Soul Fire Farm Field Day

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Taylor in Farming Resources, Management, Mentoring, Training Programs, Workshops // 0 Comments

Soul Fire Farm Field Day, Oct 21, 2019, 9 am-noon – Building your Farm Team to Build Healthier Soil

Sponsors – NOFA-NY, Soul Fire Farm and the Agricultural Justice Project.

The Soul Fire Farm Field Day will focus primarily on communication strategies on the farm, building healthy soil, and the mutual support between the two.

For Soul Fire Farm, positive relationships among the people who work on the farm are essential to making the farm a center of social justice while also transitioning from carbon depleting practices to active carbon farming. The Soul Fire Farm team will explain the challenges and benefits of using specific practices for building organizational culture and why the farm is Food Justice Certified. The farm is in transition from typical heavy tillage practices to carbon farming. Team work has been critical to making the transition successful. The farmers will also talk about Soul Fire Farm’s Black-Indigenous-People of Color (BIPOC) farmer and builder immersions, youth food sovereignty programs, and multiracial Uprooting Racism in the Food System workshops.

The farm and leadership team will discuss the importance for the farm of nurturing community and staff relationships and the value of engaging in Food Justice Certification and how it helped the farm strengthen its social policies. They will give a demonstration of communication and feedback tools such as Real Talk and Courageous Conversations. A representative of the Agricultural Justice Project will report on the joint NOFA-AJP project to provide technical assistance to farms on their labor and pricing policies and answer questions about Food Justice Certification.

Soul Fire Farm Field Day participants will have a chance to try out Real Talk and Courageous Conversations and to ask questions about Food Justice Certification and learn about the resources on labor practices and pricing available to them from AJP. There will also be a tour of the farm where Afro-Indigenous regenerative farming practices have restored rocky land with depleted topsoil allowing Soul Fire Farm to provide vegetables, fruit, and eggs for a sliding scale CSA delivering weekly to farm share members’ doorsteps in Albany and Troy.

Participants are also invited to engage in a round table exchange about their soil building practices where they will discuss these questions: 1) What are the main practices that YOU are using to build healthy soils?2) What additional research is needed to identify and demonstrate the effectiveness of healthy soils practices? 3) What would be the best incentives or support mechanisms that would help you and those you know accelerate adoption of these practices?

There is no charge. Free and open to the public. Please RSVP (elizabethhenderson13@gmail.com), especially if you would like to stay for lunch.