On the Up and Up

View from the look out at Watershed Retreat Center

Bash Bish Falls adventure with Lissa and Margot

I had such an amazing time in upstate NY - lots of fun, sillyness, learning, reflecting and connection. We started off our time staying with a mutual friend, Margot, at the Round House in Millerton.

Lissa and Eli

Another jewish queer radical....we hit it off :-) It was nice staying there and talking with her and her housemate Adin about their farming ventures, jewishness, and anti-Zionism. (And watching Beyonce in the bathtub while eating chocolate ice cream). They both used to live at the Isabella Friedman Retreat Center so we got to hear some of their reflections from being there, and of course there was the visit with the baby goats (pictured in previous post). Also, they are starting a farm called Linke Fligl, meaning Left Wing in Yiddish. So cute. They are doing that project on one of the parcels at Wildseed. Wildseed is a budding POC land project that is getting started by some people from Harriet's Apothecary and other folks doing inspiring and transformative work. I am excited to see what ends up being created there and how the different dynamics work out. It is a unique model and they have a lot of potential to do something amazing on that land. Moving along just across the road there is Watershed Retreat Center where my dear friend Lissa works. We stayed there a couple nights and it was great to connect with Lissa - she was a good friend of mine in the Bay Area and I have really missed her. She lives part time in Brooklyn and works at Watershed which seems like an intense but interesting way of having connection to both urban and rural living. She is also involved with the White Noise Collective in NYC, which I am a part of in the Bay Area. Anyways, she had so much insight about the different land projects in the area and how they function, and what is challenging. She also used to work at Soul Fire Farm which is just North of there in Petersburg, NY.

Potluck after Workday at Soul Fire

We went up to Soul Fire for their workday and got to help out with some mulching and hang out with a bunch of folks - they had 40 people show up to their workday from surrounding areas and NYC! Pretty amazing to see their reach. After the work part of the day, Leah Penniman the owner/manager of Soul Fire (who also happens to be the sister of one of the Wildseed folks) gave a talk about Soul Fire and food justice. She began by talking about the history of black people in the U.S. through the lens of slavery to share cropping to farming to land trusts. She spoke about their relationship to the food justice movement and talked about how we can address what are commonly called "food deserts":  geographic areas where residents’ (typically people of color and low income folks) access to affordable, healthy food options is restricted or nonexistent. She proposed we call them "food apartheid" areas instead of food deserts because as she points out, these are not a natural phenomena, they are the result of structural racism. The way she talked about food sovereignty, environmental justice, and imperial colonialism was so on point and so clearly connected these politics directly into practice and action. Soul Fire does a lot of different programming including artist and activist retreats, Black and Latino Farmers Immersion, International Solidarity, and farming apprenticeships. They have become a model and a leader in the food justice movement in New York.

Self explanatory, right?

"Treyfe" Band Photo (see Freddie's post)

So yeah, our time in this area was pretty epic. It was great to stay there for close to a week and get a sense of the magnitude and myriad of projects happening in that part of the Hudson Valley. As we drove away, I found myself gazing out the window dreaming and visioning about all the ways queers and people of color are fighting for liberation through land sovereignty...

More soon,

Eli