Dear Friends,

As National Farm to School Month comes to a close, we are excited to give you a gift that will continue to inspire your work of building a more just food system. We've partnered with Chelsea Green Publishing to offer FBEN members a 50% discount on Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. This is an essential resource for those working in sustainable agriculture and food justice. Read below on how you can get your copy!

Plus, our resource advisory group is sharing tools they love for supporting the whole child as students juggle new challenges in an already stressful back-to-school season. Enjoy their picks below, and remember you can share your own resource here!

With gratitude,

Vera, FBEN Coordinator
Celebrate National Farm to School Month with Your Copy of Farming While Black 

October was National Farm to School Month! To celebrate, FBEN is offering a 50% discount on Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land. This "masterpiece of Afro-indigenous sovereignty sheds light on the richness of Black culture permeating throughout agriculture," writes Karen Washington of Rise & Root Farm, Chester, NY. It's a must in the library of any farm-based educator, and we're so pleased to offer discounted copies through the generosity of Chelsea Green Publishing. Thank you Gretchen, Darrel, Sean, and the rest of the team! (The discount does not affect author, Leah Penniman's royalties.) We encourage you to read Soul Fire Farm's Integrity Guidelines as you begin your journey with this book.

To Order Your Copy: 
  • Find Farming While Black on Chelsea Green's website
  • During checkout, use the coupon code, FBEN20. 
  • Customers will pay shipping and $17.46 per book.
  • Make a commitment to read this book. Reference it often, share it with your friends, and commit to integrating your learning into your work. 

* Limit one book per person
** Available through 11/30/20 or and while supplies last
*** If you are not in the position to pay for this book, but are committed to learning from it, please request a free copy here.

In the future, we hope to facilitate a learning community around Farming While Black. If you'd like to learn more, or help plan this, sign up here. 

Mindfulness—the practice of paying attention to your feelings and helping your mind and body experience the present moment—can be a valuable tool to help children (and adults!) process feelings. Being in nature offers many opportunities to practice mindful approaches. Children are naturally mindful in nature, but this resource details four of my favorite guided invitations. Try these invitations on your own! Establishing our own mindfulness practice can help us teach others more effectively. Lastly, don’t forget that the beauty of mindfulness is it can last as long as you’d like and take place anywhere. All we really have to do is “breathe and let be” (Kabat-Zinn).

-Ashley Davenport, Retreat Farm, Brattleboro, VT
Bringing Social Emotional Learning & Mindfulness Education to Your Work Webinar

While social emotional learning (SEL) has recently been pointed out as potentially problematic to me (depending on how it is practiced) these practices are trauma-informed and help to create a liberated/safer space for students and participants. Rates of trauma in our youth are only going to continue throughout this pandemic, so it is important to have the tools to help people show up and have a safe experience. Lots of these exercises can be done in the garden or you could teach them how it's done and students can do it on their own. (Be sure to scroll down once you've clicked the link to find the archived webinar, resource handout, and additional resources from participants regarding mindfulness practices for students.)


-Meredith Rivlin, Cedar Circle Farm, East Thetford, VT

Hidden Villa has been practicing environmental education in the Bay Area for over 50 years. Follow this link to explore the ways they are bringing the outdoors into everyone's home as we all work to establish a new normal amid Covid-19. Programs are open to everyone including individuals, learning pods, school teachers, or anyone trying to learn about the natural world around them.
 

This Napcast podcast brings forward the warm & personal, equity and inclusion-focused perspectives and education practices of two male early childhood educators of color. As a professional development institute and education center, Hilltop Children's Center promotes anti-bias programming with families and children at the heart of their work. This resource has been a go-to for me over the months of the pandemic and I especially appreciate their guidance on fostering connections during this time, while still challenging me to rethink and revise my existing orientations and understandings of education and the world we live in.

-Hallie Sykes, Oxbow Farm and Conservation Center, Carnation, WA
Upcoming Workshops
A Conversation on Land Rematriation
November 10 | 3:30 - 5 ET

This conversation is an offering for those considering land transition or succession in the context of land justice and decolonization. Hosted by Sophia Maravell and Digs DeCandia, they will share resources and tools available for those looking to explore this opportunity with their families, organizations and communities.
Virtual Field Trip to Pony Power Therapies, Mahwah, NJ
December 2 | 3:30-4:45 ET

Pony Power Therapies uses horses and an accessible farm to enhance the physical, social and emotional well-being of children and adults who need extra support. Join them for a virtual field trip. More info coming soon!

Service to Justice Virtual Leadership Training
January 11 - 15 | afternoons (EST)

This anti-racism training led by Service to Justice is a process designed to help further infuse equity, justice, and belonging into your work and the movement. It features a Rooting Out Racism Training designed specifically for people working on and with the land and people connected to farming. 

Registration coming soon!

  INFO@FARMBASEDEDUCATION.ORG
FARMBASEDEDUCATION.ORG