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Black Earth is an interview podcast celebrating nature and black women leaders in the environmental movement. Join us for inspiring, informed and authentic conversations on how we can make a positive impact for people and nature worldwide.
Episodes out every Wednesday. Connect with us online @blackearthpodcast on Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok.
Hosted by Marion Atieno Osieyo. Healing our relationship with nature, one conversation at a time.
Marion Osieyo: [00:00:00] Welcome to Black Earth Podcast. Black Earth is an interview podcast that's celebrating nature and that inspiring black women in the environmental movement. In today's episode, I am joined by Leah Penniman. Leah is a farmer, an educator. An author, food justice activist, and the co-founding director of Soul Fire Farm in New York.
In today's episode, we speak about what it means to cultivate a healthy and just relationship with land through farming. Farming, and our food system is one of the most impactful ways that we can help to restore our relationship with nature and address climate change. And in this episode, we also make time to celebrate and remember the contributions of black [00:01:00] farmers and black growers in America and beyond.
Leah Penniman: Thank you so much for having me. Uh, my name is Leah Penniman. I use all pronouns and I am one of the founding co-directors and also the farm manager at Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, up in the mountain.
Marion Osieyo: Amazing. Thank you so much Leah. Um, so Leah, how would you describe your relationship with nature?
Leah Penniman: I love that we are in a space where we can talk openly and freely about our relationship to nature. Uh, as a farmer, as an environmental justice organizer, as an earth listener, my relationship to nature is almost beyond words and its profundity and impact. I would say that, uh, a foundational experience for me, uh, was growing up in a very [00:02:00] small rural town in central Massachusetts in the US where our family was, was the only non-white family in the town.
And to say that we were racially taunted would be an understatement. It was. You know, the bullying and the ization was, was constant in school. And so my two siblings and I found a lot of solace in nature in the tall pine trees and the rainbow trout in the lake, in the mountain, uh, the blueberries and the wild sorl and this.
Ecosystem became an extended family. Uh, not metaphorically, but quite actually. And we became defenders of the earth, you know, when loggers came through or other assaults on the environment. We put our bodies on the line from a really young age to try to protect our family. And these experiences fermented in me this, this deep sense of, um, our beyond human kin [00:03:00] as people, uh, not as environment or other, or resources, but really as, as family members. And so, uh, you know, continued to have a number of, of ecological experiences growing up. But one of the most salient was actually getting a summer job at an organic farm, uh, as a teenager and falling in love with that intersection of, of people care and earth care that is farming and the elegant simplicity of, of, you know, planting a seed and tending it and pulling joy and nourishment from the earth, and then being able to share that with community. And so those twin experiences are, you know, what laid the foundation for me to become a farmer, to become an author who writes about farming and, and environment, and also to teach, um, environmental science and environmental issues to the rising generation.
Marion Osieyo: Wow. Thank you so much.
I've been thinking a lot recently about, uh, landscapes [00:04:00] and how, for me, growing up, land felt like an objective or separate um, space that's separate from me. And one of the experiences I had, which really reshaped that for me was reading a book called Trace by Dr. Lauret Savoy, um, whom I know, um, is part of your upcoming book, which we'll talk about later.
Um, but reading Trace was really profound for me and she helped me to re-member nature. And especially land. Um, and now I see land and landscapes as living scapes because they hold so much stories and they tell us a lot about who we are, um, who we've been and who we are becoming. And because I know [00:05:00] from, from who you are and the way that you work and what you do, land is so intimately tied to, to who you are, and you are so intimately connected to, to land as well. Um, could you tell us. A bit more about, um, some of the lands or landscapes that have shaped, uh, you and your passion for social justice, um, for farming and for food.
Leah Penniman: Oh, such a beautiful question and yes, big ups to Dr. Lauret Savoy, contributor to Black Earth Wisdom, who helped me understand in a whole other way, um, the myriad ways that the Earth speaks to us through ice cores, through uplift and erosion, through geological formation, through tree rings, that all of these are languages that we need to restore our literacy in in order to hear the earth. So I know we'll get to that later, but you just warmed my heart mentioning [00:06:00] Trace. I was like, I need to go reread that.
This really important question about connection to land. I wanna zoom out a little bit and put it in a historical context because to me it's personal, but it's also political and there's a particular historical quote that brought me to tears when I first hear it and still gives me goosebumps.
And this came out of 1865 was the end of the Civil War and chattel slavery in the 13th Amendment in the United States. And there were groups of newly freedmen who got together to plan and advocate, for what reconstruction could look like. And in Falls Church, Virginia, one particular group, an excerpt from their letter to the Union Army said, 'What we need are homes and the ground beneath them so that we can plant fruit trees and say to our children, these are yours.' And this yearning for stable home. For stable land to be able to plant a [00:07:00] tree and tell your descendants that they can eat the fruit has been an enduring yearning, uh, a guiding light for black Americans, uh, through you know, the, since 1619, and there's a lot of history to share about that. But the deeper I dig into it and understand how the 16 million acres of land that black people once held has been eroded away due to government discrimination, to lynchings, to, um, unscrupulous developers trying to exploit the fact that people don't have wills.
You know, this, this bleeding out of land in the community is not just about a loss of intergenerational. It's not just about a loss of the ability to grow food or even to put down a home, but there is a cultural continuity that comes when we can plant the tree and tell our children, this is yours. When we can have our family reunion, we can bury our dead and come back and honor them in that space.
And I've recently learned, this is just emerging research, but black people who have [00:08:00] land have longer life expectancies than black people who don't have land.
And, and so I place my personal experience in. that context because that yearning for land is, has been inside of me as well. And because I did an inherit land, uh, because land is expensive, you know, we ended up wetting ourselves to a beautiful 80 acres.
But it's mountain land, there's almost no top soil. It's rocks, it's clay. Uh, Federal government agency for agriculture. When they came to visit, they said, you can't grow food here. You're not eligible for loans or grants because the soil is so poor. And we did what our people do, you know, make cobbler out of rotten peaches and quilts outta scraps, where we have restored the organic matter, the soil depth, the biodiversity of this land. And we grow beautiful food here. Uh, and we feel a deep belonging here.
But it is still of note, right, that in the United [00:09:00] States, 98% of the land is white owned and almost all the good land, right? Good land, so to speak. The deep top soil that you don't have to remediate is, is white owned. And so there's a personal and political in that land relationship.
Marion Osieyo: Wow. Thank you. You've just touched now on, on that journey of you. Cultivating that mountain land into, into land for growing, growing food. Could you tell us more about the turning point for you, um, where you started to, or you continued to deepen your work? Cause From what I understand, you've been, you've been actively farming since 1996, but there was a, a turning point where it became, your full vocation and devoted more and more time. So what was that turning point? Could you tell us more about that?
Leah Penniman: Absolutely. There's so many turning points, right? So I think that, you [00:10:00] know what, what brought us most directly to this mountainside land was living in the south end of Albany, which is a neighborhood under food apartheid. And. , we struggled to feed our children fresh, ancestral whole foods, and our neighbors were also struggling.
So is there a reason why? So food apartheid refers to a census tract or a area code, a zip code where there are are not grocery stores and there's high poverty. We also did not have public transportation to get to the grocery store. So you could get McDonald's, you know, you could get, uh, liquor, you'd get cigarettes, but you couldn't get apples and kale and things like that in the neighborhood.
You had to have a car and you had to be able to drive to a wealthier neighborhood, and there are millions of Americans who live under food a apartheid where it's just almost impossible to get food. So, you know, even having college degrees and being highly motivated to get that broccoli , it just wasn't available.
We ended up [00:11:00] joining a farm share and walking over two miles to the pickup spot, um, because we didn't have a car at the time to go pick up that food. You know, one baby in the stroller, one baby in the backpack, put the vegetables on the child, go back down the hill. So our neighbors. were half sort of half jokingly saying, you know, when are you going to start a farm for the people?
And that was one major turning point for us in terms of deciding to look for land, deciding to finally implement this, what had previously been an almost whim, whimsical dream of, of having a farm. And we did start out as a family farm. Our, our very first program was to deliver food at low and no cost to our neighbors in the south end of Albany.
Of course over time we've grown and changed into a community farm that, that continues with the solidarity share food delivery program, but also primarily focuses on education for, uh, rising generation black farmers and you mentioned specifically a [00:12:00] turning point around full-time vocation and a lot of that was economic.
Uh, I've been teaching full-time in the public schools as an environmental science and biology teacher for 17 years until 2019 and using the income from that sort of, you know, stable city job to fund the farm operation. And so it took some time to be able to, you know, have the farm be financially solvent.
We started a co-op and a nonprofit organization. Um, as part of leveraging some of those resources in order to be able to, you know, pay our staff and, and make sure that, that people could make this their full-time vocation and that, you know, that's only just a few years ago now, right before the pandemic,
It's not a movement that I started or that [00:13:00] Soul Fire Farm started. We are standing on legacy. We're standing on the shoulders of our, our ancestors and our elders. Um, living organizations like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which is the oldest black cooperative organization in the United States, have been, you know, doing the work.
Um, the Black Belt Justice Center, the national, uh, Black Farmers Association, and on and on. And so I really want to take a moment to thank uh, community members for their sacrifice and for their example, and we certainly added our kindling to the flame, you know, um, as the returning and rising generation of farmers who are many of us, uh, children of the great migration when 6 million black people had to flee, uh, the rural self looking for what they hope would be an escape from white supremacy. Of course, you know, they took different forms in the north. So all that to say, you know, this movement, which [00:14:00] I do agree, has, um, overlapping and intersecting, but also distinct areas when we talk about food sovereignty or land sovereignty, the root of that, uh, movement comes out of indigenous community.
And, um, I'll name Via Campesina in particular, which is an international peasant movement of earth workers, uh, femme centered, indigenous centered that came up with this term of food sovereignty, which goes beyond just having enough to eat and really talks about how do we democratize every aspect of the food system, from soil to seed, to processing, to eating.
How do we all have a say? And when we talk about, you know, ending racism in the food system or racial justice in the food system, we're talking about a predominantly, you know, black led movement and, um, I think of what some of our elders had the audacity, the beautiful audacity, like sue the federal government for discrimination to win, uh, a major settlement in the Pigford v Liman case um, that in some ways was symbolic because so much damage had already been done, but [00:15:00] also so important to show the world that black farmers didn't decline from 14% of the nation's farms to 1% because of choice. It was really a forced expulsion and then when we talk about, you know, the sort of third sphere that, that we identify very strongly with of, of farm worker rights, um, we speak about like the Latino or Latina community who comprises over 80% of the farm workforce currently in the United States, mostly through guest worker programs like H two A and other, uh, work visas that workers very vulnerable to exploitation. Um, and, and in fact the United States, there's a whole other set of labor laws that apply to farm workers that are less stringent than the ones that apply to every other worker. And this has a, a deeply and explicitly racist history. And so in my mind, I think it's incredibly important that we look at.
Actually, I'll name a fourth. Obviously, the environmental movement, , the, the deep ecology movement. And so I don't think that we move forward in creating a [00:16:00] just and healthy relationship without land, without addressing sovereignty, white supremacy, worker exploitation, and and earth reverence. Like all of these things, uh, need to move forward in conjunction, and all of them are about restoring a circle of kinship where we see one another and the earth as family rather than as resources to be exploited.
Marion Osieyo: Wow. Thank you. Um, and so can you share more about how that has manifested in the work of Soul Fire Farm?
Leah Penniman: Absolutely. You know, we work in these sort of three different spheres at Soul Fire Farm in the, and I love that. So in the, in the day to day, in a very tangible way we run a real farm. It's not like a fake Twitter pixel farm. It's like 80 acres of land that needs to be cared for. And so, um, growing food, using our Afro indigenous ancestral techniques that sequester carbon and [00:17:00] increase biodiversity, packing that food and bringing it to community, uh, making plates, you know, that go out and and feed the participants who come to our program. So on a very base level, like we're caring for the lands, um, and feeding the community.
And then, uh, the second major area of work that we have is around equipping and, and inspiring the rising generation of black and brown farmers and, this is so important because time and again, we hear that there are not culturally relevant or affordable spaces to learn how to farm. Uh, or people told that they, they're not welcome. And so to have a space where you can come stay on the farm, learn all of these techniques from seed to harvest, learn about the history of black and brown lands work, and the noble dignified agrarian contributions of our people is really important. So we have youth programs, adult, we have, uh, 18 month fellowship that provides a stipend to help people get started with their first year on the farm. We have online classes, so [00:18:00] there have a whole wraparound support for learning how to farm and learning how to, to care for the land.
And then to get to the movement piece. You know, there's this sort of catchall of rabble rousing where we try to be part of creating a new narrative around, uh, black folks leadership in earth and land spaces. And that looks like writing books and articles and doing public speaking, advocating for policy. Uh, we had the honor of being part of a group that drafted, uh, the Justice for Black Farmers Act, which is just reintroduced into Congress, which provides, land access and training for black farmers should it pass.
Um, working on the Breathe Act, which came outta the movement for black lives . Uh, and, and working in coalition, you know, it's, we're just one farm and so there's national coalitions that we're part of that have more influence, that are able to try to change policy and build new institutions like land trusts and credit unions and, um, training institutes.
And so we see ourselves [00:19:00] as very much part of, you know, if you think about social justice, the four wings of the butterfly of social Justice, there's the builders of alternative institutions, the reformers of existing institutions, um, the, the dismantlers of wack institutions and then the healers that help us all get through it all.
We're very much in that building wing where we're constantly trying to, um, create examples of the world we wanna see and create structures that we hope provide at least elements that could be, you know, modeled or extrapolated.
Marion Osieyo: It's amazing. Um, I really like the, four elements also of the social justice butterfly that you've mentioned.
Leah Penniman: I can send you a graphic design of it, um, because we use it a lot in our trainings and my wonderful daughter Naima created a graphic design of this butterfly of transformative social justice that I think is very helpful cuz sometimes we get in these, you know, I would say senseless debates. What's the most [00:20:00] important thing to do to make social change? And in fact, that butterfly can't fly without all of its wings. And so we just lean into our strengths and we trust that others lean into their strengths, and then we can fly together.
Marion Osieyo: I really agree with you. Um, and I think it helps us focus our energies and how we can support each other in the different aspects of the wings, you know, and, and helping to see the wholeness of the change movement as opposed to like, this is the right way, or this is the next step.
Leah Penniman: So when I was coming up in farming as a teenager, I bought into the myth that organic and regenerative farming was either ahistorical or European, because every conference that I went to, every book that I read, uh, with very few [00:21:00] exceptions centered the voices and expertise of white men.
And it wasn't until much later in my career doing research and traveling in Ghana and Ayiti , Haiti, um, and other places across diaspora of West Africa, uh, that I came to understand that so many of these techniques that had been attributed, uh, you know, to European thought have Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous roots.
In writing, farming while black, the hypothesis I started with was that every technique we use, if I scratch the surface, I can find black or and or brown people who created that. So let me like dig through the literature, which was a lot of fun. It turned out to be true. I could not find one exception to that hypothesis.
So take for example, composting, especially composting where you're integrating char and ash . Uh, we can thank the women farmers of Ghana and Liberia for that, for creating African dark earths, which are just a super, super carbon [00:22:00] sequestering pyogenic compost that they believed so fervently in creating that you can take soil cores and tell the age of a town by the depth of this compost cause everyone was adding to it, right?
When we think about, um, polycultures, perennial polycultures, which are so celebrated as a way to sequester carbon, increase biodiversity, stop soil erosion, on and on and on. You know, there are dozens of examples of these polycultures in Nigeria alone, um, in Haiti where my maternal lineage descents from.
They call these polyculture jardin la cour , which just means house garden. It's that common, right? It doesn't even need a special name. Uh, but you have the trees growing with the shrubs around them, and then the low growing crops and the chickens and the goats running through, right?
Um, raised beds. Uh, we can thank the Ovambo people for teaching us this particular rectangular method of creating raised beds, you know, and on and on.
And then you jump to you know, the [00:23:00] diaspora to the United States or, or the colonies even, and the rice growing that generated massive amounts of wealth for those southern planters was the, the work of Mende and Wolof rice growers who had developed those technologies in West Africa.
Dr. George Washington Carver of Tuskegee University in Alabama in the late 18 hundreds was advocating for organic regenerative agriculture to generations before it was officially invented, right? And so it was getting people to cover crop, uh, go muck out the swamps and integrate organic matter into their soils, rotate their crops through. Make sure that nitrogen is getting fixed in the soil. Um, whether you talk about co-ops or credit unions or farm to table, you know, like on and on and on, you can chase these two, uh, black and brown communities.
And I think this is so important. One, just to set the rec record straight, but two, so many people, including myself, have been discouraged from farming because [00:24:00] we have felt like we'd be borrowing somebody else's story. That we'd be perpetually an outsider. And so to tell the rising generation, you're just, you're just building on a legacy that belongs to you, that you belong here as part of this lineage, um, allows for a much deeper, uh, sense of agency and persistence that that really propels people forward in the farming space.
Marion Osieyo: So I wanted to talk to you about bell hooks because I love bell hooks, and I've been really trying to find a way to bring her up in this podcast. So, this is my shot * laughter*
bell hooks has really influenced me as, as a person, uh, both my [00:25:00] healing as a black woman in unlearning and relearning ways of being that are dignifying for me, uh, as a black woman, but also helps to bring more love into the world, to be honest.
Um, and I remember reading an essay that she wrote called Touching the Earth, which is in her book, Sisters of the Yam, and. The essay essentially talks about how black people have always had a relationship with nature that's centered on love and pleasure and community and joy, and sometimes there can be a tendency to almost think that caring for Earth takes away from some of our deeper struggles in, in terms of racism and, and challenging anti-blackness. [00:26:00]
But actually she sees them as connected and as one part of a greater whole, which is nurturing love for ourselves and our community. Um, but that essay helped me to, uh, start thinking about black people's relationship with nature from a place of love, um, and not necessarily trauma.
And it's something that I've spoken with my teammate, um, Anesu alot in terms of communicating in this podcast. Like we want to talk about, uh, our contributions to nature, the black people's contributions to nature, and center it in the love that we have for Earth. But then obviously we also have to talk about the traumas that we've experienced and the manifestations of anti-blackness that have come through, uh, [00:27:00] environmental injustice and, and damaging earth.
But, I personally and deeply feel that centering our narrative around the love we have for Earth is, is really important because it helps us remember the greater whole. You know, we weren't just born to, to suffer and die like we were born to live joyously.
So my question to you is, how, how does love show up in, in your work, um, and your relationship with nature?
Leah Penniman: So, I love bell hooks too, and we actually start one of our workshops with a bell hooks quote about Love. bell hooks wrote,' The moment we choose to love, we begin to move against domination against oppression , the moment we choose to love, we begin to move towards freedom to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.' So I'm with [00:28:00] you. I'm with you on that. And love is the guiding force of all things.
You know, when, when, when folks enter into that false, false dichotomy between caring for black people and the earth, it's because we've forgotten that we are the earth . We are the color of soil, we are the soiled people of earth. There is no separation. So hatred of earth is hatred of self. Love of earth is love of self.
Um, you know, when I was living in Ghana, west Africa, the queen mothers who are just like the dope, environmental protectors, caretaker of orphans, mediators, ceremony keepers, history keepers.
You know, they said, Leah, is it true that in the US a person will put a seat in the ground and they won't pray or dance or sing or poor libation or say thank you to the earth, and then they expect the seed to. grow. And when I said That's by and large true, you know, [00:29:00] they said, well, that's clearly why you are all sick because you see the earth as a thing and not as a family member.
Right? And what do we do? Hopefully we love our family. If we, if we restore the concentric ecology as Enrique Solomon, and other indigenous thinkers would say, it is then impossible to destroy and exploit in the ways that, uh, Western capitalism would, would have us do.
And you know, to bring that to a very, very personal sense, I'll go back to my, my childhood of, of this forest refuge from racialized violence.
And I remember getting this, um, we used to go to yard sales when I was a kid, so you could pay like a nickel or a dime, you'd get some book or something. So I got this, this botany book. It was a college textbook, fat faded dusty. Of course I was young. I couldn't really understand anything in that book, but I pretended, you know, I had my little lab with all my [00:30:00] specimens and my, my botany book.
But I, I read in that book about this incredible phenomenon called photosynthesis, and it blew my little mind. I was like, wait, the plants take in sunlight and carbon dioxide and water. and they make oxygen and sugar. They make oxygen for us to breathe. That terraform the whole planet. And so I got this idea, , that I could go up to a tree and hold it and then I would exhale my co2 and then it would give me oxygen , and we would just breathe together. Me and this tree would just breathe together. I know granted the diffusion chemistry, it doesn't quite work exactly like that, but in my heart, that's exactly what would happen. So I would go breathe with my tree friends and give them some air and they would give me some air, and we just had this thing going on and it was so intimate and so personal, and it's something I tried to come back to that love isn't theoretical [00:31:00] love is absolutely, um, tangible and every day.
And it does mean touch and proximity, relationship care. Right. And, and you know, it's why it's super cool to be a farmer. You get to touch what you love .
Marion Osieyo: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, that's delightful and I hope you had so much joy when you were hugging that tree. We need more of that in this world for sure.
We're speaking about food, um, at a time when for a lot of people, food is really expensive. , um, for all the reasons that you've mentioned, the food system is really broken and how can we bring in conversations about food, serenity and farming at a time when, uh, I feel that a lot of people are living with [00:32:00] multiple pressures, so like the cost of living. Uh, institutional racism, state violence, you know, things that really physically shape, you know, their relationship with space and everybody around them.
Um, and so how have you found ways to. to bring in conversations about food, serenity and farming that takes into account the pressures that some people feel when they come to your farm or when they come to talk to you about this work.
Leah Penniman: Yeah, I hear that. You know, anytime our basic needs as human beings are not met, it's almost physiologically impossible to focus on some of those higher or more transcendent needs.
So if we don't. Food, shelter, clothing, safety, belonging, and someone tried to tell you to go out and vote . Or to sign some petitions or to be on a board of directors or [00:33:00] volunteer. You know, it's just you're in survival mode. It's not feasible. And we have to remember that there is no moral judgment on that. Uh, folks need to take care of themselves and we need to be in solidarity with folks to take care of themselves and to, to survive the madness, right?
But that doesn't mean that we're excused from systems change and those of us who have enough of our basic needs meet , , um, I believe have a moral obligation to work on systems change and to alleviate conditions so that nobody is having to be in some hard scrabble place where they can't engage civically and they can't participate in, um, at least an obs extensible democracy.
And I think that one thing I will say though is, You know, folks come to Soul Fire Farm from all walks of life, you know, uh, races, economic backgrounds, religion, age, and being in relationship with land can, yes, there's a long-term effect, right, on food sovereignty, [00:34:00] but there also can be an immediate alleviating effect on some of the difficulties, um, both in terms of, you know, I talked about our solidarity share program, which provides food. That's to address a very tangible, immediate need. And we are inspired by the Black Panther Party who simultaneously held a political platform and worked on survival programs because they had exactly that analysis. It's not possible. To make this political change if like, we're hungry and we don't have any medical care. You know, and so those things were simultaneous.
But there also is a psychospiritual, um, healing component that comes with being on the land. And this is really not to be understated because, you know, being a survivor of racial capitalism, Uh, enacts a huge amount of stress and a huge toll on the psyche that makes it very difficult to navigate life.
And so to be in a liberated space to be able to get hands on the earth, to hear the bird song, [00:35:00] uh, you know, to like play the drums with other people, you know, all of these, um, healing activities can open out possibility, uh, for people.
And, and we've heard anecdotally time and again of folks being like, you know, after my time on the farm I was able to, um, alcohol lessened its grip on me, or I was able to step away from a toxic relationship or a dead end job and, and expand my choices. And so I think that, you know, there is the immediate as well as the long term, and we need to pay attention to both.
So for folks who wanna engage in food sovereignty in their communities, I think it's very important, uh, to follow the lead of those most impacted by food injustice. So, uh, Latino farm workers, farm workers in [00:36:00] general, um, black farmers, indigenous earth keepers, uh, the people who have been most impacted are the ones who are experts in the solution.
And so we don't need any saviors. You know, we need folks to get involved, pitch in and help with the existing movements that are happening. And if you go to Soul Fire Farm's website, soulfirefarm.org, there is a directory of organizations that you could get involved with. So I would definitely say check that out.
At a personal level, um, especially, you know, to folks who have been impacted by food apartheid or food injustice, reclaiming our personal food sovereignty is about taking back control. So sometimes that's as simple as, um, making commitment that once a week we're gonna cook a whole foods meal from scratch with our family, right? And using affordable ingredients.
It can be about starting to grow sprouts or microgreens in your house so that you have access to fresh food. It can be about joining the community garden or starting to learn about, [00:37:00] uh, your grandmother and great-grandmother, great-grandfather's recipes, and bringing that historical knowledge back in.
It can be about saving the family land that people have been fighting over trying to sell, right? But it's about reclaiming control and agency over our food, and all the steps in the food system.
Marion Osieyo: Thank you.
Um, and thinking about next steps, I want to speak about your upcoming book, . I'm so excited. I can't wait to read it. Um, please can you tell us about your book? Um, firstly tell us the title so we can all just be excited and then [00:38:00] tell us about the book and how we can support.
Leah Penniman: Thank you. So the title is actually, there's a beautiful synergy and serendipity between at least three black femmes um, who have some common nomenclature for overlapping themes.
So drum roll, but the title of this book is Black Earth Wisdom, Soulful Conversations With Black Environmentalists. It is coming out. I don't know when the show's gonna hit, so maybe I shouldn't say that. Um, anyway, , Black Earth Wisdom, Harper Collins.
Um, you can get it everywhere fine books are sold, but I will tell you that this book, I almost ruined my computer with how much I was crying on my keyboard because this book came from a dream where the animals of my childhood had come in, uh, to my room and were both outraged and devastated that I had forgotten how to speak their language.
And they said, [00:39:00] it is so important for us to rehydrate and remember how to hear the language of the animals. And so I called one of my elders, um, mama Claudia Ford and I said, well, you're clearly someone who knows some of the languages of the Earth. Tell me about that. What is the earth saying? And tell me who else can still hear the earth.
And every person I talked to told me two or three other people, I had to stop at 40 interviews. Um, but so I made a directory with hundreds more people that I didn't have time to interview. But it was so profound to hear from black folks who can read the bird song can read, the North Star, can read the silence between the notes, um, of the creaking trees and the tree rings, and the geological formations and who, have messages for humankind survival based on what the earth is saying.
And, you know, being able to restore our relationship with Earth as a text to read, and also with Earth as a role model to emulate [00:40:00] is so essential to chart our way forward. Um, so the book is a compilation of essays and interviews and poetry on this theme of Black Earth Wisdom and black, earth listening.
Marion Osieyo: That sounds incredible, Leah Um, congratulations. It really. Firstly, thank you for listening to your dreams and, uh, the beings that spoke to you in your dream. And yeah, I'm so excited. I'm so excited to read it and to share it and, I hope it transforms every single person who was involved in creating it, but also uh, was involved in reading, uh, reading and, and receiving and sharing it with, with themselves and their community. Um, so thank you so much.
Um, before we close out, Leah, tell us how we can follow you, support you online, offline, and every line that exists, this planet .
Leah Penniman: [00:41:00] So our uh, website is soul fire farm.org. All of our socials are soul, fire farm all one word. Um, so you can follow us there. You can uh, click on the volunteer link to come through and volunteer on the farm. We have, uh, community work days every other week. We have tours every month. Uh, also on Soul Fire farm.org, you can find our reparations map where you can donate to black and brown led land projects, which we always encourage and you can order Black Earth Wisdom. The newest book is out for pre- order and the existing book, Farming While Black is also there too, which is if you're interested in farming, it's a really nice, concise manual to help you get started. So hopefully we'll see you, you know, in the ether or on the land or on the socials.
Marion Osieyo: Thank you so much for joining us today. We're on Instagram, TikTok LinkedIn at Black Earth Podcast. And you can also subscribe to our [00:42:00] podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. See you in the next episode.