Over the past three seasons, Soul Fire Farm has grown from a small family farm into a national leader in the movement for food justice. With no outside funding at all, we can no longer meet the overwhelming demand for our educational and food distribution programming. We are raising funds to expand our infrastructure, including building a barn, and expanding our community kitchen, to expand our capacity and grow our contribution to creating a just food system!
The barn will include…
Join us!
We began our work in 2012 to further regional food sovereignty through education and organizing on sustainable agriculture, spiritual activism, leadership, and justice for people from marginalized groups. We have since grown from a small family farm to a national leader in the movement for food sovereignty. We built a straw bale, timber framed, passive solar home plus a barn, cooler, animal housing, and irrigation system. We have hosted 491 youth for our farm and food justice programming. We have trained 58 farm apprentices, 2/3 people of color, several of whom have gone on to manage justice-oriented farming programs around the country. Our farming practices have demonstrated the transformation of rocky, shallow, marginal clay soils into highly productive, micro-nutrient rich, high organic matter black gold that is producing impressive amounts of food and nutrients per square foot for our communities. Our farming practices have sequestered over 6800 pounds of atmospheric carbon and increased the topsoil depth by 300%. We have delivered 3980 bushels of farm fresh food to shareholders, 73% in food desert neighborhoods, plus provided food for the hundred of attendees of our programming. We provided this food with less than 10% of the inputs of industrial agriculture, 1.3% of the food miles, and 0.02% of the waste. We established the Black and Latino Farmers Immersion that has an impressive waitlist and national media coverage. We co-created a collaboration with farmers in Komye, Haiti to restore degraded lands after the devastating 2010 earthquake, including planting 1650 trees and establishing 54 composting systems. We collaborated with other local organizations to create the Albany Food Justice Coalition, hosting community meals and conversational platforms on food justice topics. We have presented at 55 conferences across the country, taught in prison, and advanced the food justice conversation by writing articles for over 59,000 readers. We even catalyzed national policy change, helping to reform the Farm Bill to make it easier for CSA farms to accept SNAP.
And we have done this work from the heart, infused with love, with 100% volunteer effort.
We are in the farming and food justice movements for the long haul and we want to do it right. We learned this year that there is an incredibly high demand for Soul Fire Farm programming with waitlists for all we offer, and it is not slowing down! We are striving to make this operation financially and logistically sustainable, while also spiritually and emotionally nourishing those who work here so they can continue to infuse all of our work with powerful spirit and love.
More information at www.soulfirefarm.org. You may contribute by check to “Soul Fire Farm” and mail to 1972 NY HWY 2, Petersburg NY 12138.