo courtesy of Enroue Halfkenny.
Sacred Literature
I grew up with the myopic misunderstanding that only the Abrahamic faiths—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—offered sacred texts to guide successive generations in terms of ethics and spiritual practice. While I study and cherish the Torah, I felt a great and expansive joy to learn that my Indigenous African ancestors had an oral sacred literature as long and deep as several Torahs combined. Each of our lineages carry sacred texts rich with the stories of our ancestors and guideposts for living. In this section we will look at the Odu Ifa, originated with the Yoruba people, and listen to its teachings for us as farmers.
Broadly, we learn from Odu Ifa that nature is sacred. “The basis of Yoruba religion can be described as a worship of nature,” explains Professor Wande Abimbola, the Awise Awo ni Agbaye (Spokesperson of Ifa in the Whole World).2 In the Yoruba religion it is believed that divinities, known as orisa, changed themselves into forces of nature, such as thunder, lightning, rain, rivers, oceans, and trees, after they completed their work on Earth. Oya became the Niger River. Sango became thunder, lightning, and rain. Olokun changed herself to become oceans, while Osun and Yemoja became the Osun and Oogun Rivers, respectively. There are at least 64 trees whom the Yoruba people worship as divinities. Every hill, mountain, or river of Yorubaland is a divinity worshiped by some people. Numerous birds and animals are sacred to Yoruba people who worship or venerate them. The Earth herself is a divinity. Human beings are ourselves divine through our Ori (personal divine nature) and Emi (divine breath encased in our
hearts), which are directly bestowed on humans from Olodumare, the Supreme God.
UPLIFT
Odu Ifa
The Ifa divination system, practiced among Yoruba communities and throughout the African Diaspora, was inscribed in the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2008. The word Ifa refers, among other things, to Orunmila, the orisa (deity, force of nature) of wisdom, destiny, and intellectual advancement. Ifa divination is rooted in a literary corpus, the Odu Ifa, which contains the Yoruba history, cosmology, beliefs, language, and social analysis. There are 16 books, each containing 16 chapters, for a total of 256 odu (chapters) to the Odu Ifa, each chapter containing around 600 to 800 ese ifa (verses). The Ifa priest(ess) (Awo or Babalawo or Iyanifa) uses sacred ikin (palm nuts) and an opele (divining chain) to generate a system of signs that correspond to specific odu of the literary corpus. The Awo chants the ese ifa corresponding to the Odu revealed during the divination. The wisdom in the ese guides the client in making decisions in line with their destiny and in harmony with the orisa. The Awo also uses the divinatory tools to determine what offerings the orisa require to secure the blessings or remove the challenges revealed during the divination. The knowledge of Odu requires extensive training, memorization, and spiritual discipline. As with most Indigenous practices, Ifa divination is under attack by Christianity, Islam, and Western colonization.3
Central to the recognition of the sanctity of the Forces of Nature is the practice of reciprocity through ebo (sacrifice). Numerous verses in the Odu Ifa (see the Uplift sidebar) speak to the importance of prayers and sacrifice by farmers. An excerpt from an ese in Ogbe Iwori reads, “Cast divination for the Farmers, the one that was going to choose a new land for annual farming. They asked him to take care of the ground [by performing sacrifice to the land before his departure, and pledging an ongoing relationship of stewardship with the Earth]. The Farmer heard about the sacrifice and performed it … Offering of prescribed sacrifices and free gifts to Esu. Life so please us aplenty.”
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