SUMMER 2021

JOURNAL THE CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE PRACTICE

Field of the Future New Definition of Nutrient Growing a New Crop SUSAN JENNINGS Density Goes Beyond Labels of Regenerative Farmers DAN KITTREDGE AMY HARPER & KAT CHRISTEN CONTRIBUTORS Matan Mazursky, Educator AGRARIA JOURNAL SUMMER 2021 Gabby Amrhein, Megan Bachman, Beth Bridgeman, Jyoti Miller, Database Coordinator Ariella Brown, Caressa Brown, Kat Christen, Scott Montgomery, Webmaster CONTENTS Sheryl Cunningham, David Diamond, Emily Foubert, Pam Miller, Office Manager Rose Hardesty, Amy Harper, Bob Huston, Rachel Isaacson, Teddy Pierson, Asst. Landuse Coordinator Susan Jennings, Dan Kittredge, Jim Linne, Peggy Nestor, Kaylee Rutherford, Miller Fellow An Invitation to Pay Attention— and Thrive, SHERYL CUNNINGHAM 4 Teddy Pierson, Kenisha Robinson, Rich Sidwell, Kenisha Robinson, Farmer Training Assistant What’s In a Name? Cheryl Smith Xinyuan Shi, Americorps VISTA 5 McKenzie Smith, Miller Fellow Field of the Future, PHOTOGRAPHY SUSAN JENNINGS 6 Mark Thornton, Educator Dennie Eagleson, Amy Harper, Rose Hardesty, New Definition of Nutrient Density Goes Beyond Labels, Tiffany Ward, Educator DAN KITTREDGE 9 Susan Jennings, Teddy Pierson, Renee Wilde Joseph Young, Melrose Acres Grant Coordinator Edible Ethics: To Harvest or Not to Harvest, GABBY LOOMIS-AMRHEIN 12 ILLUSTRATION FARMER PARTNER Natural Foods – Native Edible Plants, BY TEDDY PIERSON Bob Huston 14 Jason Ward Black Farming and Beyond, ARIELLA J. BROWN HORN 15 EDITORS COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS Amy Harper and Susan Jennings Farmer Fellowship Program: Growing a New Crop of Regenerative Farmers, AMY HARPER & KAT CHRISTEN 16 BOARD OF TRUSTEES DESIGN Sheryl Cunningham, President Coming Back to the Land: Reviving a Multigenerational Legacy, BY KENISHA ROBINSON & CARESSA BROWN 18 Tika Redding Richard Sidwell, Treasurer As Below, So Above: From Healthy Soil to Healthy Body, A Conversation with Elaine Ingham, MEGAN BACHMAN 20 Megan Bachman, Secretary AGRARIA STAFF Mark Cohen Optimal Health: A Physician/Farmer Perspective, JIM LINNE 22 Robert Bacheller, Land Team Jessica D’Ambrosio Amber Bodkin, Grantwriter Agraria: A New Educational Model, RICH SIDWELL 24 Donna Haller Naomi Bongorno, Development Manager Kevin Hallinan Around Agraria, Photography, AMY HARPER & DENNIE EAGLESON 26 Ariella Brown, Black Farming Conference Lead Sarah Hippensteel Hall From Activist to Advocate: How I Became a Voice for Black Agriculture, Sherry Chen, Melrose Acres Manager CHERYL WOOD SMITH 28 Jim Linne Kat Christen, Farm Training Manager Macy Reynolds Grounded Hope: From the Highways to the Hedgerows, RENEE WILDE 30 David Diamond, K-12 Education Lead Steven Roe Food as Farmacy, PEGGY NESTOR 32 Alberta Dempsey, Research Intern Cheryl Smith Lyric Ester, Land Team for argiope, GABBY LOOMIS-AMRHEIN 33 Emily Foubert, Nature Education Lead AGRARIA Nature Based Education During a Pandemic, DAVID DIAMOND 34 Adam Green, GIS Coordinator and Web Developer Box 243 Rose Hardesty, Social Media 131 E. Dayton Yellow Springs Road Building Community Through Reskilling, BETH BRIDGEMAN 37 Yellow Springs, OH 45387 Amy Harper, Communications Manager/Research Liaison VOLUNTEERS, 38 Kelly Hudson, Educator 937-767-2161 SNAPSHOTS Around and About Agraria, Rachel Isaacson, Americorps VISTA AMY HARPER 40 Susan Jennings, Executive Director CALENDAR, 46 Stephanie Kelly, Educator Electric Blue Songs to Nurture the Spirit, Alex Klug, Food and Farm Program Manager EMILY FOUBERT 48 Matthew Lawson, Project Manager CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE PRACTICE FUNDRAISING UPDATES, 49

2 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 3

CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE PRACTICE PRACTICE INTRODUCTION about food legacies—Gabby Loomis-Amrhein asks us to antioxidants, while other spinach may have only a small BY SHERYL CUNNINGHAM pay attention to where and who we are as we forage and amount? Megan Bachman’s interview with Elaine Ingham the impacts our foraging might have on ecosystem health. puts a new spin on an old idea—you are what you eat—to Caressa Brown and Kenisha Robinson turn our attention make the connection between healthier soils and healthier toward their family histories, and their grandfathers’ and humans. In her feature on Leslie Edmunds of Clem & fathers’ relationships with growing food, and how those Thyme Nutrition, Peggy Nestor explains that there is work growing lessons are connected to their present and future, being done, just down the road, for people hungry to learn An Invitation to Pay Attention and that of their community. Cheryl Smith looks back about the healing power of real, whole food. toward the decline of her childhood home in Dayton, Susan Jennings asks us to pay attention to the — and Thrive and the liberatory capacity of land reclamation and food bigger picture, and how new understandings of our interconnectedness with each other and the planet can lead production for Black Americans. us to a healthful future. Other writers featured in this edition ask us to pay I started to grow some of my own food in the spring of Nope. What do we need to thrive? At Agraria, the answers start attention to the relationship between soil, food, human 2009. I knew nothing about soil health, but the house I had Soil. Depleted soil. I was asking plants to grow without in the soil. health, and the health of ecosystems. Jim Linne walks us moved into had a big garden and I decided to use it. I got on paying attention to what they needed to thrive. through rebuilding a farm, literally from the ground up, Sheryl Cunningham is president of the Agraria Board the Internet and read about something called the “double- What do we need to thrive? And who, or what, counts as while Dan Kittredge directs our attention to the mystery of of Trustees and a communication professor and faculty dig” method, a sort of tilling by hand. That sounded good “we”? nutrient density—how can some spinach be packed with sustainability coordinator at Wittenberg University. to me. It turned out to be an enormous amount of work and The writers featured in this edition of the Agraria I’m still not sure if my lower back has ever forgiven me for it. Journal ask us for something, though they do so gently and I planted what seemed like everything that first spring—and with encouragement. They ask us to pay attention to the food it all grew! we put into our bodies, how it was grown, and by whom. Year two, my back and I decided not to double dig. They also ask us to pay attention to the legacies of food and Instead, I attempted to till in a rather clueless way, the growing, what has been lost, and what can and should be What’s in a Name? borrowed tiller bucking left and right, raked a bit of the soil regained. Over the years our organization has gone by different around, and weeded what was left. My food grew again, Beth Bridgeman talks to us about skills from the past names, but the work has been essentially the same: but not as well. Too much water? Not enough? Too humid? and the joy that comes with learning that they are still to research, educate and promote community as both a Plants in the wrong spots? worth passing down. Other writers encourage us to think cooperative attitude and place-based way of life. Founded in 1940 as Community Service, Inc., the intent was to serve small communities by disseminating ideas and strategies for their economic and cultural vitality. It was only later that the term “community service” came to mean a type of local volunteering. So in the early 2000s, the organization began using The Community Solution to highlight the ways that community — local, cooperative living — was the solution out in several of his books. to many of our most pressing challenges, namely oil and The name Agraria speaks to the work to both reclaim resource depletion. and reimagine a more rooted way of life in deep relationship In 2009, we rebranded as The Arthur Morgan to the land and one another. It brings us back to our Institute for Community Solutions, honoring the work of foundations as an organization, and as a civilization. our pioneering founder and reflecting our research and And it brings us to another name change for our education prowess as a new kind of think tank. 80-plus year-old organization. The legacy that began The 2017 purchase of our 128-acre farm brought with Community Service and continued with Community another shift. We called it Agraria in a nod to both a Solutions will now live on under the banner of the Agraria low-energy community design crafted by Pat Murphy and Center for Regenerative Practice. After all, the more things Morgan’s vision of vibrant rural cultures and economies laid change, the more they stay the same. Jacoby Creek crossing on Agraria. AMY HARPER

4 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 5 DIRECTOR’S NOTE

BY SUSAN JENNINGS

The Field of the Future “The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.” -Thomas Kuhn

As we enter a new decade, the show up in laboratories that cannot be extreme version of this is seeing all ground beneath our feet continues explained by the current understanding living things as nothing more than to shift as the natural and human of how reality is constructed. When machines set loose in a random systems that sustain us are increasingly anomalies proliferate, science enters universe. Rene Descartes famously imperiled. Yet our greatest challenge a crisis period that is resolved when operated on his wife’s dog when it was DENNIE EAGLESON may be the collapse of the narratives a new paradigm arises that shifts awake to show that animals did not that have guided us—narratives about understanding and practices. have a soul. Materialist science assumes other and the planet we inhabit. This an air-conditioned office, and AI- scientific underpinning of the Gaia our future, about “progress” and It's clear to me that we are in this that wholes can be cut into parts thinking is evident in agricultural enhanced humans are promoted as an hypothesis and deep systems thinking. technology, about our relationships crisis space between a world organized without fundamentally altering their systems that suggest we can kill major evolutionary option, we know that we Our understanding of frequencies with each other and the natural world. by materialist science, conceptualized nature. parts of the food web, such as insects are on the edge of an historical cliff. as communication helps us to see Some of the proffered descriptions of by Newton and Descartes, and Many of our most pressing and soil, without harming ourselves, We are on the verge of breaking the that trees and plants are talking to our present—that we are in a time of an arising quantum paradigm, as problems have at their root materialist and confine animals in darkness as if delicate threads that bind us to each one another and whales and bees are civilizational and ecological collapse, a understood by Einstein and Bohm. thinking. Climate change, ecological they could be reduced to a piece of other and the planet. navigating by sonar. In fact these are great reset, a great turning, and a long The tenets of Scientific overshoot, rampant degenerative a corporate food “chain.” In other Yet fully embracing the arising just a few known examples of how the emergency — provide helpful framing. Materialism (also known as scientism) diseases, hunger, and inequity systems, materialist thinking shows up quantum paradigm gives us reason for fundamental underpinnings of life are But there are longer scientific and include the hypothesis that the natural share a basic premise that we are in siloed institutions and professions— hope, and a toolkit for change available akin to a field of energy that connects historical arcs that illuminate a broader world is without consciousness. An fundamentally separate from each like urban planning systems that to all. The double-slit experiment that us in magical yet potentially traceable context for our predicament and separate the engineers who design forms one basis for quantum physics ways. provide new mindsets for developing roads from the biologists who deal was first performed in 1801—and Practices based on the on-the-ground solutions to our systemic with the challenges of toxic run off. has since become the most replicated understanding of this unity, and the crises. Also witness energy systems created experiment in scientific history. This need to repair the systems that threaten Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of without a concern for the limits of their experiment shows that light is both it, are proliferating across the planet. Scientific Revolutions, first published component parts, and health systems wave and particle—and that waves In natural systems, through rewilding in 1962, is a history of scientific that ignore nutrition and the need for become particles when they are projects and wildlife corridors and discovery that lays out a thesis that people to be in community with each observed. The collapse of the wave bridges, we are helping to restore science, rather than progressing from other and nature. function into concrete reality, in other biological communities. In our insight to insight in measured steps The atomized separateness words, happens when we pay attention. human communities, degrowth and through experimentation, actually epitomized by a one-size-fits all This linking of consciousness cooperative initiatives; alternative takes its biggest leaps through new materialist culture urges us toward an to the creation of concrete reality, work and currencies; and doughnut theories that arise outside the bounds evermore brittle centralized control coupled with an understanding of the and ecological economics are helping of the accepted science—think the of all systems by an evermore distant unity that underlies all life, gives us us to mend the divides between us— Copernican Revolution. In this other. When drone strikes that kill principles and practices for re-mending and pull us back from the ecological narrative, “normal” science starts people on the other side of the our relationships with nature and with edge. Permaculture and regenerative to become stressed when anomalies AMY HARPER Fall colors along Mary's Way, the bike trail connecting Agraria with Yellow Springs. planet are done by an “operator” in each other. Quantum theory is the agriculture are showing us ways to feed

6 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 7 people healthfully while leaving food for through the rubble? Clearly, the future agricultural practices and the healing our fellow creatures. And forest bathing, is malleable, and dependent on our of the systems by which we share BY DAN KITTREDGE outdoor schools, and an explosion of dreams as well as our doings. food; and the healing of the silos of people starting to grow their own food, We chose to call Agraria a Center education through transdisciplinary are providing opportunities for deep for Regenerative Practice because hands-on initiatives. We share our work immersion and reconnection between we understand that the healing that with multiple institutional partners, people and planet. needs to happen on the planet goes many of whom are written about in this Kuhn stresses that the scientist’s far beyond the regeneration of soils. journal. Together with our funders and New Definition of Nutrient Density tools and viewpoint determine the Regenerative practices are those that volunteers, they are helping to weave outcome of experiments. If what move forward people, institutions, and a field of the future that is diverse and Goes Beyond Labels we pay attention to determines the projects in an evolutionary-spiraling filled with creativity and hope. We outcome of our future, we might cycle of growth and development. invite you to join us as we develop a think of attention as one of the most Our nonprofit’s current work plan As a child in elementary school I new narrative of the possible important resources we have. Do we assumes that we need to pay attention remember telling my science teacher choose to “pay” our limited attention to multiple levels of healing—the that I was an Organic Farmer. The to our collapsing structures, or to healing of the biosphere and the Susan Jennings is the Executive Director disdain with which she responded in these vigorous new shoots growing urban/rural divide; the healing of our of Agraria. front of my peers by saying “organic means contains carbon, so all farmers are organic farmers” sticks with me to this day. It was not actually that long ago that a group of back-to-the land homesteaders took a word that meant one thing in the world of science and redefined it to create a cultural touch point that now has a significant meaning globally. In much the same way, food scientists have defined nutrient density differently than have those in the broader food movement. Specifically, PHOTO COURTESY OF BFA they determine the nutrient density Bionutrient Meter developed by the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA) measures the nutrient density index of a crop by its average level of of food. nutrients per unit calorie. For example, nutritionally uniform. This assumption effectively process standards, not quality kale has on average a relatively high is foundationally flawed. standards. A crop is either organic or level of nutrients but a low level of My experience as a farmer has not, local or not. There is no subtlety or calories. By this metric then kale has been that some crops have greater nuance in them. a high nutrient density score. Rice has sheen, vigor, vibrancy, pest and disease For a decade, the Bionutrient Food many more calories in it per unit and so resistance, flavor and shelf life than Association, which I helped found and would have a low nutrient density score. others. My understanding is that there serve as executive director, has been For the broader food movement, are some profound nutrient variations working to expand our understanding however, nutrient density has to do with in these crops, and these are really what of this new definition of nutrient quality, with how nutritious one bunch I should be striving for rather than density, and for the past four years we of kale is in relation to another. Or one a label like Organic or Regenerative have been using the scientific process to bag of rice to another. Among food or local or Non-GMO etc. None of do so. scientists there is an implicit assumption these labels correlate to the inherent We devised a strategy to move this that all kale or rice is relatively nutritional quality of the crop and are process forward: Volunteers planted raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, currants, and jostaberries in Agraria's perennial pantry garden.

8 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 9 1) Identify the nutritional variation conference that fall. carrot has as much copper as those if you ate one leaf of the highest In 2020 we increased the number conditions. This will allow us to that exists in crops so that an empirical In 2018 we established our first three carrots, and that leaf of spinach antioxidant level spinach on January of crops to 20 and broadened our build correlations from management definition of the nutritional density lab to begin identifying the nutritional has as much iron as those 18 leaves 1 of a year, you would have to eat one base of labs from the primary lab in to quality in a way that should give of any individual crop could be variation in food and chose two crops of spinach. When it came to those leaf of the lowest antioxidant level Ann Arbor to the first satellite lab at significant insight to growers about accomplished. to begin with: carrots and spinach. higher order nutritional compounds, spinach every day for the entire year to Chico State in California and our first what limiting factors they can change 2) Identify the environmental We reached out to our community for antioxidants and polyphenols, it was get the same level as you received on European lab, in partnership conditions and causal factors that volunteers and asked for samples of 75:1 – 200:1. As in this leaf of spinach January 1st of the most nutritious one! with Valorex, in the relate to those varied nutrient density these two crops to be shipped to the has as many antioxidants as those 75 Most impressively perhaps we Normandy region of France. readings. lab. We received samples from gardens, leaves of spinach and that carrot has as were able to build a calibration on We added oats and wheat many polyphenols as those 75 carrots. This variation did not correlate "The results we found in this short year with local or organic or any other labeling or marketing type. Some non- of assessment were nothing short of organic carrots in a grocery store, for astounding." example, had much more nutrition in them than some organic carrots from those six crops for our first-generation to our assessments, and the local farmers market. Bionutrient Meter. The calibration is we increased the number In 2019 we added lettuce, cherry not perfect, but we have proved that we of farms we are getting

tomatoes, kale, and grapes to our can build a handheld spectrometer at a management data from AMY HARPER assessment process along with soil consumer price point that can be used to more than 125. We will Corn, bean, and squash, known as the Three Sisters, have been from 35 farms where those crops in real time and non-invasively to give now have more meaningful at the center of indigenous agriculture and food traditions for centuries. The three complementary crops grow in Agraria's were grown, and management and readings about nutrient density in food. data about environmental staff garden. environmental conditions data like cover cropping, crop variety, soil to increase overall function in the minerals, tillage practice, soil carbon, biological system of the operations. fertility amendments and fertilizers, This work has been accomplished irrigation type, soil biological activity, solely through charitable donations so mulching etc. With the 2019 data all information, raw data, hardware we now have the ability to overlay engineering, software code, etc. remains all of these different dynamics in Dan Kittredge PHOTO COURTESY OF BFA open source and in the commons in relation to each other. After reviewing perpetuity. We want to make sure that farms, farm stands, grocery stores and this information, although from a 3) Build and calibrate a hand-held free access to the best information farmers markets, ranging from Maine relatively small data set of 35 farms, nutrient density meter that anyone, is available to all globally regardless to Iowa. We got local, organic, and it became clear that no one factor from grower to consumer, could use of resources. We hope to have a not organic. We looked at 16 different like type of seed, no-till, or fertility to get a real-time assessment of the elements in the crops, like calcium, product correlates with nutrient density comprehensive definition of nutrient food they want so that there would potassium, copper and zinc, as well as variation. It seems to be a combination density with cutting edge spectrometers be no need or role for a bureaucratic polyphenols and antioxidants, two well of these factors. and a deep understanding of how to certification system. defined plant secondary metabolites Also in 2019 we were able to verify do more well within the next five years. 4) Engage as many aligned partners associated with flavor and nutritional that the dramatic nutritional variation The level of support for our work is as possible who also had critical value. in crops, both in the mineral levels as really the primary variable. subject matter expertise. We call this The results we found in this first well as the higher order compounds, partnership the Real Food Campaign. year of assessment were nothing short is present in the broader spectrum of Dan Kittredge has been an organic farmer for In 2017, we created our first of astounding. crops assessed. The most significant more than 30 years and is the founder and generation “Bionutrient Meter” and The variations for mineral levels variation we found was the antioxidant AMY HARPER executive director of the Bionutrient Food presented it at the Soil and Nutrition The staff garden on the front campus of Agraria contains native perennials as well as annual crops. were from 3:1 to 18:1. As in, this levels in spinach: 364.5:1. That means Staff members Naomi Bongorno and Kat Christen tended the garden on a staff work day in May. Association.

10 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 11 Edible Ethics TO HARVEST OR NOT TO HARVEST

BY GABBY LOOMIS-AMRHEIN

Foraging for food is an ancient plants have on the communion I or non-native plants vs. native plants. tradition spanning cultures, and now seek with them? Let’s take Ramps for example, Allium geographic and political boundaries. • What are the potential ecological tricoccum, var. tricoccum or burdickii. The practice is seeing an uptick in effects of my harvesting or Much has been written by others recent decades in the U.S., particularly promoting the consumption of this about this wonderful plant. This among folks who appreciate having a food? native Allium (onion family) is a native relationship with the outdoors. This • What is the difference between woodland plant known for inhabiting trend, along with the current ecological “can” and “should” in harvesting shaded areas with good soil quality. footprint of global trade and market- and in eating each of the foods I The leaves and bulb of the plant driven relationships with nature, has forage? are a delectable edible, tasting like a created many ethical quandaries. • If I find myself at odds with the rich, sweet, combination of the garlic From left: Garlic mustard flower, ramp leaf, ramp flower TEDDY PIERSON Some that are often on my mind questions above or similar ones, and onion commonly found in U.S. fraction of a given patch or population, potential to outcompete native plants however, in relation to garlic mustard include: are there alternatives or do I need supermarket chains. It is often made while others still will encourage such as ramps, increasing the already consumption over ramps. I am a • Whose land am I on and what to set boundaries with myself now into pesto, used as an onion/garlic foragers to eat other plants entirely. ecologically cumbersome footprint of forager on colonized land who is does that mean about how I should in relation to these foods? garnish, and of course the foragers In the case of ramps, this often looks the history of this country. descended from colonizers. My colonial forage and what I eat? This last question is becoming a favorite in many places, cooked low like never harvesting the bulb, only This plant, in the Brassica or relation to ramps and to garlic mustard • What bearing does the way my hot one in foraging circles, particularly and slow in butter with morels, which taking one leaf from a plant of two mustard family, is also edible in a are different than the relationships ancestors’ interactions with these as it involves the concept of “invasive” also appear in early to mid-spring. or more leaves, and only taking a garlicky way. As its common name other peoples hold with these plants. The questions when applied here, fraction of these leaves per patch, with suggests, garlic mustard is more of a Far be it from me to suggest to any bring some issues to the table. Ramps the harvest spread across the patch. garlic/mustard taste combination native person what they should and are a plant with a reproductive life The percentage of patch harvested when set beside the sweet garlic/onion should not eat on their land. Far be cycle regularly documented at up varies widely. I have seen folks suggest flavor of ramps. I will not lie; ramps it from me to suggest to historically to seven years. This means it takes everything from 1/3 to 1/250th of any easily outcompete in the kitchen. and systemically impoverished the plant up to seven years to reach given patch. This brings up another However, I have had incredible garlic Appalachians to refrain from consum- maturity, flower, and reproduce. So, issue though: What if 20 other foragers mustard pesto, and mixed with other ing ramps, a traditional food in the if I walk into the woods and pull a interact with this patch in this way? spring greens, it gives salads a great region. The communion we hold with bunch of ramps from the ground, I’m Such compounded foraging would kick. Additionally, the ethics of harvest- food and with where and from whom likely not doing a great job of either surely negate honorable harvesting ing as much garlic mustard as you it comes, is deeply personal, cultural, stewarding the population in its own practices. can see in the name of conserving ecological, and political. right, its place in the ecosystem, or To which there is another native plant diversity and populations I for one look forward to the ensuring future harvests for myself or alternative, named garlic mustard. and stewarding local ecosystems far coming weeks wherein I will spend my other foragers. Garlic mustard is an out-of-place or outweighs the potential of contributing days after work stewarding the land Alternatives, however, have been “invasive” plant found in the eastern to the diminution of those native and eating seasonally unique pesto in proposed. Many folks will speak of U.S. It readily colonizes most any soil populations. In sum, I adhere to the one fell swoop. performing an honorable harvest, in shaded areas, though it particularly harvest of garlic mustard to fill my using only parts of the plant so it can thrives in many of the same habitats halitosis needs. Gabby Loomis-Amrhein is a naturalist, birder, still grow, as well as only harvesting a that ramps do. Garlic mustard has the I do have a strong caveat, and former lead on the land team at Agraria. Garlic mustard leaves TEDDY PIERSON

12 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 13 Natural Foods – Native Edible Plants BY TEDDY PIERSON Black Farming and Beyond WOOD SORREL much information about the nutritional content of wood Oxalis stricta nettle, though its relative stinging nettle is considered a super BY ARIELLA J. BROWN HORN Description: Small yellow flower with five petals, power in terms of its nutritional content. It is high in iron, calcium, protein, and vitamins C, A, and K, among other bright green heart shaped leaflets in sets of 3 - classic Early last year a small group of the Justice for Black Farmers Act now “shamrock” shape, fruits resemble miniature okra. things. volunteers came together to create before Congress recognizes that as well S.E. PHOTOGRAPHY Growth habits: Common garden and lawn “weed,” can a platform to not only celebrate the as the injustices of the past that left so of the roundtable discussions and will form dense mats EVENING PRIMROSE include sources for grants and funding Oenothera biennis Black and underrepresented farming many Black farmers landless. If passed Edible parts: Leaves, flowers, and fruits. Sour, lemony taste. community in Southwest Ohio, but into law it would create a new Equitable opportunities, information about Tall (3-6’), biennial plant with dark green, Harvest late spring to early fall. Fruits are delightfully crisp Description: also to take a look back at the history of Land Access Service under the USDA upcoming events, a profile of a Black narrow, pointed leaves with a light-green or red contrasting and crunchy. Can be used in salads, cooked greens, soups, farming in the Black community and that would issue land grants of 160 farmer from our region, and much mid-rib. Upper portion of the plant has 1” wide yellow sauces, garnishes, teas, and as a cool, sweetened lemonade- serve as a catalyst for the next generation acres apiece to up to 20,000 experienced more. To subscribe to the newsletter, flowers with four petals that come together to form a long like drink. of Black farmers. The result was the first Black farmers annually, through 2030. contact Rachel Isaacson, risaacson@ slender tube. Flowers bloom early summer to early fall. Nutrition: High in iron, calcium, and vitamin c. Black Farming Conference in Southwest This would expand Black-owned communitysolution.org. Only a few flowers bloom at a time, opening during the Ohio, held virtually in September. farmland by up to 32 million acres. Our keynote speaker for this year’s evening and closing late the following morning. Unopened Antioch College, The National (Source: https://www.agriculture.com/ conference will be Leah Penniman, co- buds are found above the blooming flowers, and seed pods Afro-American Museum and Cultural news/business/justice-for-black-farmers- founder of Soul Fire Farm and author found below. Center, and Central State University bill-introduced-in-senate) of Farming While Black. Ms. Penniman Sunny, dry areas such as field edges Growth habits: partnered with us on the conference, In 1920, there were nearly 926,000 is a highly sought-after speaker, and and meadows. and we received generous sponsorship Black farmers, compared with fewer we are delighted she has accepted Taproot of 1st year growth (basal rosette of Edible parts: support from Nationwide Insurance, than 50,000 today. Community our invitation to join us this year. Our leaves) can be cooked and used like other root vegetables The Ohio Farm Bureau, and Farm Solutions/Agraria hopes to help conference theme will be Black Farming: and has a spicy taste. Young shoots and leaves of second- WOOD NETTLE Credit of Mid-America as well as other change this narrative through the Community Land and Food Sovereignty. Laportea canadensis year growth (flowering stalk) can be eaten raw or cooked as contributions and in-kind donations. creation of the Black Farmers Network. If living through a global pandemic over a spicy green. Harvest mid to late spring before flowering. Description: Tall (2-5’) medium green plant with large, With more than 400 attendees from We are bringing local Black and the past year has taught us anything, Flowers and buds, spicy and a little sweet, can be added to alternate, serrated leaves. Stalks and leaves are covered around the country over a two-day underrepresented farmers together it is that we as a society need to get salads or used as a garnish. Seeds have a pleasant flavor and with stinging hairs. This is a native plant often mistaken for period and more than 1,000 who pre- for quarterly roundtables, publishing a back to growing our own food, truly can be roasted, used likewise as a garnish, or an addition to another member of the nettle family, stinging nettle (Urica registered for the conference, it was clear quarterly Black farming newsletter, and knowing where our food comes from, breads. dioica). However, the stinging nettle has pairs of opposite that we had struck a common chord sponsoring the annual Black Farmers and supporting our local, family and The oil of the seeds has the highest amount leaves only, while wood nettle has some alternate leaves. Nutrition: with our focus on Black farming. conference. These are small ways in community farms. Be on the lookout for of gamma-linolenic acid, Growth habits: Moist, rich soils, floodplain and bottomland The keynote address, by Dr. Anna which we can be better citizens of our more conference details soon. an Omega 6 fatty acid, woodlands, colony forming Lisa Cox took us back to pre-civil war community. They are also ways of For more information about the of any known food and Edible parts: Shoots, tops, young leaves, and seeds. Best times, before Ohio was a state, to learn saying thank you to the farmers who Black Farmers Network or to offer also contain the amino eaten early to mid-summer. Gloves must be used to harvest; about how Black pioneers cultivated work every day to put food on our tables. suggestions about how we might better acid tryptophan. Evening boiling neutralizes the sting. the land in this region and created a The goal of the Black Farmers serve and strengthen the region’s Black primrose is also a source of Can be eaten as a cooked livelihood for themselves before it was Network is to create a platform for the farming community, please contact protein, carbohydrates, beta green, an addition to soups all stripped away by racist laws, policies, Black farming community to network, [email protected]. carotene, potassium, and or casseroles, or made into and practices that robbed Black as well discuss relevant farming topics, share Ariella J. Brown Horn is Associate Director vitamin B3. tea. Seeds are very similar to as indigenous people of their land and insights, gain peer support, and connect of Gender Equity Programs and Education flax seeds and can be used in agrarian ways of life. with resources. Our next network at Antioch College, coordinator of the Black hot cereals or breads. Teddy Pierson is a naturalist, photographer, and member of the land Access to land is one of the biggest roundtable will be held in October. Our Farmer Network, and a member of the planning Nutrition: There is not team at Agraria. barriers small scale farmers face, and quarterly newsletter is an extension committee for the Black Farming conference.

14 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 15 NEW FARMER FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM Growing a New Crop of Regenerative Farmers

BY AMY HARPER AND KAT CHRISTEN

A vision Agraria has had since its founding — to the Black Farming Network coordinated by Ariella Brown serve as an incubator for beginning farmers — became of Agraria. a reality this spring when the organization launched the Fellows without property of their own will be able Regenerative Farmer Fellowship, in partnership with The to establish plots on Agraria and on Agraria’s partner in Nature Conservancy and Central State University. Springfield, Melrose Acres Urban Agriculture Center. This pilot program will support six beginning farmers Leading the training will be Kat Christen, who developed, through 25 weeks of education and training in regenerative operated, and managed the Antioch College Farm for agricultural practices and business planning. The first 10 years. She has also led educational programming on class of Farmer Fellows is a group of six women, most of Smaller Footprint Farm, which she and her husband, Doug whom are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). Christen, have owned and operated since 2006. Supporting They represent both urban and rural sites in Montgomery, Kat will be Program Assistant Kenisha Robinson, who is Greene and Clark counties. According to the 2017 Ag also participating as a Fellow in the program. Census, less than 1% of farmers in Ohio are BIPOC, and A unique feature of the program is the financial of these farmers, 30-43% are new and beginning farmers. support the Fellows will receive: $12/hour for 20 hours Regenerative Farming Fellows Kenisha Robinson and River Johnson with Kat Christen at Agraria. DENNIE EAGLESON The training includes workshops focused on per week over the course of the program, from April 19 either low or non-paid, creating a barrier for low-wealth regenerative practices and business planning as well as through October 8. A grant secured by TNC from the “non-privileged” groups, according to a 2015 study, tours of successful farms and/or markets. It will allow North Central Region of Sustainable Agriculture Education “Situating on-farm apprenticeships within the alternative participants to build capacity for their own sites and and Research (NCR-SARE) program provides funding for agrifood movement: Labor and social justice implications” growing operations and to connect and collaborate with the stipends. (MacAuley, L. and Niewolny, K. Journal of Agriculture, farmers and organizations that support farmers, including The majority of farm internships and trainings are Food Systems, and Community Development, April 8, 2016). The study called in part for consideration of strategies that “provide apprentice farmers the equivalent of minimum wage with benefits,” and ways to “supplement apprentices’ educational activities through the land-grant system, programming initiatives, and programs that have had demonstrated success in providing such support.” This project addresses these issues of equity. The first cohort of six participants includes a diverse range of experiences and interests within the field of regenerative growing and within their communities. Participants have expressed interest in growing annual crops, flowers, and native nursery plants, agroforestry, perennial crop production, and more. In addition, participants are interested in addressing food security in their communities, learning more about specific growing systems, building growing capacity at their sites, selling products, business planning and/or meeting other growers. The Fellowship program will be tailored, whenever possible, DENNIE EAGLESON DENNIE EAGLESON Program Assistant Kenisha Robinson, of Trotwood, who is also a Fellow in the program, with Fellow Omope Daboiku, from Edgemont Garden in to meet the interests and goals of this exciting new cohort. Fellow River Johnson with Mandy Knaul, who provided rototiller training Dayton, and Trinity Hoskins, of Springfield. to Fellows.

16 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 17 Caressa’s goals for Veggie Soul: BY KENISHA ROBINSON & CARESSA BROWN The Urban Farmers’ Market was to partner with churches located in West Dayton and Trotwood to host a weekly traveling farmers market and also teach residents of the two communities how to garden at a community plot in Coming Back to the Land West Dayton. This initiative brought REVIVING A MULTIGENERATIONAL LEGACY out multiple generations to learn to garden throughout the summer of An edited version of this article appeared in the and were just one generation away of debt to a white farmer in a part of 2020. However, due to COVID-19 Black Farming Newsletter from the sharecropping era. For her Alabama that did not allow Black kids related shutdowns, the churches closed KENISHA ROBINSON their doors, and the market end of this Kenisha Robinson and Caressa grandparents and great grandparents, to receive an education. He, his wife, Friends and family pitched in to help prepare the ground and plant the first crops in Brown are childhood friends who farming to feed their family was a and their nine young children had to Nouorganic Farm. community outreach initiative did not joined forces in 2019 to address the necessity, not an option. work off their debt in the farmer’s field but he never taught Caressa to garden Kenisha’s desire to reconnect with the get off of the ground. Kenisha and food desert crisis in the West Dayton Both of her parents’ families during Alabama’s long growing season. because he wanted her to focus on land—and that alchemy generated two Caressa opted to donate their first-year and Trotwood, Ohio, communities. moved north to pursue better When winter months came around and getting an education. She was a part new local food ventures in Dayton— harvest to those who requested it and Kenisha is a “surprise” third opportunities; they wanted more out there was no work for Black people, of the first generation in her family to Kenisha’s Nourganic Life Farm and gave the remaining produce away to generation farmer. Though she grew of life for their future generations. Caressa’s grandfather had to ask for a receive a K-12 education in one school Caressa’s Veggie family and friends. up on her family farm in Trotwood, Kenisha’s paternal grandfather owned cash advance from the white family to system, and one of the first in her Soul: The Urban “For her grandparents and great she did not intend to become a horses, raised chickens, and grew feed his family. The cycle continued for family to earn a college degree and take Farmers’ Market. farmer. Her parents grew up in the produce on his farm in New Lebanon, almost a decade until one night, her advantage of opportunities that her The two women grandparents, farming to feed their south, in Georgia and Alabama, Ohio, and her father raised pigs and grandfather had enough. He wanted father and grandfather never dreamed completed The Ohio hogs and grew an array of better for his children. possible. She has a bachelor’s degree in State University family was a necessity, not an option." vegetables and fruits around The growing season was over, and organizational/educational leadership Extension’s New and their farm while also working a as usual he had requested an advance and is now working on a degree in Beginning Farm College and went on They plan to continue encouraging full-time job as a mail-carrier. from the white family that he and his urban affairs. to obtain GAPS Certifications from area residents to adopt self-sustaining Kenisha’s parents encouraged family were essentially enslaved to. Caressa begged her father for years Cornell University, in 2020. They also and self-sufficient lifestyles by growing her to take a different path, Only this time, he had no intention to help her start and garden, and in attended the first annual Black Farming their own food, not only for their toward higher education and of having his family work it off during 2019 he drove up from Texas to build Conference: Beyond “40 Acres and a consumption but also to produce fresh, a career they thought would the next growing season. Instead, he a small garden box in her backyard Mule,” last year and recently became non-pesticide grown produce for sale provide a more stable and packed up his wife and kids and fled, and teach her the basics of gardening. members of the Ohio Ecological Food direct to the community. lucrative life. She set her sights in the middle of the night, risking their She fell in love with the process and and Farm Association. Kenisha, who never dreamed that on college and the big city lives. He moved them to town in Texas power of growing her own food. So Kenisha’s initial goal for Nourganic she would one day become a farmer, lights, graduated from Wright where he heard there was a school that much so, that it fueled her quiet dream Life Farm was to plant a variety of has reconnected with her farming roots, State University with a degree taught Black kids in K-4th grades, then of owning a farm, and she flooded her vegetables to get an idea of what would continuing the legacy her father worked in public administration, to another Texas town where there was Facebook timeline with updates about grow on the land. A friend with tractor so hard to leave for his family. She and eventually moved to school that taught Black kids 4th-8th her garden and her desire to own plowed, tilled and disked a small patch now sees farming and growing your Chicago, where she worked grades, and then once again to another a farm. of land for them; they purchased a few own food as a necessity, rather than for the Greater Chicago Food town in Texas that taught Black kids in Kenisha, who had moved back to hand tools and enlisted some family an option. “It’s interesting how history Depository, the food bank for 9th-12th grades. Ohio to help care for her ailing father, and friends to assist with planting and repeats itself,” she says. Cook County. Caressa’s father migrated to saw Caressa’s post, and reached out harvesting. The experience helped Caressa, is the youngest child Dayton, Ohio, after serving in the U.S. to her with an offer: the opportunity renew Kenisha’s connection to and love Kenisha Robinson is program assistant for of a Jim Crow-era sharecropper Marine Corps, and relocated back to to grow on her family-owned property of nature. She not only wants to restore the Regenerative Farming Fellowship Program from Alabama. Her grandfather Texas, after she graduated from high in Trotwood, which had lain dormant the land that her family once worked and also one of six Fellows participating in found himself stuck in a cycle school. He had always kept a garden, for years. Caressa’s vision sparked but also use it to help her community. Kinesha Robinson and Caressa Brown the program.

18 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 19 viruses, protozoa and fungi and their forever, and you are never going to slowly killing ourselves? The epidemic collective genetic material present in solve that problem,” Ingham said. “And of chronic diseases correlates well with As Below, So Above: From Healthy Soil to Healthy Body the soil/gastrointestinal tract.” that’s what fixing the biology in the soil the ecological devastation of our soils. A CONVERSATION WITH ELAINE INGHAM These microorganisms essentially will do.” Take the use of the popular serve the same function in both When Ingram started her work, pesticide glyphosate. As Ingham places. They help the plant’s roots nearly all soil research focused on the explained at the Ohio Ecological Food BY MEGAN BACHMAN in the soil, and the gut microflora, mineral content, not the biology, of the and Farm Conference in February optimally absorb nutrients from their soil. But without microorganisms soil is 2021, when glyphosate accumulates I remember the first time I heard food movement, and the whole foods That’s thanks to the pioneering work of environment, Ingham explained in a more like “dirt,” she says. In 1978, she in the soil, the soil can no longer hold the saying, “You are what you eat.” movement expanded that initial Elaine Ingham of the Soil Food Web recent Zoom interview. started her Ph.D. research by asking mineral nutrients for plants. In high I was young enough to be a little realization. I sought to avoid food School, who’s been studying soil life “The microorganisms need to be university professors in agriculture all enough concentrations, plants will unsettled by the idea that I might grown with toxic chemicals, eschew (and its relationship to human life) for in your food so that you always have across the country whether she should actually absorb glyphosate, which become a “chicken” or “popsicle” overly processed food, and choose going on five decades. the correct amount of microorganisms but old enough to understand that fresher foods closer to home. To Ingham, it all comes down to in your body,” she said. “The cells “They all said, ‘You shouldn’t do that because what I put into my body affected my But it wasn’t until I learned about the diversity of the microbiome — in lining your intestines, your colon allow constitution. the connection between healthy soils both our soil and our digestive system. these organisms do nothing in the soil.' That’s the uptake of the nutrients into the As I grew up, my awareness of and human health did I fully appreciate She defines “microbiome” as “the bloodstream, and that is mediated by a how bad our understanding of soil really was.” the organics movement, the local the phrase, “You are what you eat.” totality of microorganisms, bacteria, whole bunch of microorganisms.” Take two apples, Ingram says. look at the role of fungi in soil. means, yes, we are eating glyphosate. One is grown naturally, the other “They all said, ‘You shouldn’t What does that do to our body? sprayed with fungicides to kill apple do that because these organisms do “It’s doing exactly the same thing scab. Though both technically apples, nothing in the soil,’” Ingham recalls. in your microbiome as in the soil, which the sprayed one now lacks the healthy “That’s how bad our understanding of is to kill those beneficial organisms,” microorganisms your body needs to get soil really was.” Ingham said, “And it’s withholding the most out of the apple, since at least Since then, advances in ways to nutrients from your gut microflora — 50% of the beneficial organisms have image microorganisms, such as x‐ray from your digestive system — so you been killed. shadow microscopy, have helped shed can’t obtain the nutrients that you “Where are the good guys going light on their role in the larger soil want.” to come back from if you spray that food web. The realization of just how Healthy soil grows plants that are orchard?” she asks. biodiverse healthy ecosystems are, was unstressed and resistant to disease. But Instead, Ingham says, eat straight a wake-up call. when we eat fragile plants, our human from the garden, gently wash produce “The Bible lists 5,000 species, and health becomes fragile too. — don’t scrub or use harsh soaps — the people at Michigan State University “We’ve got to understand that and be sure to compost to continue the showed that in a one-acre woodlot in these two things are related,” Ingham cycle. Michigan [there were] over one million said. “We need billions and billions of The popularity of probiotics in species,” Ingham said. bacteria — on the outside when we recent years is one way to improve gut But change in the larger have to grow plants and on the inside health, especially since 60 percent of agriculture industry has been slow. In when we’re growing human beings.” the immune system is located there. the meantime, we’re losing species of Now, I know that if I am what I But why not go to the literal root of the bacteria, fungi and protozoa that may eat, I actually am the soil in which my problem? After all, biologically diverse never return, Ingham says. food is grown. And I sure don’t want to soil not only improves plant health and “One suspects that we are getting be dirt. water retention, it also sequesters more close to the no-return point, where the carbon from the atmosphere, Ingham last of the land is desertified,” she said. Megan Bachman is a board member of notes. And fundamentally, if we are Agraria and editor of the Yellow Springs “You can try to fix the symptom killing the life in the soil, aren’t we also News. GRAPHIC COURTESY OF ELAINE INGHAM, SOIL FOOD WEB SCHOOL

20 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 21 what to do, she just needs us to get our BY JIM LINNE boot off of her neck. Now that the farm was in grass- land, I introduced cattle as a way OPTIMAL HEALTH to build soil organic matter, recycle nutrients, and produce high quality A Physician/Farmer Perspective beef. Healthy soil is a living organism with billions of microbes in a single As a physician, I was trained in the to start focusing our efforts on content of food. Soil is the foundation teaspoon. In order not to harm the detection and treatment of disease. prevention. While the USA boasts of health. Healthy, nutrient dense food soil biology, we have avoided using any During my 35 years in the practice of providing the best health care in comes from healthy biologically alive harmful chemicals such as antibiotics, of gastroenterology, I noted a marked the world, our populace suffers from soil. Our soils have become degraded hormones, pesticides, or herbicides. increase in diet related disease. NASH an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and through the lack of biological diversity, With short periods of grazing (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis), which other chronic illnesses that are related high levels of chemical inputs, and followed by long periods of rest, the is primarily caused by obesity and primarily to diet and lifestyle¹. To bare fallows. biodiversity of plants in the pasture diabetes, is now the leading cause of address this problem, we must change Our current agriculture is extractive has increased as the latent seed bank cirrhosis in the USA. Eosinophilic our focus from treatment to prevention and unsustainable. Regenerative is awakened. The soil organic matter esophagitis is an inflammatory disease of disease, with good nutrition being agriculture is a way to grow our foods has increased from 1.5% to 4%, cycling of the esophagus that is due to food the cornerstone. We need to emphasize that mimics Nature. It is a system that carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere Jim Linne with his herd of cattle on White Clover Farm RENEE WILDE allergies. It causes painful swallowing whole foods as opposed to the highly produces healthy, nutrient dense food and sequestering it in the soil. This only grass, sunshine, and water—the The presence of birds of prey are an and dysphagia (difficulty swallowing). processed, high calorie, hyperpalatable while continuously building topsoil. has resulted in improved soil structure way Nature intended. indication of a healthy ecosystem with Once rare, it is now the leading cause foods that are often deficient in It helps restore our broken carbon and with better water infiltration and water Testing done at Michigan State a well-functioning food web. of food becoming lodged in the nutrients and minerals.²,³ water cycles. holding capacity. We can now hold University confirms the high mineral, A holistic definition of health esophagus. As a farmer, I have developed As a first-generation farmer, my an additional 50,000 gallons of water vitamin, and omega-3 fatty acid includes the health of the planet as well The costs associated with the a more holistic view of health and goal was to farm regeneratively. The content of our beef.4 as all of its inhabitants. They cannot treatment of these and other diet- nutrition that includes the environ- farm I purchased was in conventional "Soil is the foundation of health. We direct-market our be separated. As we strive to improve related diseases are becoming mental impact of the way we produce crop production of corn and soybeans beef locally, providing our health through better nutrition, unsustainable. I felt that we needed food and its effect on the nutritional with its associated tillage, chemicals, Healthy, nutrient dense food comes a healthy product while we must remember that healthy soil is and bare winter fallows. The 5 tenets from healthy biologically alive soil." improving the land. the foundation for healthy food as well of regenerative agriculture are: 1) keep Nature has responded as ecosystem function. Optimal health the soil covered; 2) minimal soil per acre. Not only does this allow us to the care that we have given to the only occurs when the whole ecosystem disturbance i.e., no tillage; 3) increase to grow more biomass, it also helps land with another gift in the form is healthy. biodiversity; 4) keep living roots in protect the watershed from erosion, of birds. We now have hundreds of the soil year around; 5) incorporate runoff, leaching, flooding and drought. swallows that follow the cattle herd Jim Linne is on the Agraria Board of livestock. The restored groundwater provides providing natural fly control. Red Trustees and also the planning committee for I started out by planting the entire our cattle with clean water year around tailed hawks, American kestrels, the Nourishing Life Conference to be held farm in perennial grasses. I repaired from natural springs. We are able to Northern harriers, and short eared June 18-19, 2021. He is owner of White a large erosion gully by building a dam produce our 100% grass-fed beef using owls patrol the pastures and hayfields. Clover Farm. to create a small farm pond. What Citations: followed demonstrated the richness 1. Wang, Youfa et al. “Will all Americans become overweight or obese? estimating the progression and cost of the US obesity epidemic.” Obesity (Silver and generosity of Nature. This pond Spring, Md.) vol. 16,10 (2008): 2323-30. doi:10.1038/oby.2008.351 is now lined with willows, cattails, and 2. Poti JM, Braga B, Qin B. Ultra-processed Food Intake and Obesity: What Really Matters for Health-Processing or Nutrient Content? Curr Obes Rep. 2017 Dec;6(4):420-431. doi: 10.1007/s13679-017-0285-4. PMID: 29071481; PMCID: PMC5787353. beautiful American Lotus water lilies. 3. Mozaffarian, Dariush et al. “Changes in diet and lifestyle and long-term weight gain in women and men.” The New England journal of medicine vol. It is home to hundreds of fish, insects, 364,25 (2011): 2392-404. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1014296 amphibians, and reptiles. An explosion 4. Bronkema, Sara & Rowntree, Jason & Jain, Raghav & Schweihofer, Jeannine & Bitler, Chad & Fenton, Jenifer. (2019). A Nutritional Survey of The pond on White Clover Farm was regenerated along with the soil. JIM LINNE of biodiversity. Mother Nature knows Commercially Available Grass-Finished Beef. Meat and Muscle Biology. 3. 116. 10.22175/mmb2018.10.0034.

22 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 23 equipped technologically than their learning opportunities we offer, both BY RICH SIDWELL teachers to manage the tools that have practical and philosophical. become the primary access to acquiring Expanding our ability as a demon- information. stration farm, a site for regenerative So, what would the new, improved, practices, is vitally important. But educational models to promote a ultimately Agraria can be much more positive global future look like? And than that. We can help communities have pursued college degrees will what can Agraria with our diversified learn how to share resources, combine acknowledge the significant importance land-based programs provide toward efforts, and increase their overall AGRARIA: of in-depth experiences when coupled that end? These are the questions physical, mental and spiritual health. with academic pursuits. we are asking as our work rapidly Perhaps the new education model is A New Educational Model While we are excited to be moving expands. Just as the major issues facing more invitational and inspirational ahead with numerous educational humanity are interconnected, so are than purely instruc-tive. Modeling the opportunities for students of all ages, the solutions. Food insecurity, economic New means providing a window into We live in a time when the human beings. partnerships with Central State now is also a time to be building new disparity, poor human health, climate a brighter future. questions come flooding in seemingly We are restoring Agraria’s University, the University of Dayton, models of education for the future. change—all have their roots in the As we develop individual and at an ever-faster rate. Big questions farmland, providing nature programs The Ohio State University, and other Many parents are seeking alternatives industrialization of our lives that has community resilience, we may begin to about humanity’s place on the earth, for children, and hosting informative institutions to offer internships and to traditional education, choosing developed over the last few centuries. see economic disparity diminish along past, present, and future all at once. and inspirational conferences. We accredited certification courses in a private schools over public schools, We are extracting, consuming and with the impacts of climate change. We think we know more than we ever are facilitating community food variety of fields. Students will be able or home-school or un-school parent destroying resources continuously, Each of us, regardless of our have known yet have only scratched production both locally and regionally, to get experience at Agraria that relates groups, or some other approach to compromising our environment for the position in this life, is on our own the surface; we’re realizing that there is demonstrating agroforestry and directly or indirectly to their chosen childhood education. At the same sake of unsustainable lifestyles. educational journey. We take in infor- wisdom awaiting further exploration if agro-ecological practices, and hosting majors and minors. Our partners at time many high schools, colleges, and The opportunity before us is to mation, take on understanding, learn only we are open to genuine exploring. podcasts. We are becoming a trusted these schools are excited about these universities are facing declining budgets explore, learn, and share knowledge new lessons, expand awareness, ‘Regenerative’ is the new keyword in voice of hope and resilience regionally expanded offerings for their students because of the demographic shifts and and skills that can empower anyone broaden perspectives, experience our conversations about how to move and beyond, and we are partnering knowing that there is no substitute the growing dissatisfaction with high to grow, harvest, store, and consume challenges, suffer pain, and are exhil- forward to better ways of living with with colleagues near and far in the for real experience in work that has costs. Because the world is changing healthy food wherever they live. These arated by joy. Providing experiential all life on the planet. Regenerative work of promoting the New in the face wide benefits. Most of us, in fact, who rapidly, many schools understandably opportunities for expansive growth are the goals of our Regenerative agriculture, for example, is the of the collapsing Old. We do all these find themselves significantly challenged and the space, setting and means to Farmer Fellowship Program as well approach that rebuilds soil, taking our things knowing that the future is now, to prepare students for uncertain share inspirational teaching all may as our work in Springfield to develop understanding of soil health to new the New encapsulates the wisdom of futures; in fact, most students are better be central to the new “edu-cational” an urban agriculture “depths.” our ancient past while embracing the model. Community Solutions has been truth that body, mind, and spirit are center in partnership Our vision for Agraria is to be exploring solutions to the enduring one. Science and spirituality are no with S.O.U.P., a part of the global network of resource- problem of living in harmony with all longer separate; together, as one body Springfield nonprofit. ful institutions providing that array of life on the planet since Arthur Morgan of knowledge, they shape the New we Our online learning options that will equip founded it some 80 years ago. With work to bring to the fore. conferences and skill students of all ages and backgrounds the founding of Agraria as a Center for Ultimately, all that we do can be sharing workshops, the to participate in a truly regenerative Regenerative Practice, four years ago, seen as providing education in one Big Map Out project future. we have been greatly expanding our form or another. Like other terms for school age kids, We have just begun. own knowledge base while connecting in our limited language, education and our increasingly more widely with partners around the to most indicates some form of Rich Sidwell is treasurer of the Community popular Nature globe in the quest to help humanity formalized process of instruction Solutions board of trustees and co-founder and move into a new paradigm. Our that endeavors to transfer knowledge Camps are just a few treasurer of Raven Rocks, Inc. a 1250-acre work can be summed up as broadly and wisdom. And indeed, we are examples of the mix wilderness preserve and alternative energy educating and re-educating fellow in the process of expanding our of multigenerational demonstration center near Beallsville, OH. ROSE HARDESTY DENNIE EAGLESON

24 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 25 Around Agraria PHOTOGRAPHY BY DENNIE EAGLESON & AMY HARPER FROM ACTIVIST TO ADVOCATE How I Became a Voice for Black Agriculture

BY CHERYL WOOD SMITH

My story begins in Dayton, Ohio the needs of the people. It was our duty Following that, the exodus of industry in the early 1950s. Although I am a to see that the people were well fed, and commerce for cheaper labor native of Newark, New Jersey, my clothed, educated and healthy. Our fields left Black people without viable earliest memories of “the land” started social programs were the real legacy of opportunities for employment. And in Dayton. our movement, not picking up the gun. finally, the crack epidemic sealed the One of my most enduring memories is going to “market” with my grandparents. Standing on the corner of Third and Summit Streets, I watched DENNIE EAGLESON as a caravan of trucks lined up along Regenerative Farming Fellows visited The Narrow Way Farm in Brookeville, OH. The farm is owned and operated by David and Tia Stuart. the block. Each truck was loaded with left to deteriorate and then be swept up by some corporate all kinds of food and almost every truck entity who thought a landfill or a parking lot or some other driver was Black. My grandparents, obnoxious structure would work well for them in our space. who lived nearby, carried home Meanwhile Black Americans were once again becoming produce, herbs, and poultry. A crate of not just homeless but landless. chickens would soon be released in our I knew then that we had to find a way to save our land backyard, their necks would be wrung, and produce the goods and services we needed to survive. their heads chopped off, and shortly my And at the very top of that list was Food. We didn’t need grandmother’s freezer and cupboard food banks and food pantries or free food programs. We would be brimming with food to sustain needed to create sustainable sources of revenue and goods us through the winter. by reclaiming our communities. Even then, as a little girl, I knew At the same time food apartheid had created such a the abundance of sustenance in my crisis we had to start with immediately addressing hunger. community was a barrier to the kind Cheryl Wood Smith MARIANNE MACQUEEN But, in the long run the survival of “all” people depends on of racist violence we saw weekly in the autonomy and ownership of the land, our land. the Jet magazine my parents brought Our programs were meant to provide deal. Our community was abandoned I believe education, organization, and reparations are home. The west side was a safe place for our people while we helped them and dying. all necessary steps to our future success. This is my passion: of Black-owned homes with backyard prepare for revolutionary change. As I continued to work for the to reintroduce descendants of Africans to the heart of our gardens and fruit trees, and Black- Returning to Dayton after a short liberation and survival of Black existence—our love for the earth and our allegiance to the owned businesses where we were absence, I experienced what I called people, I recognized the white power land. We have been brainwashed to believe we were created welcomed and treated well. We were a “culture shock.” Three major events system would forever create poverty as slaves to work someone else’s land. But we have within real community. had completely changed the landscape by making civic and urban policy that us generational knowledge of what we need to create and When I joined the Black Panther of my childhood. The first was when left us out, while they encouraged produce. We just have to unlock those secrets, remove the Party a decade and a half later, one affluent and upper-middle-class Blacks outside entities to rob us of our land indoctrination, and return to the land. of the cardinal principles that was traipsed behind the “white flight” crowd and our resources under the dubious constantly emphasized to us was the to other areas of town; it was a major auspices of a hostile city government. Cheryl Wood Smith is a member of the Agraria board of trustees DENNIE EAGLESON role of the vanguard party in meeting economic blow to our neighborhoods. I saw one neighborhood after another and on the organizing committee for the Black Farming Conference. Mandy Knaul provided rototiller training to Regenerative Farming Fellows.

28 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 29 RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS Each Grounded Hope episode is paired with Resources Grounded Hope: for Educators curated by our Humanities Scholars Beth Bridgeman from Antioch College, and Rick Livingston from FROM THE HIGHWAYS TO THE HEDGEROWS Ohio State University. Resources include discussion questions, links to relevant podcasts and videos, suggestions for further reading, and recipes. BY RENEE WILDE Here are a few samples: The Grounded Hope podcast, launched in January 2020, transform a conventional farm into a lush ecosystem; discover pairs radio producer Renee Wilde with the team at Agraria how a declining dung beetle population is contributing DISCUSSION QUESTIONS to produce a series of podcasts that introduce people to the to greenhouse gas; and learn how regenerative practices 1.What are the costs and benefits- human, environmental, past, present, and future of Ohio agriculture. Listeners are in Indigenous Cultures are an important part of their social, economic, political—of food production and learning how historical farming practices —including those relationship with nature. RENEE WILDE consumption today? (Episode 1) of indigenous people and early Black farmers — reflect ways soda fountain, which doubles as a delicious apothecary; drop 2. Leah Penniman’s book is called Farming While Black. EPISODE 2: BLACK FARMING in which our degraded soils can be regenerated. The series in on a class at Agraria about foraging for backyard wild In what ways might the experiences and concerns of Black The number of Black-owned farms has drastically declined takes listeners on a tour of Ohio cities and back roads to meet edibles; and take a walk in the woods at United Plant Savers, farmers be distinct from those of white farmers (or farmers since the 1920s, and now make up less than two percent of current farmers and learn how they are rebuilding local food an Ohio organization that’s working to save medicinal plants of other ethnicities)? (Episode 2) total U.S. farmland. In this episode, we’ll talk with one of systems that can be resilient in the face of pandemics and in forests around the world. the organizers of the Black Farming Conference Beyond 40 3. In what context did the U.S. government first take climate change. You'll hear about unusual crops and the hope up agroforestry? What were the benefits of large-scale they hold for new products — including fibers, medicines, Acres and a Mule, learn how three childhood friends created EPISODE 6: BUILDING HEALTH an urban farm out of an abandoned dumping ground in agroforestry initiatives like the Great Plains Shelterbelt? and foods. You will also be invited to examine how Ohio FROM THE GROUND UP (Episode 3) economics is embedded in agriculture, and how that both Cleveland, and hear from a first-time grower about the joys In this episode, we turn to the ground beneath our feet to 4. What makes bison a “keystone species” for prairie supports and challenges the state and its communities. The of eating food that you've poured your essence into. bring you stories from two agricultural pioneers in Ohio. ecosystems? How does their behavior support biodiversity “Grounded Hope” series is now available on Spotify, Google One is a farmer David Brandt, who turned to cover crops in EPISODE 3: AGROFORESTRY on the prairie? (Episode 4) Podcast, RadioPublic, PRX, and more! Visit the Grounded the 1970s to replenish the soil in his fields. The other is an Hear three different stories about the importance of trees 5. Many of the plants Janet Lasley mentions tend to be Hope podcast website www.GroundedHope.org to learn more award-winning soil scientist Dr. Rattan Lal, who is research- and our interaction with them. We’ll meet a pioneer in the regarded as “weeds:” dandelions, purslane, lambs quarters, about the podcast, listen to the episodes, see resources for ing how healthy soils can be used to combat climate change. Cincinnati permaculture movement who is creating a food clover. What’s the difference between weeds and cultivated educators, and find ways to “dig deeper.” We wrap up this episode at Guided by Mushrooms, an urban forest on the Grailville Farm; go out with a small-batch maple crops? (Episode 5) syrup producer to learn how to tap a tree; and hear one man’s mushroom farm in Dayton whose gourmet mushrooms journey to save the trees in his community. are not only good for you but also good for your soil.

EPISODE 4: BEYOND LIVESTOCK: ANIMALS IN REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE Agraria Regenerative agriculture is more than a human-centered BY THE NUMBERS enterprise: it means working with nature and alongside other creatures, to accomplish larger ecological purposes. Our relationships with animals have always been multifaceted, and this episode explores ways those relationships are creating more sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships. We travel throughout the state to farms that are pasturing chickens and cattle; meet a farmer who uses Suffolk horses AMY HARPER for farm work; and learn how bison are supporting the restoration of Darby Plains. EPISODE 1: REGENERATION Regenerative Agriculture was the number one food trend EPISODE 5: PLANTS AS FOOD AND MEDICINE in 2020, with companies from General Mills Foods to the Herbalism is seeing a huge rise in popularity, as more and Patagonia clothing company turning to regenerative farming more people turn to natural remedies to keep their bodies practices in their businesses. 2021 marks the start of the UN healthy. In this episode of Grounded Hope we explore the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and in this episode, we American medical botanical movement called Eclecticism take a look at how Agraria is using regenerative practices to through a visit to the Lloyd Library in Cincinnati; visit Dawn ROSE HARDESTY

30 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 31 Food as Farmacy for argiope BY PEGGY NESTOR BY GABBY LOOMIS-AMRHEIN

where is your stabilimentum? Nutrition is having a moment. There is growing producers is a priority she eagerly asks recognition of the power of real, whole food to protect for Leslie. She likes and heal. A very challenging 2020 brought new urgency to knowing where her food her perfect zig-zag reminds me tapping the potential of food to boost our immunity, provide comes from. Eating that hers is north south for a healthy metabolism and gut microbiome, and to tame locally also implies north south north south north south chronic inflammation. eating seasonally. Food Nutrition is so much more complex than a collection grown close to home so the sun which is east west east west of vitamins and minerals, according to Leslie Edmunds, a has a smaller carbon COURTESY OF LESLIE EDMONDS will bring dinner buzzing and flitting Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and owner of Clem&Thyme footprint, and buying locally supports our growers and to her door west east west east Nutrition, a private practice just outside of Yellow Springs. strengthens our local economy. And in-season produce tastes while trying to pass through into light and warmth She received her training in medical dietetics from better too! The Ohio State University and a master’s degree in public Building healthy relationships with food is a priority things get sticky health from Wright State University and in 2019 was for Leslie, a busy mother of three young children. Most named “Ohio’s Young Dietitian of the Year” by the important is parents’ modeling behavior. Leslie suggests Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Leslie and her team actively involving children in grocery shopping, reviewing i say i’m not sure of seven registered dietitians provide individual nutrition recipes for the week, cooking and gardening. Include point with uncertainty to my sternum therapy and, after pandemic restrictions are lifted, will vegetables at every meal. Introduce novelty and a sense of resume group health education and wellness activities in adventure in trying new foods. Avoid labels of “good” or but she is busy between the tulsi and the peppermint their newly expanded office. “bad,” as it creates a negative relationship with food. shaking her house to ward the distracted vole Leslie describes herself as being passionate about get- A goal for all of us is eating the colors of the rainbow lest he stumble through her loom again ting to the root of our health problems. “We are a ‘functional daily, including cruciferous vegetables, leafy greens and other practice,’” she says. They want to figure out “why you are brightly colored veggies. For older adults, Leslie recommends having your issues and not just apply a band aid.” Rather prioritizing protein. Most are not getting adequate protein than simply prescribe a restrictive diet for someone with and can lose muscle mass rapidly. Vitamin D can be an digestive complaints, they do testing to identify the cause. issue too. It has many roles in the body, including boosting “Maybe it’s inadequate digestive or pancreatic enzymes or immune function, and she recommends monitoring vitamin maybe an overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine,” D levels. she said. “Once we know the cause, we can repair, replenish, Clem&Thyme Nutrition does not take a cookie-cutter reinoculate the gut and get you back to eating a variety approach to nutrition, handing out a food pyramid to every of foods rather than a very limited diet. We work on client. Their goal is to balance the client's enjoyment of food incorporating more nutrients and achieving better lifestyle with their personalized nutritional needs. “Enjoying life will habits in an effort to reduce medications.” always be my top priority, and I will instill the same passion One frequently hears the phrase “real, whole food.” in my clients,” says Leslie. this all makes sense- Real food, according to Leslie, is food our ancestors would To learn more about Clem&Thyme Nutrition call we agree after our respective waverings- have eaten and not something concocted in a factory or 937-206-1131, visit their website at www.clemandthyme. with what little we know of each other laboratory. Whole food implies food in its most natural, com. You can also find them on Facebook at https://www. minimally processed state. If the food is in a package it can facebook.com/ClemAndThymeNutrition and on Instagram and we go on about our late summer afternoons be called real food if the ingredient list reflects food our at https://www.instagram.com/clemandthymenutrition/ happy to share space in the garden ancestors would have recognized—without the food dyes, Peggy Nestor is a volunteer at Agraria and worked in public health for weaving dinner artificial sweeteners, and artificial flavors. many years. She is on the planning committee for the Nourishing Life finding home Eating locally and buying from local farmers and conference, as well as the Pathways to Regeneration: Water conference.

32 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2020 33 health and biodiversity, and also get their hands in the Nature-Based Education soil for invasive removal. DURING A PANDEMIC Meanwhile, middle schoolers from Yellow Springs Schools visited Agraria and Glen BY DAVID DIAMOND Helen to reclaim part of a key 7th-grade tradition– the Into the Wild project. What does a center built around experiential learning another—soil, trees, mammals, landmarks, arthropods, Since the communal 53- have to offer during a pandemic? How can we reach Story time for nature campers etc.—recording their reflections in a journal and gradually mile bike ride and camping integral to this project was students in public schools when they and their teachers are 8th-grade level and by involving new partner schools. We filling a map over the course of the entire school year. impossible this past fall, students hiked along our recently all working from home and no field trips are allowed? plan to host teachers in an informal workshop to assess their Meredith moved on from Agraria in order to devote cleared, not-yet-constructed bike path from their school to Our education team pondered these questions last needs for the coming year, and then to use the videos and more time to her nature education consulting business, and Agraria, where they monitored bluebird boxes and counted summer as we reached out to each other through the phone lesson plans we already have, adding and modifying where our education staff continued the program. Each week, we macroinvertebrates in Jacoby Creek. We were excited to and internet. Very quickly, Meredith Florkey dreamed up necessary. After seeing the tremendous impact this program sent Sarah a lesson plan and a video, and the results have have something to offer these students, who spent much of The Big Map-Out!, our first piece of remote education has had during the pandemic, we can’t wait to see it thrive been transformative. Since all Yellow Springs students were the year in distance learning! curriculum. Designed as a flexible program that students in new educational “ecosystems!” remote for the majority of the school year, The Big Map- This summer, the Nature School begins a new can do from home, at school, or both, The Big Map-Out! Our in-person Nature School programs are also Out! allowed them to get away from their computers and partnership with KIND Dayton, a free inner-city youth challenges students to develop their own relationship with growing. Last fall, we instituted a Coronavirus Safety Plan closer to the natural world than distance-learning would education organization in Dayton that serves K-6 students. their outdoor space, whether it is a schoolyard, backyard, and downsized our programs to allow us to once again normally require. Students from all grades submitted KIND’s focus on the holistic well-being of children led or a patch of sidewalk near their home. host children and families in-person at Agraria. Many wonderful pictures and videos to show their progress, and them to partner with Agraria to offer an outdoor experience Sarah Amin, the Project-Based Learning Foundations youth programs throughout Ohio remained closed, but we Sarah said that the program helped her reconnect with beyond what is possible in Dayton. Every other Saturday teacher for grades K-3 at Mills Lawn Elementary in Yellow saw an opportunity to serve families through our masked, nature in a way that she hasn’t for years. throughout the summer, these children will be picked up in Springs adopted the program for all 180 of her students. all-outdoor activities. And people took advantage of that The success of The Big Map-Out! has inspired us Agraria’s new passenger van and come for a full-day visit, The students study one feature of their space followed by opportunity. Our Winter Camp, Deep Winter Camp, and to expand the program, both by reaching up to 6th- or where they will participate in the Nature School’s program of pilot After-School Program have all been at capacity! And nature connection and outdoor skills. while field trips were banned by the state, several incredible It has been a welcome respite from pandemic monotony opportunities emerged this spring. High school and middle to see the children explore and play all over Agraria in every school students from the Miami Valley School managed kind of weather as they built fires and shelters, worked the transportation issues and visited Agraria to study soil together to cross Jacoby Creek, and discovered new human and non-human friends. The outpouring of interest in our in-person programs and field trips shows us that our community is ready for all Agraria has to offer. David Diamond is education coordinator at Agraria.

Agraria received the 2021 Connect to Nature Site Award presented by Miami Valley Leave No Child Inside (MVLNCI). Shown from left are Teddy Pierson, a naturalist and member of the Agraria land team, student Jaelah Nonis, education team MIAMI VALLEY SCHOOL & DAVID DIAMOND member Kelly Hudson, student Ariana Nonis, Students from the Miami Valley School in Dayton moved the chicken tractor during their four-day residency at Agraria. They also planted a garden, pulled garlic mustard and learned about soil health and water quality. Toad bracelets were all the rage at Nature Camp during mating season for Eastern Doug Horvath, of Five Rivers Metro Parks, Singing Toads on Agraria. and education team member Emily Foubert.

34 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 35 Big Map-Out! Building community REFLECTIONS through reskilling This has been an incredible project. During the pandemic, we were pushing for kids to outdoors more. BY BETH BRIDGEMAN As adults it was exhausting for us to be online all day, so you know it was exhausting for the kids as well. What started changing [after the program started] I love volunteering at Agraria because it gives me the was that students were becoming more and more perfect opportunity to engage in something that is found- excited about their outdoor spaces. And not only more connected to their environment, but also more ationally important to me: “reskilling,” or helping folks to AMY HARPER connected to me, their nature teacher. Every time I re-access their embodied knowledge of how to do things, Beth Bridgeman and Marianthe Bickett fired up Agraria's cob oven for the saw them, in the store downtown or wherever, they how to resist “the great forgetting” that is so foundational first time in May for a staff pizza party. They oven was built last year as part The Big Map Out! program and students’ tools wanted to tell me what they had found. Even now to capitalism. of a workshop led by Bridgeman with assistance from Bickett. and books were funded by: when they’re back in school, they come to tell me what In David Foster Wallace’s famous commencement hand-forged horseshoes, hand-hewn nails, a crowbar, they’ve found. Going outside and investigating has The Yellow Springs Community Foundation speech at Kenyon in 2005, he spoke of the value of real and bits of a coal hod among other things. Stomping the become a habit for them. They’re investigators. They’re The Mills Lawn PTO cool clay, sand, water and straw together with our bare feet noting things and the relationship between living education as “not being about the capacity to think, The Yellow Springs School District things. It’s just fun! And I’m learning with them. I’m but rather about the choice of what to think about,” of to make the cob grounded me mindfully in the present, and The Martha Holden Jennings Foundation also investigating. I was not really connected to nature “adjusting our default setting” beyond our self centered in working with so many wonderful young people on this Agraria before. I was afraid of spiders. And now I’m not. I realities and being aware of what is “real and essential.” project, I sensed the joyful future as well. would call Emily and say, “Oh, this is changing my life.” What I love about sharing reskilling workshops at The word “share” is an important component of Sarah Amin, K-3 Foundations Teacher/Teacher Support Agraria is using these opportunities as tools for mindfulness reskilling. It is all about peer-to-peer sharing and lifting each Specialist, Mill Lawn School It forced us out of the house even when the and community-building. One of the consequences of other up. I love the intergenerationality of it. I love seeing weather was not so great. We explored and the specialization trend and monetization of the economy my children teach themselves and others skills that they uncovered things we didn’t normally think about. is that skills that were once common among the general have relearned. Last summer my son and a friend taught [I liked] seeing him going outdoors with a curious themselves how to tan sheep hides. My daughter has taught mind and thinking about how to take notes and population, skills that by their nature contributed to a sense report back to his teachers and classmates. of community, skills that could not be accomplished without herself multiple woodworking skills and is especially attracted to the old ways and tools of this profession. My daughter-in- Chris Bongorno, parent thought and intention, are now shared by few. Reskilling brings deep satisfaction. It is empowering for law amazes me with her handwork skills. many reasons. I love the feeling of connection I get when I Phillip Barnes describes reskilling as “the acquisition mend, knit, make baskets, dye, save seeds, ferment, preserve, of skills essential to satisfy basic needs in a localized and do natural building, etc. And then I also love the meditative carbon-constrained future…a process, ongoing and never- nature of reskilling, the mindfulness and the non-linear, ending, that evolves as conditions change and contexts “kairos” aspect of slowing down and being present. change. It is first and foremost a community-oriented During the summer of 2020, when it was so challenging method….While one can learn reskilling by watching a to gather, it was gratifying to have been invited to harvest video or reading a book, it is the face-to-face interactions milky oats with Miller Fellow students and Agraria volunteers, that build community…where a talented and knowledgeable bending over together in the oat fields, harvesting by hand, individual or group teaches other people what they know.” watching the hand-scything of the field afterward, and then The old barn at Agraria offers such a beautiful space for this in the afternoon making milky oat tincture with a group of community-building. It was really cool. I really liked it that it mostly interested folks. I think Arthur Morgan had all of this in mind when involved outside. I learned how to make a mandala Similarly, I felt a powerful sense of connection to the he founded Community Solutions, then called Community and that was fun. Now sometimes when I’m in my past, present, future and my place in all of it when building Service. Reskilling encompasses both “service” and bedroom with the window open and I’m listening to the cob oven and benches that now grace the front campus “solutions,” and I am glad I have found a reskilling home the birds, I hear a certain bird that I pay attention. I like at Agraria. While digging a large two-foot-deep hole for here, at Agraria. how it sings. the foundation of the oven, we unearthed many powerful Beth Bridgeman is Associate Professor of Cooperative Education at Scenes from the Big Map Out! celebration in May. Riley Akers, first grade, Mills Lawn School examples of the skills of those who have gone before: Antioch College and a regular volunteer at Agraria.

36 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 37 Volunteers JOIN US AT THE FARM

As an organization devoted to fostering community resilience, volunteer participation is at the heart of everything we do. This year volunteers provided support for barn building projects, invasive removal, brush clearing, gardening and weeding, special events, education, our Produce Perks/SNAPS program, and our food assistance programs. We would love to add your name to our volunteer list! Contact Rose Hardesty at [email protected] or 937-767-2161 for more information. SNAPSHOTS

HUSTON ROAD BY AMY HARPER The new high tunnel on Huston Road is a visible sign of Agraria’s developing capacity for agricultural production and training. Snapshots Around and About Agraria Growing inside the high tunnel are a variety of vegetables that Agraria plans to either sell or donate to area food pantries and farm stands in food insecure areas. Sweet potato plants growing alongside the other vegetables are Our work to cultivate a strong local food system has allow S.O.U.P. to expand food production on site, including part of a research project conducted by Dr. Marcus Nagle, expanded and become a major focus for Agraria. The seeds fruit, honey and egg production; increase afterschool and professor of horticulture at Central State University. A plot we have been sowing, literally and figuratively, for the last few community-based educational programs; and engage outside the hoophouse is also dedicated to the sweet potato years have begun to bear fruit, with projects on and off the neighborhood residents in growing, harvesting, selling, and research project, which explores the ability of certain varieties farm. We are continuing our support of the Yellow Springs purchasing food at existing summer farm stands. The house to thrive in northern climes. Farmers Market and hope to expand to a market of our own adjacent to the garden site will be renovated to house Melrose Visitors to the site this year may also see Fellows from pending the opening of a farm store and welcome center. Acres’ educational programming as well as community events. Agraria’s new Regenerative Training and Incubation S.O.U.P. coordinator Sherry Chen is the project lead for program for beginning and underserved farmers offered in development of Melrose Acres, which reflects the historic collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and Central name of the neighborhood where the center is located. State University. Partner farmer Jeremy Schleining will bring MELROSE ACRES some color to the Huston Road site later this year with his Agraria closed in April on the purchase of property that Other partners include neighborhood residents, Central Agraria staff and volunteers, led by VISTA Xinyuan Shi, installed a new plot of cut flowers. high tunnel on Huston Road. will enable development of the Melrose Acres Urban State University Extension (CSUE), Wittenberg University, Funding for the high tunnel, which was installed by between the site and the neighboring property. Agriculture Center in South Springfield. The goal of the Opportunities for Individual Change, and 1159 South, a Agraria staff led by VISTA Xinyuan Shi, was provided by Also planned for the Huston Road site is a Class 2 project is to increase food security in the area, a severe food nonprofit citizen group in Springfield. an EQIP grant. The grant also funded installation of a well composting facility, which will serve local residents. Funding desert, along with the self-reliance of neighborhood residents. Agraria will serve as an educational resource, continuing a longstanding partnership with S.O.U.P. that includes on that site and another site on Agraria. We intend to plant for the project was provided by a grant from the Ohio collaboration on a 2017 Farm to School project for the trees along the perimeter to provide a natural privacy fence Environmental Protection Agency. Springfield City Schools. Last year, Agraria provided produce to S.O.U.P., through its COVID-related food distribution program, to sell at the neighborhood farmstands coordinated by the nonprofit. S.O.U.P. is also partnering with Agraria on the Regenerative Farming Fellowship program. Two South Springfield residents are Fellows in the program and have established their training plots on Melrose Acres. Chen will serve as their on-site mentor. CSUE has consulted with S.O.U.P. on site layout and soil testing and will also provide training and consultation throughout the project. Chen has attracted a corps of volunteers who have already developed a collaborative Porch Garden Project, a plant sale fundraiser, a production garden, and zoom workshops on food, gardening, and nutrition.

It has long term implications, not only for food access in south BOB HUSTON Springfield, but also for strengthening the local food system SILVOPASTURE and building community and regional resilience. Since the purchase of Agraria we’ve been planning to soil and leads to healthy animals. The purchase of the 7.5-acre parcel and adjoining house integrate silvopasture and managed rotational grazing We added chickens and ducks last year to our front was made possible by a four-year $400,000 USDA-NIFA into our farming practices because of the role they play campus. The EQIP grant we received provided funding for grant awarded last year to Agraria in partnership with the in building and maintaining ecosystem health. Silvopasture a well and perimeter fencing around the 28-acre rotational nonprofit Springfield Urban Plantfolk (S.O.U.P.). Senator is an agroforestry practice that combines trees with livestock grazing pasture. We are hosting a fencing workshop this fall in Sherrod Brown’s support helped secure the grant. and forage production. Livestock in a managed rotational partnership with the Tecumseh Land Trust and Central State S.O.U.P. had been using part of the parcel for several years grazing system are pastured in fenced-off sections and moved University. Xinyuan Shi, who has an interest in agroforestry, to grow vegetables and house bees. The purchase will regularly to prevent overgrazing. The practice builds healthy created a preliminary design for a 3-acre silvopasture

40 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 41 SNAPSHOTS installation, and we expect to plant root stock and cuttings creating and maintaining healthy soil, and eliminating from trees on Agraria in the area within the next year along chemicals. An educational event at Agraria in late May with native trees purchased from area nurseries. We are included education and presentations on pollinators, raised planting a forage crop in the pasture this year, and we expect beds, rain gardens, and composting. To learn more about the to introduce sheep next year in partnership with farmer Giving Garden Challenge, visit the DRG3 website. Jason Ward. These projects will help demonstrate the benefits of REGIONAL FOOD agroforestry and managed-rotational to area farmers and & FARM PARTNERSHIPS landowners, delight kids in our nature programs, and serve as Our food work flourishes through multiple partnerships. a learning experience for the many interns we host at Agraria. These include our work with the Tecumseh Land Trust, with whom we have partnered on three Growing Green Conferences and who assists us with our conservation FOOD FOREST was donated to Yellow Springs Pottery. They also created Another agroforestry practice will be added this year--the easements and EQIP applications; our work with several brush piles along the way using the material they cleared to installation of a food forest, designed by Shi. Her design regional partners on a USDA food system planning grant; create mitigative habitat for small animals and birds. is being planted in the front yard surrounding the Agraria food security work with The Yellow Springs Community Plans for the trail, beyond construction, include sign. To the trees that are already growing there, we are Foundation and the Yellow Springs Senior Center; Wildlife native plantings alongside the trail, interpretive signage, adding hazelnuts, plums, red mulberries, chokeberry, wild Certification work with several Yellow Springs Partners; and benches, and a terminus with a patio, bike racks, and a ginger, and a paw paw colony. The food forest will model a working partnership with Co-op Dayton. Central State VISTA Xinyuan Shi in Agraria's perennial garden. bike repair station adjacent to Agraria’s historic barn. The “backyard” food forest style plantings, serving our educational University Extension continues to provide us and our farmer trail is scheduled for completion in August. Stay tuned for mission, while creating a seed and scion bank for future tree raspberries, strawberries, currents, gooseberries, and partners significant support. Agraria was also instrumental information about our grand opening celebration. nursery activities (growing from seed grafting/budding, etc.) jostaberries. The garden also has potential to expand to a in bringing a Farms and Forestry Climate Adaptation online and permaculture practices, reducing lawn maintenance, and larger U-pick garden. A portion of what we raise will be workshop to Ohio in partnership with OSU Extension and donated to S.O.U.P. for sale at their neighborhood farm the National Institute for Applied Climate Science. producing fruit and nut trees that are not commonly grown JACOBY CREEK STREAM in the area. stands in Springfield. & WETLAND RESTORATION MARY’S WAY The branches of honeysuckle lying in profusion along the Jacoby Creek corridor through Agraria are signs of the GIVING GARDENS By the time this issue of Agraria Journal is published, The Giving Garden Challenge, a partnership between construction of Mary’s Way, the bikepath connecting imminent change in store for this environmentally sensitive Dayton Regional Green (DRG3), Five Rivers Metroparks, Agraria and Yellow Springs, should be about to start or water way. Work crews from Cincinnati-based Green Corps and Agraria, was launched on Earth Day 2021 to encourage already underway. Agraria’s partnership with AmeriCorps friendly competition between church, community, and NCCC helped keep this long-anticipated project on schedule. individual gardens that will be developing regenerative Last year, from October to December, a six-member practices and/or growing food for their neighbors. Practices team from AmeriCorps NCCC worked with Agraria’s land that will be incorporated in participating gardens include team to clear the way for construction of the mile-long paved incorporating native species, removing invasive species, trail. They removed honeysuckle and trees along the route, cleared brush, and hauled and rived logs. In the process, they helped generate fence posts, lumber that will be milled and used for construction projects on Agraria, and firewood that

PERENNIAL GARDEN Shi also repurposed the pantry garden put in last year by our land team, shifting the plantings from annuals to perennials, but with a continued focus on edibles. Several varieties of berries were planted this year along with asparagus. This will expand our own growing operation and cut down honeysuckle along the creek and its tributaries in help establish a longer lasting, low maintenance “backyard” 2019 in preparation for the major work set to begin this fall: garden. It will serve as a demonstration garden while also rehabilitation and restoration of the stream and surrounding filling a market gap in the community since many of the wetlands by The Nature Conservancy. crops are not commonly grown in the area. They include New plant starts for the Agraria high tunnel. Planning for the project began soon after the purchase

42 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 43 SNAPSHOTS of Agraria, in 2017, by the Arthur Morgan Institute for Foster. The study area borders Jacoby Creek and will provide administered by the Yellow Springs Community Foundation. Community Solutions (now known as Agraria). If all goes as important baseline data for exploring changes in pollinator The program offers paid internships for students to work in planned, crews will begin the major work this fall of restoring diversity as a result of the TNC restoration project. area non-profits. Our Miller Fellows have helped develop meanders to the stream, which was channelized to increase The TNC restoration of Jacoby Creek also figures in and manage our website, amplify our social media presence, the amount of land available for agricultural production, another research project that has yet to begin: a study to coordinate events and programming, create GIS mapping, rehabilitating and restoring surrounding wetlands, and investigate the potential for harvesting mycorrhizal fungi to and have worked on a variety of projects with our land team, replanting the restored areas with native trees and plants. improve tree seedling growth and survival. The TNC provided among other things. In short, they have played a major A conservation easement protects the 60 acres covered by funding to Rua Lab at Wright State University to conduct this role in helping Agraria grow and develop. This summer we the project as well as an adjoining 20 acres of productive research. are hosting Ohio State University student Abigal Titzer, farmland on Agraria. Other collaborations with Wright State researchers that who will be working with our social media team to expand TNC is collaborating with Agraria on the selection have been explored include ornithology field work and feeding our outreach. UD students on site include Kate Kizer, an of native plantings for the outer buffer zone, which will be of coyotes within anthropogenic environments. engineering student who is designing a water catchment used to explore and demonstrate permaculture and riparian Central State University (CSU), an 1890 land grant We have served as a research site for a number of system for the barn, and Josie Weitz, who is assisting the agroforestry. Landowners can use these practices along institution, signed an MOU with Agraria/Community student projects in the University of Dayton School of education team. Earlham student Aza Hurwitz of Yellow riverine corridors and other water ways to diversify their Solutions in 2019, formalizing a partnership that includes Engineering. The two projects this year focused on soil and Springs is assisting the education and the land teams. Ohio cropping systems while also conserving soil and water health. collaboration on research and Extension initiatives. crop health. The goal of one student team was to develop University graduate Alberta Dempsey is on staff as an intern A plot of sweet potato seedlings was planted this spring a soil monitoring product that could be used by small-scale with the sweet potato research project. on Agraria, which will serve as a mirror site for comparing farms to collect samples and analyze them for nitrogen, RESEARCH ON AGRARIA with field trials at CSU, using sweet potato accessions phosphorus, potassium, and pH levels. The aim of the other One of Agraria’s goals from the beginning was to serve provided by the USDA germplasm. The research will explore project team was to design a device for monitoring crop PHYSICAL PLANT IMPROVEMENTS as a site for studying the impact of regenerative practices organic vs conventional practices, comparing the ability health and detecting disease in plants at an early stage in their We continue to upgrade our 113-year-old bank barn with on ecosystem health, the local food system, and human of plants to survive and produce in colder climates. CSU development. Both teams presented their final designs during the goal of housing a welcome center, event space, and farm health. Our partnerships with area institutions and other researcher Dr. Marcus Nagle, professor of horticulture in a presentation in April. store. Also planned for the barn are electrical upgrades, a organizations have generated a number of projects. the Agricultural Research and Development Program, is cement floor in the basement donated by CEMEX, and new Silphium seedlings that went in the ground last year as the project lead for this research. He also partnered with front doors. The barn, house, and offices received a new paint part of trial begun in partnership with the Kansas-based The Nature Conservancy to conduct research on Agraria INTERNSHIPS job and beautiful new red roofs this spring. Land Institute have re-emerged after their winter sleep, to determine whether and how glyphosate, when used to Agraria has served as a site for student internships since A grant from Friends of the Ohio Barns will allow us to demonstrating their ability to survive and even thrive in the eradicate honeysuckle, moves in the soil. its founding, benefiting both the student interns as well begin developing interpretive signage for the barn’s welcome southwest Ohio bioregion. The goal of the research is to Honeybees are the focus of a research project by another as our organization. Since 2020, we have hosted seven center. The signs will depict the history of the barn as well as determine which ecotypes from other regions perform best CSU researcher, Dr. Hongmei Li-Byarlay, assistant professor Antioch College students in The Miller Fellowship Program other aspects of agriculture in Ohio. in this area and whether Silphium integrifolium can serve of entymology. The research will explore how farm landscape as perennial conservation species in flood-prone riparian types (organic, conventional, and roadside) affect levels of borders. Silphium is a new perennial oilseed crop that is stresses, both biotic (such as pathogenic viral infections) and useful for forage, revegetation and erosion control, and as a abiotic (such as pesticide exposures), and how these levels pollinator resource. affect bee development. A hive as well as raspberry stems will be placed on Agraria to study both honeybees and small carpenter bees. CSU researcher and soil scientist Sakthi Subburayala is monitoring soil and water quality on Agraria and other sites in connection with the Jacoby Partnership Project spearheaded by The Tecumseh Land Trust. Agraria is one of several partners in this five-year project, which aims to encourage conservation practices and farmland preservation with two subwatersheds of the Little Miami River. We are also exploring collaborations with CSU and others on elderberry and mushroom production on Agraria for both research and education purposes. Collecting data about bee diversity on Agraria is the aim of a study by Wright State University student Adam CSU students with field assistant Ashley Cordle checking CSU hives on Agraria BOB HUSTON

44 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 45 CALENDAR OF EVENTS

VIRTUAL EVENTS 2021 IN-PERSON EVENTS 2021

JUNE 18-19 are impacting municipal systems, industry, and AUG 22 NOV 7 agriculture, all intensified by a changing climate. Annual Meeting/Bike Path Walk Nature Resiliency Skillshare: Water Nourishing Life Conference We will explore water at local, regional, and 2-4 pm Join Arrow Wightman in this resiliency skillshare Online Only. national levels and the social and environmental Come take a tour, walk the new bike path, and series as we learn about the important skill of being This online conference will address the interwoven justice issues that have arisen. We will hear stories learn about the work we’re doing! We will also able to get clean water out in nature. Registration: threads of soil health, nutrition, and community directly from Indigenous peoples, artists, activists, present awards to volunteers and community COMING SOON. health. Free to attend. Donations encouraged. and researchers working to protect water. Most leaders. Registration: COMING SOON Keynotes include: Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Drew importantly, we will present solutions that are NOV 19-21 Ramsey, and Dr. Christine Jones. Register at springing up across the planet to restore our https://nourishing-life.eventbrite.com Nature Resiliency Skillshare: Food memory of and relationship with water. Confirmed Join Arrow Wightman in this resiliency skillshare SEPT 10-11 Keynotes include Dr. Kelsey Leonard and Isabel series as we learn about the important skill of Friend. More information and registration being able to find and cook food for yourself Black Farming: Community Land & Food Sovereignty COMING SOON. out in nature. This includes foraging, tracking Conference animals, and more. Given the time of year, we’ll be This year's Black Farming conference will look incorporating gratitude and reciprocity into this at the economic impacts and possibilities of the IN-PERSON EVENTS 2021 practice. Registration: COMING SOON. cooperative business model with an emphasis on the power of growing your own food-- AUGUST 14-15 For more updates and information, please from seed saving to community gardening-- Seed School with Beth Bridgeman visit or email and celebrating the contributions of our Black www.communitysolution.org 10am with and underrepresented food and farming OCT 1-3 [email protected] This course is for farmers, gardeners, seed any questions. community. Keynote speakers include: Dr. Nature Resiliency Skillshare: Shelter librarians, students, educators, and anyone who Join Arrow Wightman in this resiliency skillshare Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Leah Penniman, Ira cares about food and the seeds that grow it. Join series as we learn about the important skill of Wallace, and Malik Yakini. Register at: https:// us and empower yourself! No previous experience being able to build shelter outdoors with natural blackfarmingconference2021.eventbrite.com necessary. Registration: https://www.eventbrite. materials. Optional camping to test out your OCT 16-17 com/e/seed-school-tickets-148618236145 shelter skills! Registration: COMING SOON. Arthur Morgan Legacy Symposium in collaboration with Antioch College OCT 15-17 Join us as we explore the legacy and meaning of Nature Resiliency Skillshare: Fire Join Arrow Wightman in this resiliency skillshare Arthur Morgan's work in Community, Education, series as we learn about the important skill of being Business, and Water Systems with presenters from able to build a fire! Participants must bring their across the region and across the planet. More own knife. Registration: COMING SOON. information and registration COMING SOON. NOV 5-6 Pathways to Regeneration Conference The ancient waters never left us. This most precious resource has through time continued to move and cycle above, below, around and inside us, and all life. Yet today, water and our relationship with it are imperiled on multiple levels. Join us November

5-6, 2021 as we investigate the water crises that

DENNIE EAGLESON

46 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 47 Electric Blue Songs to Nurture the Spirit Fundraising UPDATES BY EMILY FOUBERT

BY NAOMI BONGORNO Today on my walk along the bike path past Goes Station, I met a heron rookery. Agraria’s generous donors, dedicated volunteers, and RECENT GRANTS: Ten pairs in a sycamore tree, dancing their passionate program participants give our work meaning Baker Heirloom Seed Company sticks into the nest together. Their garbling and make possible our progress. As you’ve seen throughout Clean Ohio Trails Fund coos like rock doves on the cathedrals of this Journal, the past year at Agraria has been one of Christopher Reynolds Foundation New York City. growth and evolution, in which the desire for our work and Farm Credit of Mid-America And then I went into the wood to say programs has compelled us forward and expanded our Friends of Ohio Barns good morning to the river. And there I work and reach. Meeting this need is important, both for Greene County Parks and Trails heard him as I crouched at the bank and our community and for us as an organization. To make HealthPath Foundation paddled a few scoops of water onto my this possible, we launched the Regenerative Futures Fund Kettering Family Philanthropies face and into my hair. Indigo Bunting had in 2021 with a goal of building a consistent foundation of Martha Holden Jennings Foundation returned overnight. Singing his descending operational support for Agraria during this time of growth. Mills Lawn PTO duos of notes, “Fire fire, where where, Regenerative Gifts in the form of sustaining monthly Morgan Family Foundation here here, don’tchaknow?!” donations or a generous multi-year pledge will give Agraria National Corporation for Community Service I responded with bright eyes, out- the consistency we need to invest in our wonderful staff, National Farmers’ Union stretched hands, and choked up words that resilient community, and the beautiful land that we steward. National Resource Conservation Service spilled out with a joyful sputter like when To help move our Regenerative Fund forward, a you see a long lost loved one: “Hi Mom, hi group of our legacy donors have created a $100,000 Nationwide Insurance Granny!” I shouted to the trees in which Matching Fund specifically to encourage new supporters Ohio Council for The Humanities Indigo sat, too far for me to see, but definite- to join Agraria! They have championed Agraria since the Ohio Community Development Corporation ly present. beginning and hope their dedication to our mission will Ohio Environmental Protection Agency In many Springs past, my mother would regale me with picturing her in her rose beds in April, gazing up to greet inspire at least 100 new Regenerative Gifts this year. If you Ohio Farm Bureau Federation stories about my grandmother’s relationship with a certain Mood with a smile, while pausing to take a sip of water from have never attended an Agraria event, volunteered on a Ohio Farmers’ Union indigo bunting at her home in Granville, Ohio. Every spring her cup decorated with prints of strawberries. work project, or donated to our organization, now is the Patagonia Foundation Granny would welcome “Mood,” the summer resident indigo Back on the river this morning, I spoke aloud again to perfect time. Your Regenerative Gift this year will help build Reynolds and Reynolds Associate's Foundation bunting, back to the yard with a gentle spoken acknowledg- Indigo, “I’m sooo happy to hear from you today. Thanks a base of support for Agraria that will ensure our place as Rising Star Coffee Roasters ment and note in her journal. My mom, in telling me, was for coming and sitting with me this morning.” I sat. I cried. a community resource for years to come. The Nature Conservancy remembering down through the generations, connecting me And I listened to Indigo sing. The more I heard him, the We are grateful for the incredible support we have United States Department of Agriculture to Granny through this bird. more I felt my matriarchal lineage fill inside of me. Indigo received through individual gifts and grants, even during Vectren Foundation Even though Granny died when I was two, I still loved was a conduit for this moment. Indigo was mom. Indigo was a year of pandemic. Since the beginning of 2020, we Village of Yellow Springs Green Space Fund Granny. I told Granny and Mom all about my current life, have received a total of $460,000 in cash and in-kind Yavanna Foundation what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been loving about my days, contributions from individuals and over $1.2 million in Yellow Springs Community Foundation and the hard parts of life. When indigo sang, I felt their grant funding. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! listening ears, beyond this life, assuring me of their presence through his vocal chords, through his beak. I welcome the indigo buntings back to town with a soft song of my own, of thanks, for their song that foretells of summer; with tears in my eyes for knowing that granny and mama can fly to me in the body of a plump, small electric blue bird; and with a note in my journal of their arrival date: April 5th, 2021.

Emily Foubert is an educator and naturalist at Agraria.

48 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 SUPPORTERS OF AGRARIA SUPPORTERS OF AGRARIA SUPPORTERS OF AGRARIA

Lisa Abel David Champney Edgemont Solar Garden Eric Hausker Nancy Lineburgh & George Coder Peggy Nestor & Mike Blevins Scott Romstadt, Romstadt Electric Elias Vlanton AmeriCorps/NCCC Elaine Chappelle Katie Egart Bruce Heckman Jim Linne, White Clover Farm Lisa Niquette Denise Runyon Malte & Pam Von Matthiessen Sarah Amin Kat & Doug Christen Mike Eid, JJJ Auto Mark & Robin Heise Little Art Theatre Daniele Norman Kirk & Christina Rowe Eugenia Wall Gabby & Selena Loomis-Amrhein Cincinnati Permaculture Institute Emporium Wines & Underdog Café Lisa Helm/Dayton Urban Grown Joshua Lockyer Ohio CDC Peggy Saari Jason Ward Tom Amrhein Don Cippolini Claryce Evans Bob Henderson Logan County Land Trust Ohio Ecological Food Paul & Gayle Sampson Richard & Barbara Webster Catherine Anderson Dawn Clark Victor Eyth Vickie Hennessy Lowes, Beavercreek & Farm Association Elizabeth Sanchez Margaret Wehner Antioch College Tom Clevenger Fairborn Cement Company Sarah Hippensteel-Hall Ward Lutz Ohio EPA Educational Fund Devin Schenk Robert & Marilyn Welker Asanda Imports Mark Cohen Mary Fahrenbruck Don Hollister Ardis & Thomas Macaulay Ohio State University William Schieman Tony Wells Foundation Robert Bacheller William Cornhoff lll James & Betty Felder Marc Holser Marianne MacQueen Ohio University Al Schlueter Dave Westneat Megan Bachman Community Impact William Felker Homefull Carl Maida Jenna Orkin John Schneider Mark Westneat & Melanie Hale Parker Bachman Pam Conine Piper Fernway Tim Honchel Tom Manley & Susanne Hashim Judith Dehn Oplinger John Schuster Marianne Whelchel Jane Baker Coop Dayton Finca Tierra Permaculture Ellen & Rod Hoover Chris & Buffy Maple Fern Opotow Alex Scott Maria Whittaker Bob Baldwin Paul Cooper Flagel Huber Flagel Howard Horstman & Laura Marshall Kevin Martt Harvey Paige Sherraid Scott Linda Wigington Hardy & Jeanne Ballantine Donna Cottrell Meredith Florkey Dale Hotaling Marvin’s Organic Gardens Andrea Panaritis Sara Sherick Bonnie Wilkinson Peter Bane Gordon Cowperthwaite Caelan Ford Brian Housh Donald & Linda Mates Jerry Papania & Moira Laughlin Karen Shell Harvey & Ellen Wineberg Timothy Barhorst Jeannamarie Cox David Foubert Micheal & Robin Hoy Thomas McCaulay Patagonia Corporation Shohei Shibata Ted & Trudy Winsberg Fred & Joy Bartenstein Cresco Labs Ohio Emily Foubert Jon Hudson & Debbie Henderson Kathleen McCloud Namita Patel Solomon Shemano James & Jeannie Witherell Saba Bathija Catherine Crompton Ann Fox Carol Huesman Lynn McCown National Afro-American Museum Suellyn Shupe Wittenberg University Roger Beal Sheryl Cunningham Betsy Fox Bob & Tia Huston Jonathan McCracken and Cultural Center Rich & Mary Sidwell Anna Wolf-Powers Paul Beck Laura Curliss Lacey Fox Dr Carl Hyde Dr Geeta & Mr. Robert McGahey Caroline Parry Frances Simon Nancy Lee Wood Carol Beale Current Cuisine Dough & Ruth Freyta IBI Group Kevin McGruder Peach Mountain Organics Edward Simonoff Beth Workman Ruth & Tony Bent Rebecca Dale Glenn Gall Kim Iconis & Chuck Taylor Margaret McLaughlin Peifer Orchards Cheryl Smith Harold & Jonatha Wright Hollyn Bermond Dayton Urban Grown Jerry & Carol Gasho Jonathan Inslee Elizabeth Mersky Steve Piatt Mary Kay Smith Wright State University Rex & Karen Berney Jessica D’Ambrosio Bryan Gay Artie & Alisa Isaac Robert & Elaine Middlesetter Mary Frost-Pierson Lynn Sontag Tim Wulling Dan & Kathy Beverly Maureen Dawn MJ Gentile Wes & Joan Jackson Pam Miller Jim Polk Springfield Urban Plant Folk WYSO Richard Biddle Dayton Foundation John & Barbara Geri Frances Jennings Shawndra Miller Ron & Becky Pollack (S.O.U.P.) Yavanna Foundation Marianthe Bickett Dean’s Ecocycling Larry Gerthoffer Susan Jennings Susan Miller Elizabeth Porter Pat Stempfly Yellow Springs Brewery George Bieri & Abigail Cobb Wilma Deen Joe Giardullo Pauline Jensen Matt Minde Nancy Putnam Perry Stewart Yellow Springs Chamber Michael Blackwell Judith Dehn Oplinger John Gibson Eric Johnson & Patricia Hart Scott Montgomery Branson Pyles Susan Stiles of Commerce Malaya Booth Isaac DeLamatre Glen Helen Association Deborah Jordan Angela Moore Linden Qualls Fred Stockwell Yellow Springs Credit Union Nick Boutis Donna Denman Lauren Gjessing Bob & Beverly Jurick Bob Moore/RM Horticulture Thomas & Susan Quinn Elizabeth Stotler Yellow Springs Community Bruce Bradtmiller Nancy Deren Cheryl Graham Kettering Family Philanthropies Charles & Pauline Moore Rails to Trails Conservancy Sunrise Cafe Foundation David & Ann Brandt Celia Diamond Terry Graham Jimmy Kingsolver John Morgan Anne Randolph Jane Sweet Yellow Springs Dharma Center Bob Brecha & Katharina Seidl Thomas Dietrich Bethany & Jordan Gray Valerie Kosheleff Lee & Vicki Morgan Thomas Rapini Charles Taylor Yellow Springs Farmers Market Elizabeth Brevik Kenneth Deveney Greater Dayton Conservation Fund Len Kramer Matt Morgan Janeal Ravndal Braden Trauth Yellow Springs Friends Meeting Beth Bridgeman & Edwin Amrhein Celia Diamond Green Canteen Keith Kresge Peggy Morgan Raven Rocks Community Tecumseh Land Trust Yellow Springs Hardware Ariella Brown David & Caryn Diamond Alan Greenland Kroger, Fairborn Morgan Family Foundation Carolyn Ray Barry Thacker Yellow Springs Home, Inc David Brown Frank Doden Linda Griffith & Scott Kellogg Lori Kuhn Lamees Mubaslatt Tika Redding Mark Thornton Yellow Springs Library Senator Sherrod Brown Mary Jane Dodson Jeanna Gunderkline Yasmina Landaburu Nadia Mulhall Cristina Redko Stephen Tobias Yellow Springs News Michelle Burns Rick & Mary Donahoe McArthur Gunter Kim Landsbergen Jim Mulherin Matt & Kathy Reed Tom's Market Yellow Springs Psychological Center Linda Butler & Dr. Steve Nissen Toni Dosik Audrey Hackett Eric Lang Marcus Nagle Julia Reichert Ron & Susan Tower Yellow Springs Riding Center Julia Cady Keith Doubt Hall Hunger Initiative Maggie Lankford National Institute for Applied Perk & Karen Reichley, Bobbi & Greg Treadwell Yellow Springs Schools Sallie Calhoun Janet Dowell Kevin & Linda Hallinan Richard Lapedes & Maureen Lynch Climate Science Reichley Insurance David Turner Yellow Springs Senior Center S. Cameron Sheila Drennen Dan Halm Janet and Tom Lasley Natural Resources Robert & Cindi Remm University of Dayton YSI/Xylem John Cannon Gail Dunlap Rose Hardesty Ronald Lawler Conservation Service Macy & Roger Reynolds Vale, Inc Barry Zalph Andrea Carr Judith Eda Mike Harding, Servlet Richard Lawrence Julia Navaro Alice Robrish VanLehn Construction Gary Zaremsky Central State University Dennie Eagleson Donna Haller & Family Matthew Lawson Gideon Naziri Steven Roe Vectren Foundation Bob Zearfoss Peg Champney Nick & Becca Eastman Franklin Halley Kathryn Levesconte Jerry Neely Martha Rogers Village Guest House Karen Zukowitz & Dave Huber Sherry Chen Roy & Heidi Eastman Amy Harper Scott Lindberg Bill Nelson Catherine Roma & Dorothy Smith Village of Yellow Springs Chris Zurbuchen

50 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2021 51 AGRARIA CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE PRACTICE PRESENTS

AGRARIA CENTER FOR REGENERATIVE PRACTICE PRESENTS

Save the Date! September 10th & 11th 2021 Online registration: https://blackfarmingconference2021.eventbrite.com This evSenat isv FeR EtEh aned oDpen atot thee !public. K e y n o t e S p e a k e r s : L e a h P eSnenpi mteamn ,b aeurt 1h o0rt ho f& F a1r1mtihn g2 0W2h1i l e B l a c k : S o u l F i r e F a r m ’ s P r a c t i c a l G u i d eO tnoli nLe irbegeirsatrtaitoionn :o hntt pt hs:e// bLlacnkdfa, rMmianlgicko nYfeareknicnei2,0 2c1o.e-vf eonutnbdrieter. caonmd E x e c u t i v e This event is FREE and open to the public. D i r e c t o r o f t h e D e t r o i t B l a c k C o m m u n i t y F o o d S e c u r i t y N e t w o r k , D r . J e s s i c a G o r d o n K e y n o t e S p e a k e r s : L e a h P e n n i m a n , a u t h o r o f F a r m i n g W h i l e B l a c k : S o u l F i r e F a r m ’ s N e m b h a r d , a uPtr ahcot irc aol Gf uCi doe lt ol eLci bteirva tei o Cn o nu trhae gLea n:d ,A M aHl iiks Yt oa kriyn i ,o cfo -Af ofurn di ce ra ann dA Emx e ceurt i vcea n C o o p e r a t i v e E c o n o m i c T h oDui rgehc tto ra onf dt h eP Dreatcr otiit cBel a,c ka nCdo m Imruan i tWy Fao oldl aSce ceu,r i twy oNre tkweorr k/ ,o Dwr .n Jeers soi cfa Gt ho red ocno o p e r a t i v e l y N e m b h a r d , a u t h o r o f C o l l e c t i v e C o u r a g e : A H i s t o r y o f A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n C o o p e r a t i v e m a n a g e d S o u t h e r n E x p o s u r e S e e d E x c h a n g e . E c o n o m i c T h o u g h t a n d P r a c t i c e , a n d I r a W a l l a c e , w o r k e r / o w n e r o f t h e c o o p e r a t i v e l y m a n a g e d S oSupt heecr nia El xTpho saunr ek S Ye eodu E txoc hOa nugre .Sponsors and Partners: Special Thank You to Our Sponsors and Partners: