((PKG))  SOUL FIRE FARM  
((Banner:  Soul Fire Farm))
((Reporter/Camera:  Gabrielle Weiss))
((Additional Camera: Camilo de la Uz ))
((Map: Grafton, New York))


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
We are part of a returning generation of black and brown farmers whose grandparents and great-grandparents fled the red clays of the South to escape oppression.  And we’re realizing that something was left behind in the Great Migration and that was a bit of our culture, a bit of our souls, a bit of our connection to our ancestors and the sacred earth.

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((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
Another worm.

((Neshima Vitale-Penniman, Daughter))
Mom, there’s three left.

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
Oh, ok.

((Neshima Vitale-Penniman, Daughter))
This one looks a little healthier.  Maybe I’ll switch it out.  It’s a little sickly little thing.

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
They grow, sickly little things.  It’ll grow.  It just needs soil.

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
My name is Leah Penniman and I’m the founding co-director at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York.  
So, there’s eight of us who live here in season.  My family, including my partner Jonah and our two teenage children, Neshima and Emet, are here all year round in this beautiful, straw-bale, timber-framed home that we built from hand.  And additionally, members of our farm team live with us from the spring through the late fall. 


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((Neshima Vitale-Penniman, Daughter))
Because I’ve grown up with farming, I never think that it’s something people are really interested in.  It’s like, oh, that’s just how you get your food.  But then, like hundreds and hundreds of people come to every single event, and it’s like whoa, like, my mom has created something that people really want to learn about and be part of, and that’s amazing to me.


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
Soul Fire Farm is a Black, indigenous, people of color-led community farm and we’re dedicated to ending racism and injustice in the food system.  We do that in three basic ways.  We grow a whole lot of vegetables, herbs, fruits, eggs and pastured poultry, which we distribute at low prices to people who need it most, in the communities of Albany and Troy. The second way is by educating about a thousand new farmers from Black, Latinx and indigenous communities across the country, who come for week-long residential courses in sustainable agriculture.  And the third and final way is that we organize, very actively, for fair laws that support farm workers, farmers of color and consumers in the food system.


((wendelin, Land Worker, Soul Fire Farm))
I've been coming to Soul Fire since 2017.  This place has really helped me to, sort of, find myself in the land, and to come to understand all of the things that I can bring to this movement, and to our people, and back to the earth.


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
Buenos días.  Good morning.  Welcome to Soul Fire Farm. We’re dedicated to ending racism in the food system, and healing land and our relationship with land, and part of that is being in a learning community where we deepen our understanding of how animals, like chickens, can be part of an ecosystem, and also how they can feed the community, and especially feed people, who otherwise would not have access to that delicious, vital, food.  I'm so excited to be here with all of you for this workshop on chickens.  Most of the participants, who are here for today's pastured poultry class, are farm workers from Hurley, New York.  Now we want to introduce ourselves. 


((Victoria, Farm Worker))  

My name is Victoria.  I grew up with farm-raised chickens and I’m here to learn about raising organic chickens.
((Victor, Farm Worker)) 
My name is Victor and we have plans to return to Mexico and we want to start a business like this and sell at low prices to help people out.

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((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
It's a little known fact that about 85% of the people who do farm labor in this country, speak Spanish as their first language.  So, if we say we're for food justice and liberation, it would be very disingenuous to only offer programming in English that excluded most of the farmers in this nation.  And there’s been a lot of excitement, particularly from the Latinx farm worker community in our area, to learn these skills, so that when they do have their own farms and are no longer working for wages on other people’s farms, they can implement these integrated livestock and vegetable systems. 


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
And then we're going to walk around and meet the chickens on the farm, and see how we take care of them, how we know if they're sick, what kind of houses they need.  Then after lunch, we'll actually take five chickens and we’ll process them for meat.  If you include all of our on-farm and off-farm programs, we reach over 7,000 people a year, of which around 2,000 actually come to the farm.  And we learn everything from seed to harvest, as well as the history of black, indigenous farming and land-based movements, and do a lot of work to heal from the trauma of slavery and sharecropping and the bracero program and other types of land-based oppression that seek to really separate us from a healed and dignified relationship with land


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((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm, Author - “Farming While Black”))
We call these shelters chicken tractors.  I wanted to be able to move it by myself without a tractor, because for the first few years of the farm, I was managing the farm and I didn't have any staff or partners in the farm.  So, I had to think about systems that I could do on my own.  We also don't want the meat to be so tough that our customers don't know how to prepare and eat it.  So, keeping them in a smaller space that moves everyday or every other day means, they still get the benefit of pasture, but they're not getting so much exercise that their muscles become very tough. 


((NATS))

((Samuel, Farm Worker))
So, raising them like this in smaller cages is better for the meat, to keep it tender and it cooks faster.  So, now I understand why the meat from my grandmother's hens were so tough.


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
You can give a little push and help her.  You're doing perfectly.  You're very strong.


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((Alex, Community Gardener))
Soul Fire Farm is just really at the vanguard of thinking about racism in our current food system and how we have to shatter that together.  And so, I've wanted to come and learn through that lens for a really long time.  So, this was the perfect opportunity.


((NATS:
Samuel, Farm Worker
Welcome.
This is it.  Goodbye my chicken friend.))


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
I believe so passionately that we all have the right to have dignity and belonging as it relates to the earth, and to have agency in the food system, and there's just been a whole history of dispossession and discrimination against certain people as it relates to land and food.  So, a big part of teaching is about empowering our people and equipping our people with the skills to take back that dignified relationship with land. 


((NATS))

((Lytisha Wyatt, Instructor))
We remove the feathers on the side of the neck that we're going to be cutting from.  And I cut cross body, so I don't cut this way.  I actually come over here, that's what I find most comfortable, because I'm right-handed.  I'm going to remove the feathers from the left side.  So, I want to remove enough feathers, so that I can see what I'm doing.


((Alex, Community Gardener))
So, I'm left handed.


((Lytisha Wyatt, Instructor))
Right.  Since you're left-handed, you would do it on the opposite side. Yup.


((NATS))

((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm; Author, “Farming While Black”))
So, the bird is now considered dead.


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((Leah Penniman, Founding Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm, Author - “Farming While Black”))
We want to build up a generation of people who believe that they matter, and that they're connected to something bigger than what capitalism would have them believe.


((NATS))

((wendelin, Land Worker, Soul Fire Farm)) 

I was just taken aback by how warm the bodies of these animals were.  Learning about the different aspects of pastured poultry, really, sort of, has affected the way that I will be consuming poultry going forward.


((NATS:
4 and a quarter, put 4.
4.1))
((Samuel, Farm Worker))
I know how to raise chickens now, how to get eggs, and I think it is something nice for my family going forward, because now I know how to feed my kids, and I can teach them to feed the grandchildren and future generations going forward.  And hey, even for my neighbors.

((NATS))