Dear Farm-Based Educators:
Thanks to all who filled out our low-tech matchmaking forms last month: seeking mentorship and offering mentorship. This is an ongoing process, so it's not too late if you have something to offer or are looking for advice.
In 2021, we piloted an offering, "Healing the Roots of Racism in Ourselves" using affinity spaces for BIPOC and white attendees. The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive:
“It was the first time I have had a Zoom experience that was so potent energetically - I enjoyed actually feeling connected, albeit remotely and digitally, with all of the participants. I look forward to more of that!”
We're excited to bring this offering back in an expanded form: 6-months! We're aware that many organizations within the fields of food, farm, and garden education have predominantly white staff, and the cultures within these organizations can place disproportionate stress on staff of color. If you're a person of color, we hope this 6-month series can offer community, care, and healing for you. If you're a white person looking to unlearn white supremacy culture both cognitively and through repatterning your body, this space is for you. If you're curious why we're doing this work in two separate groups, here are some resources.
We have a twofold member question this month. Respond to this email with your answers! If you're charging admission to your farm somehow other than an "entry free" model, how are you doing it? Secondly, if you're asking for donations in lieu of an entry fee, how are you communicating that your organization/farm still has financial need?
And finally, a gift for you! The wonderful team at Yellow Farmhouse Education Center is hosting a virtual author series this winter, "Food and Gender", and you're invited! Use this code "LEARN" for free registration at www.yellowfarmhouse.org. Interested in purchasing the books? Click here.
Wishing you joyful pruning, planning, chipping ice out of buckets, rest, and whatever else January offers you.
Vera Simon-Nobes
FBEN Coordinator
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FBEN Summer Farm Camp Meetings
Join peers and Andrew Ziv, Eden Village Camp to chat about what's alive with your camp planning. New for this year: shorter zoom meetings (30 minutes) every other week and an invitation for YOU to share-out where you are in your camp-planning.
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Healing the Roots of Racism in Ourselves for White / White Adjacent Folks
This series creates space for healing from white supremacy culture and transforming anti-Blackness within ourselves, toward healing our webs of relationships, organizations and societal structures. In this series participants will practice a creative combination of healing practices ranging from embodied awareness to movement, reflection and writing. Join this series with peer farm-based educators to rediscover, relearn, and reimagine in our current crisis-driven reality. Learn about our facilitators and program goals at the registration links below.
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Healing the Roots of Racism: A BIPOC Series for Reclamation and Reconnection with Richael Faithful
Space in this series is reserved for farmers, farm, food, and garden-based educators, and those who work with land who identify as BIPOC. Our healing focused series will center the reclamation of, and reconnection with, our bodies, our places, our ancestors, our beyond-human kin, our cosmologies, and each other through the mirror of nature. Our space will root, and grow, from the themes of stillness-movement, cyclical living, regeneration, adaptation, collectivity, and vision. Together, we'll move with radical hospitality, and toward radical imagination.
Faithful is a folk healing artist from the African diaspora tradition of the U.S. South, called conjure. Faithful supports spirit-work for and with land, nature, and meaning of place through ritual, storytelling, and other majik. In their role as a community lawyer, Faithful helps land sovereignty efforts for Indigenous and Black especially within food and land justice movements.
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FBEN Community Check-In with Yellow Farmhouse Education Center
Join Jennifer Rothman, Executive Director of Yellow Farmhouse Education Center in Stonington, CT for a conversation about what's cooking, growing, fermenting, and transforming at Yellow Farmhouse! We'll chat with Jen about the 2021 season, what's coming up in 2022, and will have space to hear your updates, questions, and connections as well.
Yellow Farmhouse Education Center uses culinary and farm-based education to connect people to each other and to where their food comes from so that we can cultivate a shared commitment to supporting a local, sustainable food system accessible and affordable to all.
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2022 Mid-Atlantic Farm-Based Educators Winter Gathering
The 2022 Mid-Atlantic Farm-Based Education Winter Gathering will be postponed - new dates TBD! Email Peggy with questions.
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AgGrad Podcast and Video Series for Students and Young Ag Professionals
This is a great podcast and video (YT) series full of inspiration and practical advice on starting or advancing a career in agriculture. By spotlighting unique careers in agriculture so you know what opportunities are available, by sharing resources to help with you land your dream job, and by giving you actionable tips to help you network the right way.
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Farm Discovery's home is Live Earth Farm, a 150 acre patchwork of working farm, riparian corridor, oak and redwood forest in the Pajaro Valley of Santa Cruz County, California.
They're seeking a Farm Manager and Assistant Education Director. Learn more!
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AmeriCorps Members and You!
AmeriCorps NCCC has teams of 18-24 year olds who can help communities meet their critical needs. NCCC partners with a variety of nonprofit organizations, federal/state/local governmental agencies, and tribal organizations, who design a project to address an identified need in their community and then we send a team to be the people power behind it by living and serving in that community for typically 6-8 weeks at a time. A few past project examples include weatherizing homes, trail building, blight removal projects, repairing or maintaining homes or public infrastructure, and building community gardens. An upcoming webinar can help you determine if AmerCorps NCCC is right for you.
(Photo: Healthy Acadia)
AmeriCorps NCCC: A Resource for Nonprofit & Government Agencies
Friday, January 21 at 11:00 a.m. ET (10:00 a.m. CT)
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Did you know, youth farmers at East New York Farms have seeds available through TrueLove Seeds? TrueLove is a farm-based seed company offering culturally important and open pollinated vegetable, herb, and flower seeds. Their seeds are grown by more than 50 small-scale urban and rural farmers committed to community food sovereignty, cultural preservation, and sustainable agriculture. They share their profits directly with growers: 50% of each packet sale goes back to the farmer who grew it!
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Applications for the 2022-23 Northeast Farm to School Institute Are Open! |
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The Institute is a unique year-long professional learning opportunity for selected school, district, or early childhood teams from New England and New York.
Since 2010, the Farm to School Institute has been bringing teams together to build relationships, skills, and a collaborative action plan for their school. With the support of a coach, teams spend the school year putting their plans into action and strengthening their capacity to impact classrooms, cafeterias and communities, with change that lasts.
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June 28–30, 2022 Attend a summer kickoff retreat at Shelburne Farms to dive into farm to school action planning, and network with peers around the region, and explore farm to school possibilities.
- September–May Meet regularly as a team with your coach as you implement your action plan during the school year. Participate in a role-specific (educator, school nutrition staff, coordinator, student leaders) affinity group / professional learning community that meets throughout the year.
Applications are Due February 14, 2022
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FoodCorps Applications are Open!
FoodCorps service members help kids learn about, grow, cook, and eat nourishing foods in school. They cultivate health, joy, and belonging through food in school, and nurture habits that can last a lifetime. And they build lasting partnerships with communities dedicated to healthy kids, food education, and food justice.
Are you passionate about fueling kids’ bodies and minds? Then consider applying! This year’s application deadline is March 31, 2022. The sooner you apply, the sooner you’ll hear back from FoodCorps.
Photo: Rachel Terry, FoodCorps New York ‘16, works with students in the garden.
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Introducing Shelburne Farms and UVM’s New Education for Sustainability Graduate Programs
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Whole Kids Foundation Seeks Grant Reviewers
Whole Kids Foundation is looking to build a team of grant reviewers for the 2022 Garden Grant cycle. Each year, Whole Kids receives on average 1,000 applications from schools and organizations for our Garden Grant program. In order to select recipients, they conduct a review process scoring each application in key focus areas and providing recommendations to each applicant via our grant management system. The commitment is roughly March thru June. The deadline to submit an application will be Monday January 31st, 2022 at 11:59PM EST.
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