Happy Solstice! WILDSEED Year-End Updates & Opportunities

Warm Greetings on this Winter Solstice!

Sending you snowflake kisses and the rainbow prism glitter sparkling over WILDSEED.

This season calls for release on so many levels, from the personal to the universal. We extend our deepest love and fortification from these nurturing lands, to all the places within you / us that are grieving or frightened.

In this era of non-stop catastrophe across our precious planet, the solstice is a moment for confronting what we need to shed as a species (supremacy, resource hoarding, violence, neglect), recommitting ourselves to necessary change, and dreaming into the infinite possibilities ahead.

WILDSEED was once just a dream.

Now we mark our 10th anniversary—a decade of planting deep roots and building a haven where farmers, artists, healers, and organizers connect, create, grow, heal and build power. As the shadows of systemic injustice intensify, our resolve is unwavering: to cultivate this land as a space for practicing radical care and interdependence, and sustaining our collective future.

This year we welcomed hundreds of community members through Konbit Days, Wellness gatherings, Rituals of Resistance, skill-shares, camp outs, retreats, and Intergenerational Play Dates. We’ve offered land and support to QT (Queer, Trans) and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) farmers and secured historic investments for agricultural infrastructure. And we've practiced mutual aid with sibling farms in this magical place we call the Webatuck Valley, collaborating toward a regional food system rooted in justice, earth-care and sovereignty.

We feel immense gratitude for our shared path. We are being called to listen more closely, love more intensely, divest from harmful systems, to heal and repair, and to build resilience alongside Mama Earth. We celebrate our unbreakable connections and our commitment to a future where everyone flourishes.

Please continue reading for seasonal highlights, opportunities to connect (including a JOB OPPORTUNITY to join our team) and more expressions of thanks for the solidarity that binds us.

May you find peace as you tend the fires of transformation. We have navigated the longest night and now turn toward the ever-increasing light.

With deep love, trust and unity,

Naima, Kavitha, Natasha, Athena, Ana, Monti and Taij

We are seeking a deeply committed Land and Community Steward to join the WILDSEED team!

This person will serve as an embodied anchor for our purpose, providing comprehensive, grounded leadership across operational, relational, and land-based areas:

Community Farm Management
Ecological Stewardship
Community Engagement

Find the full job description and apply here: https://bit.ly/wildseedjob

Please share this widely with your networks and tag anyone in alignment with our sacred work!

Radical Imagination Residency

WILDSEED offers one to two-week residencies at no cost for Black, Indigenous and other People of Color creatives, artists and cultural workers whose work strives for a more just and livable world. If you or someone you know could use a creative sanctuary learn more and apply here.

We are thrilled to report that WILDSEED was recently awarded a $7,500 grant from Dutchess County Community Grants Fund of the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley that is helping to fund the 2026 Radical Imagination Residencies. We are deeply grateful for this funding from such a trusted local partner.

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.

Volunteer with WILDSEED

Eager to connect with the land and community? We have volunteer opportunities to support our programming and daily operations. Whether you enjoy local driving, farming and landscaping, organizing, building maintenance, fundraising, creating artwork, or providing administrative assistance, there's a place for you to contribute your skills. Learn more and sign up through our volunteer form. Thank you!

Giving Campaign

Join us in celebrating a decade of WILDSEED. We are grateful for every person who has walked with us—dreamers, farmers, healers, artists, elders, youth, donors, neighbors, volunteers, and ancestors whose prayers made WILDSEED possible.

On Giving Tuesday, we launched our 10th Anniversary Giving Campaign, running through March 2026. We lovingly invite our community to celebrate a decade of putting down roots by investing in a flourishing future for WILDSEED.

Whether you give $10, $100, $1,000, or $100,000, every contribution becomes nutrients to this land and the people who tend it. We welcome meaningful and generous gifts that reflect your hope for the next decade of WILDSEED.

To move from scrambling to sustainable—and onward to sovereignty—we encourage supporters to consider monthly or yearly contributions. Steady nourishment helps us plan boldly for regenerative farming, sustainable staffing, affordable housing in our co-living Village, creative residencies, wellness offerings, local collaborations, and long-term infrastructure.

Please Give today:

Online: https://bit.ly/Wildseed10
To give via DAF, check, or other methods, email gratitude@wildseedcommunity.org.
Employer matching: You can find us in your employer’s Benevity portal by searching for “WILDSEED”, and make your gift that will then be matched by your employer.

Donate

Konbit Days

In the Mandala Medicine Garden, we spent a gorgeous day under the sun, joining our hands to tend to the sacred healing plants and enrich the soil with compost. Sarah Elizabeth, the Black elder herbalist whose labor and leadership gave rise to the garden, shared life stories and plant wisdom with us. After navigating a life-threatening condition, she was there right beside us, barefoot and regal in her flower crown tending to the bee balm, sage, and tulsi ~ a testament to the healing power of nature and community. Photos

Our final Konbit Day was inspired by Pilé Fèy, a Haitian ritual of coming together to prepare plant medicine for everyone to take home for the year to come. The Sun House was aglow across three levels of medicine making with herbs we have grown, foraged and gathered. We enjoyed an amazing Indo-Guyenese love feast and chocolate cake, shared poetry, drumming and music, and frolicked alongside the 8 wonderful kids who reminded us of the simple medicine of bounding through the land. Check out this reel!

Wellness Days

Our Wellness Days this summer offered a much-needed oasis of care for hard-working bodies of our community, including farmers, frontline organizers, and caregivers. Folks enjoyed massages, acupuncture, herbal salt baths, spiritual cleansing limpias, group stretching, individual coaching and food-as-medicine. The presence of three cherished elders, resting in hammocks and nourished by farm-to-table creations, and the visible way people's bodies and faces transformed from when they arrived to when they left—softening, opening up, and embracing more possibility– reminds us the importance of pouring into the people who pour into our world. July photos & August photos

Intergenerational Play Dates

With guests ranging from 5 to 69 years old, we had a blast during our last Intergenerational Play Date playing pickle ball, splashing in the pool, making giant bubbles, and drumming and dancing barefoot on the grass. We sculpted talismans from red clay, each one molded with our intentions for WILDSEED—focusing on the care, love, justice, trust, safety, joy and freedom we are shaping together on this land.

Rituals of Resistance

"Rituals of Resistance" was a powerful journey into sacred connection and collective healing. The gathering began with reflections, food and fellowship, setting the tone for shared vulnerability. The rituals were transformative: creating flower honey offerings and listening in silent communion with the water, followed by a brave space to speak and bury our collective and personal grief into the earth as an act of release and solidarity. The day culminated in an embodied practice of fostering care for each other and the Earth. Photos

We Are Made of Stardust

The "We Are Made of Stardust" campout welcomed 100 people to the land for joyful communion under a meteor shower. The weekend opened with a powerful altar building ritual, followed by soulful performances, and a heart-opening cacao ceremony. After a magical night of collective prayer and sleeping under the stars, we were sipping on agua fresca, jumping and gyrating to Congolese rhythms in the blazing sunshine, and hanging clay talismans imbued with our prayers around the land. Professional photos & Collaborative album

We Want to Hear From You!

Please take a moment to share your feedback and let us know what you appreciated, what we could do better, your desires for future programming, and anything else you'd like to share with us.

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 and Medicinals, and Sage Herbalz. Here are 2025 updates from each project sharing soil, sun and mycelium at WILDSEED.

Catalyst Collaborative Farm continues growing into their 2.8-acre farm, tripling production space and welcoming ground cover friends like red and white clover to build soil in expansion areas. They dedicated more space to hot and sweet peppers, distributed through partnerships with the BIPOC Queer Expressway, Brooklyn Packers (serving 40 NYC food pantries at no cost), and the North East Community Center locally. Their garlic planting quintupled using last year's harvest and seed from Soul Fire Farm. 2026's harvest will nourish communities far and wide.

Ancestral Moon Farm & Medicinals

deepen our relationship with the land through a year of providing herbal baths, somatic exercise practices and the slow craft of growing the very plants we turn into medicine. Our teas, custom remedies, and consultations will unfold as rituals- rooted in presence, reciprocity, and gratitude. This coming season is a devotion to tending plants and people with intention, honoring the privilege of stewarding land in partnership with WILDSEED.

Sweet Freedom Farm celebrated another abundant year, tapping maple trees for syrup on a neighboring property and at their Germantown home base. At WILDSEED South, they expanded sorghum cultivation to two acres and hosted over 100 people for a joyful harvest event (pictured above). This ancestral grain puts down deep roots that build soil while offering dual gifts: seeds milled into waffle flour and stalks juiced for sorghum syrup. The celebration honored sorghum's full potential—nourishing bodies, healing land, and weaving liberation into every harvest.

Sage Herbalz’ Apothecary on Farms

Sage Herbalz Apothecary on Farms culminated their 4th year on the land with a sweet Konbit Work Day where community members gathered to weed, create accessible pathways through the Mandala Medicine Garden, and spread compost. The Garden Nymphs poured love into the space all season, supporting two medicine distribution events that shared over $1,000 worth of herbal remedies at each gathering, tending to communities in need with care and abundance.

Site Development

This year has been one of deep listening to the land and water and significant development on site. We completed an in-depth ecological site assessment with Alosa Ecological Strategies and are finalizing our comprehensive site plan, which will guide the long-term design for farming, programming, housing, and stewardship.

We asked the big questions: What can this land hold? What responsibilities do we carry sitting at the top of the watershed that nourishes so many communities? How do we cultivate abundance for our farmers, program participants, and the broader communities we serve—while honoring our wetlands, forests, and all our non-human kin?

The Sun House now shines brighter than ever with new windows and a fresh coat of paint, and the Moon House has new shingles on the roof. We upgraded The Oasis (Mongolian yurt) with a new window and a second layer of sheep’s wool insulation. Our new outdoor cedar shower with hot water on demand is complete, and we’ve spread cedar wood chips across the land to enhance comfort and safety by mitigating ticks.

We planted 3 new perennial gardens, growing strong with medicinal and pollinator favorites like echinacea, lemon balm, yarrow, and tulsi holy basil. And this year brought an abundant harvest of apples and mushrooms from our food forest, with an understory of native medicinal and edible perennials taking root.

Partnerships

This year, our partnerships deepened into something ancient and emergent—a weaving of dreams, labor, and long-haul collaboration. In the Webatuck Valley Farm Collaborative (WVFC), we are practicing what it means to build infrastructure for a just food future as a living practice rooted in a hyper-local ecosystem.

WVFC is a QT & BIPOC-led partnership 9 years in the making between Rock Steady Farm, Sweet Freedom Farm, and WILDSEED. We are designing a food processing and distribution hub for our region, rooted in regenerative agriculture, cultural reclamation, cooperative governance, and economic sovereignty.

With cold storage, drying space, commercial kitchen, grain mill, wash and pack, and space to aggregate our harvest for distribution —the food hub will increase QT & BIPOC-grown produce by 300%, strengthening viable farm businesses while feeding our communities with dignity.

This year, WVFC secured $2.8M of our overall $7.5M goal, unlocking a historic $2.2M USDA investment—a testament to what becomes possible when farmers, organizers, funders, and land stewards move in concert.

The next stretch requires all of us to ensure a future where food, culture, and care are not commodities but birthrights. Stay tuned for the launch of our WVFC Capital Campaign next Spring, and join us in building the roots of a resilient regional food system.

We listened to farmers who told us:

We need a grain processing mill, cold storage, and a commercial kitchen to grow our scale and impact.
We will feed our communities so much more through a powerful shared infrastructure.
We are ready to thrive through cooperation and solidarity economies.

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.