Leah Penniman has planted and harvested food on a section of land located on the forested slopes of the Taconic range in upstate New York, forty minutes east of Albany. She calls this place Soul Fire Farm. “We have the blessing to be stewarding eighty acres of Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican territory in the rocky hills of Grafton.” The Mohican people were the original stewards of this land, forcibly relocated to Wisconsin in the 1800s.
By nine o’clock on a morning in late July, the sun is already high and the day hot. Visitors are arriving at the farm and congregating in the shade of a large tent: they carry water bottles and sunscreen and wear eager, tentative expressions that say they are here for the first time. Today is a community farm day, called a konbit after the traditional Haitian practice of voluntary, shared labor, in which farmers take turns attending and hosting work parties on their land. Once a month from April to October, Soul Fire Farm extends an open invitation to anyone who wants to lend a hand, regardless of farm experience—or ethnic background.
“This food system, built on stolen land and exploited labor, continues to disproportionately harm communities of color.” - Leah Penniman
“Every age, ethnicity, and creed is welcome at some of our programs, not at all of them,” says Leah, who wears large teardrop earrings wound with patterned fabric and long hair plaited into a single braid, wrapped into a tower atop her head. “We have select programs that are designed for certain constituencies—for example, Black farmers, Indigenous farmers, Spanish-speaking farmers.”
Leah, as a Black Kreyol farmer in a country where 98 percent of arable land is under white ownership, politely informs those who do not identify as one of these constituencies—whether they be community members, potential funders, or members of the media, such as myself—that they are warmly invited on specified days, and not always on others. “This food system, built on stolen land and exploited labor, continues to disproportionately harm communities of color…. It’s very important to make sure that there are spaces for all of us.”
With Leah employed as a science teacher in Albany’s public schools and Jonah working as a natural builder, they were trying to make ends meet while raising a young family: their daughter, Neshima, was a toddler, and their son, Emet, only two weeks old. As they began to get to know their new neighborhood, Leah and Jonah were troubled to find that there was no local grocery store where they could buy whole foods and fresh produce for their family. Though they both had farming experience, they found few options for growing their own fresh fruits and vegetables. “We didn’t have land to farm, a community garden plot, any type of access to grocery stores, or a car, or public transportation,” says Leah.
Grand Street is located in Albany’s South End neighborhood, classified by the federal government as a food desert—“regions of the country [that] often feature large proportions of households with low incomes, inadequate access to transportation, and a limited number of food retailers providing fresh produce and healthy groceries for affordable prices.”1
Though they could scarcely afford it, Leah and Jonah joined the Denison Farm CSA. To receive their weekly box of fresh vegetables, they had to walk over two miles each way to the pickup point. Even though the share was far more than they could comfortably afford, they were relieved to have an avenue to healthy food. But they looked around at their neighbors and community: “We didn’t want to just be enjoying this food on our own,” says Leah.
“A desert is a natural ecosystem. There is nothing natural about people lacking access to healthy, affordable food.”
AS MORE INDIVIDUALS and families arrive for the konbit and a cloudless sky urges the day toward sweltering, the adults settle quickly into the work while the younger children decidedly opt for curiosity over diligence. A stream of questions and exclamations—“There’s that old rooster crow again!”—accompany the soft thud of potatoes being placed into large crates.
Once the potatoes have been harvested and loaded into the bed of a pickup truck, the group relocates to pull pigweed out of the carrot patch.
Goussy has come from Queens with her sons Evan and Isan, nine and six. She smiles and shakes her head at her boys, who are “weeding with a flourish”—yanking up interlopers and flinging them toward the woods. Both of Goussy’s parents are from Haiti, where her grandfather owned a farm and konbits were a frequent occurrence. It’s an experience she and her husband want their children to have. But from their home in New York City, she says, it’s easy to feel apart from the natural world.
“It’s important for my kids to know where food comes from—to not have a disconnection or to think that everything we eat comes from the store.” As noon approaches and her water bottles are nearing empty, Goussy wraps an arm around Evan’s shoulder. “Come on,” she says, “let’s take a break.”
LEAH’S GRANDMOTHER, Brownie McCulloh, had a strawberry, flower, and apple garden outside of Boston. “I went and picked strawberries with her and made jam with her, and my most beloved type of farming that I do now is perennial agriculture—specifically strawberries.”
Growing up, it was not unusual for Leah and her siblings to go to bed hungry. Raised in a trailer home in rural Massachusetts, where they were bullied at school as mixed-race children in a majority-white community, Leah and her sister spent a lot of time in the woods behind their home. “My sister Naima and I created what we thought was our own religion as small children—we would go into the woods and make shrines for Mother Nature, light candles, make offerings.”
“The woods was a safe place for me, whether it was light or dark. I would go into the woods in the middle of the night with no flashlight and just feel my way through … I had a game that I played where I would follow the little dappled spots of sunlight, one to the next, and that would be my map through the forest. It was where I felt whole.”
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