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Happy Winter Solstice!
We made it, ya’ll! From this day forward, we embrace ever-expanding light.
As we mark the shortest day and the longest night, we at WILDSEED send you love and fortitude from our nurturing lands. This season symbolizes a profound shift—a time to release the old and welcome new beginnings. In these challenging times of constriction, contraction, and contradictions, the winter solstice invites us to reflect on renewal and the infinite possibilities that lie ahead.
WILDSEED's mission feels more timely than ever as we confront systemic injustices and envision a society grounded in equity and compassion. Amidst the shadows cast by ongoing genocide and governance marred by white supremacy and violence, we are more committed to cultivating this land as a haven—a vibrant space for organizing, healing, and sustaining our communities.
We are deeply grateful to be intertwined with you in this journey. Together, we are called to dream bigger, love harder, and listen more intently. It’s a time to come together for direct action and direct service, to divest from destructive systems, to heal and mend, and to foster resilience with the earth.
Continue reading for highlights from our season and more expressions of gratitude for the solidarity and support that bind us.
Wishing you peace as you kindle the fires of transformation within. Let us channel our grief, rage, hope, and creativity into building a world to crafting a future where all beings can thrive.
With love & solidarity,
Naima, Kavitha, Natasha, Athena, Monti and Taij
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Oasis Activiation
On Sunday, October 27th, we gathered at the Oasis to have a closing ceremony for our first art installation and a ritual to fill the space with our intentions. Wonhee created a stunning, spinning mobile of sun catcher prisms using a traditional knot work ritual practiced in Mongolia (where the yurt was made and where Wonhee has matrilineal ancestors). The designs pay homage to the beyond human kin that live in the nearby creek including the turtle and the swans, who came out to celebrate. Three swans swam down the creek as we offered our praise songs and water, and spoke our intentions for the Oasis to be a fertile spring for healing and creativity.
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Perennial Dome Build
On a sunny day during peak foliage, we worked together to build a geodesic dome between the fire pit and the mandala medicine garden. We puzzle pieced and bolted the metal pieces together, enjoying the satisfaction of shaping something new. The structure will support passion vines that will grow up its flower of life geometry, and offer a dappled gathering space to circle or find solitude.
We also removed and re-homed the massive hardy kiwi vines that had engulfed the Moon House and nearby trees, with ladders, saws, loppers, and laughter.
Thank you Jared and Stefanie for facilitating the hardy kiwi removal and Natasha and Naima for facilitating the dome build.
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Radical Imagination Residency
We hosted 3 artists for the Radical Imagination Residency so far this winter, sharing space for rest, dreaming and creation with BIPOC cultural workers whose work strives for a more just and livable world.
Phoenix Amadi (Hempsted, NY) is an arts educator, writer, trauma-informed yoga instructor, childcare worker, storyteller, performance artist, singer, and somatic coach expressing a liberatory love that exists in all of nature.
Niki Andre (Ontario, CA) uses embodied practice, land-based rituals, spoken word, circle songs, and vocal jam ceremonies to cultivate interdependence and the common ground to build our activism from.
dre jácome (Brooklyn, NY) is an Ecuadorian-cClombian storyteller and strategist weaving across digital and traditional technologies. As a designer, cultural organizer and wordsmith, her practice is informed by our oldest technology, the land.
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Sweet Freedom Sorghum Harvest
Our beloved Sweet Freedom Farm squad hosted a beautiful weekend of sorghum harvesting this fall. They brought folks together to honor the land, share in hard work, and continue the legacy of growing this resilient, nutritious crop. From pressing sorghum through sugarcane presses to sipping fresh, sweet sorghum juice, we celebrated their work with this resilient West African plantcestor. We cooked down the juice, threshed the seeds, and ended the day with a delicious sorghum-infused meal. A huge thank you to everyone who joined us, whether in the fields, at the sugarcane presses or in spirit!
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WILDSEED provides BIPOC farmers and herbalists no cost access to prime agricultural land. Current cultivators include Sweet Freedom Farm, Catalyst Collaborative Farm, Ancestral Moon Farm & Medicinals, and Sage Herbalz. Below are updates from each project sharing soil, sun and mycelium at WILDSEED. | | |
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Catalyst Collaborative Farm wrapped up its 2nd season on 2.8 acres, growing peppers, herbs, and flowers shared with program participants or made into products. With a focus on soil health and centering reciprocity with the land, they added compost, practiced cover cropping, and used low-till methods. This fall they planted a bed of garlic with seed from Soul Fire Farm and mulched it with spent sorghum stalks from Sweet Freedom Farm. This winter, they’ll rest and recharge before welcoming the community back for Lilac Fest on May 17, 2025!
Sweet Freedom Farm completed its 4th Farming Season on .65 acres, growing ancestral varieties of sorghum for syrup and flour. They are filled with gratitude for this season’s yield, and for the community that came out to support and learn from the Spring planting and Fall harvest. This year Sweet Freedom gave directly to those impacted by incarceration, including a monthly free farmstand outside of Sing Sing Prison.
Ancestral Moon Farm & Medicinals Natasha has been building a relationship with the land in preparation for a 2025 vegetable grow, excited to implement the farm's design and crop plan and see it come to life next season. This year, Ancestral Moon has been able to create and donate $3,500 worth of medicine to BIPOC families and community members free of charge: 20 jars of mullein honey, 15 jars of fire cider, 37 pain relief and skin repair salves, 15 medicinal balms, 25 elderberry and cough syrups, 35 moisturizing body oils, multiple herbal tea blends, and free workshops teaching others how to make medicine and preserve vegetables.
Sage Herbalz completed its 3rd season tending the Mandala Medicine Garden. Sarah Elizabeth and the Mandala Nymphs cultivated comfrey, bergamot, lemon balm, tulsi, calendula, mullein and wildcrafted elderflower, burdock, motherwort, and jewelweed. With these healing plants, they created over 100 herbal tinctures, teas, salves and syrups distributed at no cost at Rock Steady's Fall Block Party and Trap House Doulas BK.
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WE ARE HIRING!
Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative Grant Writer / Fundraiser Role
Wildseed, Sweet Freedom, and Rock Steady Farm are calling in a new teammate to support the collaborative grants our organizations are embarking on together. This year we established the Webatuck Valley Farm Collaboration (WVFC) to build mutual aid amongst our sibling projects and collaborate to support BIPOC & LGBTQ+ farmers. Together we are designing a modern processing hub for the shared use to foster a more interdependent, equitable and resilient food system in the Hudson Valley.
As we launch this large capital project, this position will both take on the reporting and administration of current grant awards as well as apply for new grants. This a contract position with the potential of becoming staff after a trial year for the right fit. Learn more and apply here.
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Site Development
We worked with L-Pro Restoration, a multigenerational BIPOC family business, to repair the Sun House roof to ensure lasting protection for residents, event participants, and the broader community. Additionally, we’ve installed energy-efficient mini-splits to provide heating and cooling, a resource-saving upgrade that supports our transition away from petroleum-based heating for a more sustainable future.
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Thank you!
As the first delicate snowflakes blanket our sanctuary, we're filled with warmth and deep gratitude for each of you.
Your unwavering support has been the steady ground beneath WILDSEED, nurturing hope and growth through every season. Just as these first winter crystals transform our landscape, you've helped us transform possibilities for community and connection.
Thank you for being the light that keeps our mission bright, even in the coldest moments. Together, we continue to cultivate something wild and wonderful.
With heartfelt appreciation,
The WILDSEED Team
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Deep Reflection & Radical Visioning
Our core WILDSEED team gathered for a 3-day strategic planning retreat, celebrating a fruitful 2024 and aligning our priorities for the years ahead. We reflected on our collective journey, rejoiced in our accomplishments with a growing team, and harmonized our spirits with the nurturing presence of the land.
Under the spiritual leadership of Leah Ifagbamila Adelowo, we conducted an annual divination to seek guidance and permission from spiritual forces about our plans ahead. With the support of our facilitator, Luis Alejandro Tapia, we delved into strategic sessions that held space for connection, creativity, playful rest, and rigorous planning.
The days were structured to foster a shared understanding of our work and vision, ensuring that as WILDSEED moves into its tenth year, we are unified and stronger than ever. Our conversations clarified our roles in our organization and the wider movement and generated new ideas that will guide our programming and partnerships moving forward.
The retreat reaffirmed our dedication to each other and to our wider communities, as a thriving farming ecosystem, and a sanctuary for art, healing, respite and resistance. As we step into the future, we carry with us the warmth of our collective fire, a deepened sense of purpose, and luminous visions for the future.
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Land Transfer Updates
Over the past 10 months we have been in deep study of collective structures and land stewardship models to enable us to make intentional decisions around how WILDSEED holds the land, within and beyond legal frameworks.
Through literature reviews and connecting with groups that are learning as they practice, we are assessing our options and tending to relationships that will continue to nourish the intertwined ecosystems that WILDSEED is part of. We’ve outlined offerings and limitations around practicing reciprocity with those who are indigenous to this land, given more shape to our community farm model, connected with legal teams, and participated in a training that will strengthen our legal resilience.
Moving into 2025, we are looking to make formal moves around WILDSEED’s structure and title transfer, and have plans in place to practice different ways of listening to the land for guidance. Please reach out to Athena if you’re interested in being in this learning together at athena@wildseedcommunity.org
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Shared Purpose, Shared Space
As justice-workers, we know that our efforts to build a more liberated world are intertwined. And we know that we need space to recuperate, strategize, and fortify the skills, visions, and insights we need to be effective stewards of necessary change.
We are honored to offer indoor and outdoor space at WILDSEED to mission-aligned groups for trainings, retreats, movement meetups, innovation labs, cultural gatherings and celebration. To make a request for subsidized space rental for your organization's internal gathering or community event, please fill out this form.
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WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village is a creative sanctuary rooted in reciprocal relationships with land, water and ecology in the Mid Hudson Valley, NY. Centering the leadership and radical imaginations of BIPOC stewards, we grow food, medicine, and love as infrastructure for solidarity economies to nourish our ancestors, ourselves and generations to come. | | | | |
