For The Wild - AMYROSE FOLL on Free Food for Liberation ⧸238

00:00:00.000 For the Wild is brought to you in part by the Calliopeia Foundation.

00:00:05.080 We are grateful for their continued support and the support of grassroots contributions from listeners like you.

00:00:11.800 Learn more at calliopeia.org.

00:00:14.640 To make a donation, visit forthewild.world slash donate or find us on Patreon.

00:00:20.620 If you'd like to support us in other ways, consider sharing our episodes through social media or leaving us a review wherever you listen to the podcast.

00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with Amy Rose Foll.

00:00:40.360 I think that the medicine for tragedy is community. We have everything that we need.

00:00:46.620 Amy Rose is an enrolled tribal member of the Abenaki, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and an alumni of Cornell University.

00:00:53.980 She is cultivating the next generation of land and water protectors through sharing knowledge in indigenous lifeways and ethnobotany.

00:01:03.080 A passion for agriculture and deep concerns about community food security led her to become a stakeholder in the Virginia Department of Agriculture Equitable Food-Oriented Distribution Task Force and founder of Virginia Free Farms.

00:01:18.600 Through Virginia Free Farms, Amy Rose provides free, nutrient-dense food assistance to those

00:01:23.940 with need free of charge, plants, and seeds to community gardens, schools, and community-based

00:01:30.000 organizations, and educates young people in the Richmond metro area about indigenous agriculture

00:01:35.760 and life ways.

00:01:39.840 Well, Amy Rose, thank you so much for joining us on For the Wild podcast today.

00:01:45.280 I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

00:01:49.760 Yeah, thank you for having me.

00:01:52.520 Well, I'd like to preface Virginia Free Farms by first discussing one of the great ironies

00:01:59.020 of this country, which is the surplus of the food we theoretically have access to amidst

00:02:05.720 our staggering rates of hunger.

00:02:07.760 And it's even more complex when you begin to think about food waste, as well as the

00:02:12.880 reality that the majority of small-scale farmers rarely make enough to sustain themselves with

00:02:18.340 farming alone. In preparation for our conversation, I learned that despite Virginia's 46,000 farms,

00:02:26.820 some counties have rates of food insecurity that double the national average. So can you begin by

00:02:33.120 framing this conundrum for listeners and why we need to work on projects that simultaneously seek

00:02:39.880 to address the quality of food offered to the community, the well-being of farmers, and equitable

00:02:45.440 distribution. Yeah, I actually live in one of those counties. So before the pandemic hit, we were

00:02:51.860 looking at about 13.7 million households in the U.S. being food insecure. After the pandemic hit,

00:02:59.820 we're looking at 35 million households that can't either meet their needs on a daily basis or

00:03:06.080 they're uncertain of how to fill their plates. So when we look at all the ways and all of the

00:03:11.160 issues surrounding food security that come together, we really more accurately need to

00:03:16.100 assess how we can innovate and problem solve on these issues because it's so many things that go

00:03:21.460 into this problem. I mean, we waste 80 billion pounds of food in the U.S. a year. That's like

00:03:27.360 30 or 40 percent of the food supply and the largest component of solid waste that goes into

00:03:32.720 our landfills every year, which is massive. We need to start looking at that in a perverse light,

00:03:39.160 not trying to be overly dramatic, but the fact that so many people are food insecure and we're

00:03:46.020 throwing so much food away is just absolutely abhorrent. We also need to look at the set of

00:03:53.000 facts and imagine better access and attempt to create an alternative model for production and

00:04:00.840 delivery in order to serve these demographics that are experiencing this more effectively,

00:04:06.060 while also kind of attending to the well-being of what is considered a small-scale farm worker.

00:04:12.840 We have, as you said, over 40,000 farms in Virginia, and many of them are not solvent

00:04:17.820 because of this race to the bottom price structure that has been put into play by

00:04:23.280 industrial farms, making it impossible to compete. And that's not new. It's been going on since the

00:04:29.360 very early 80s. So small responsible land stewards are crushed by these large vertically integrated

00:04:36.300 organizations who are poisoning the water and land and causing desertification of our arable

00:04:43.080 farmland and massive top sale soil loss. So we have hundreds of farms in bankruptcy right now

00:04:49.720 in the U.S. and what really worries me is mental and physical well-being of these small farmers

00:04:54.320 in addition to the possibility of these existing behemoths compounding factors that are already

00:05:00.520 causing so much food insecurity and such financial hardships for the small farmers by buying up all

00:05:06.620 these farms and further consolidating farmlands and perpetuating that system that's been devised

00:05:12.280 to control us so much. That system works the way that it was designed to work. It's almost the same

00:05:19.820 thing as burning food stores and cornfields that controlled my ancestors. You control the food and

00:05:26.180 you control the people. And that's exactly what it was meant to do. And so I guess our liberation 0.72

00:05:32.940 as a people in the U.S. is intimately tied together. I think we kind of collectively need to

00:05:40.440 work to make a drastic change in our own corrupt food system by re-education of people and

00:05:47.260 imagination of a new alternative model. We're trying to start getting to that. I realize that

00:05:55.700 the biggest room in the house is room for improvement. So every day we are doing a little

00:05:59.740 bit more working with different community groups to help get these people fed. And end goal is to

00:06:06.980 kind of do a top-down and bottom-up approach for getting food distributed more equitably,

00:06:14.720 getting people growing for themselves, all that sort of stuff. And it must include forging an

00:06:21.100 alternative model that seeds new innovation in line with traditional ecological knowledge

00:06:27.320 to save ourselves from the agricultural industrial complex that's not going to change unless we do

00:06:34.320 something about it. We can't change what's been happening, but we can transform the future into

00:06:39.780 something powerful if we work together. In preparation for our conversation, I was reminded

00:06:45.880 of a previous interview I just did with Vijay Prashad, and they spoke at great length as to

00:06:52.560 what it means for the cultural morality of a country like the United States that loudly boasts

00:06:58.560 of its prosperity and convenience, yet it refuses to ensure its citizens are fed. I mean, food

00:07:06.080 insecurity impacts every community, yet no political party or popular movement really

00:07:11.360 seeks to address it. So with this in mind, reading about how Virginia Free Farm really lives up to

00:07:17.540 the ethos of giving freely was a sign of relief. And I wonder if you could speak to the specificities

00:07:25.560 of this and what it looks like and who are you serving when you practice free food and free

00:07:31.120 medicine? We actually serve everyone. We serve a lot of individual families and community

00:07:38.440 organizations and anyone that wants to kind of check out of the system. Currently, we have quite

00:07:45.000 a few different programs going on. We do a land access for LGBTQ gardeners, BIPOC gardeners,

00:07:53.380 anybody that wants to get some garden therapy and that otherwise might feel a little bit 0.83

00:07:59.140 uncomfortable in the traditional, like, you know, good old boy type farming situation or wants to

00:08:06.200 learn. We do, we have a free open source learning library. We have a seed library that's also free

00:08:13.100 to community members. We do food distribution twice a week to about 550 individuals.

00:08:22.600 And we're hoping to expand, well, we are expanding this year. Now we've got a fridge program going on

00:08:27.520 and we have four satellite farms that are opening that are going to be funneling food

00:08:32.340 into those refrigerator programs so that we can serve more people because we can only do so much

00:08:37.720 from this piece of land. So we actually have been working to mobilize other community groups and

00:08:45.320 other individuals to kind of replicate because there's nothing that I do that's like groundbreaking

00:08:50.660 in your heart, I just get up every day and do something that puts food on somebody else's

00:08:57.540 table. That's literally my motivation every single day. So like you said, we have part of what

00:09:06.500 the, I guess you should say ethos or the reason is, like you said in the very beginning when you

00:09:12.980 introduced this, is there are counties in Virginia that have double the national average

00:09:18.540 of poverty and I live in one of those but we don't just take care of this community

00:09:23.480 and we've been working really if we've been working really hard for the last couple years

00:09:28.520 and really getting a lot of great innovation and collaboration out of our team members

00:09:34.780 I think above all else that's the most important thing the people that I work with are so hard

00:09:40.700 working and are they care about their community so much so we're trying to figure out ways to

00:09:46.340 reimagine working within an existing system in a practical way, while also at the same time

00:09:51.960 providing kind of a working example of alternative models for food distribution, for people to use

00:09:59.580 and to check out, because we really need to be able to serve that target audience in a practical

00:10:05.460 way. If we are just, you can't just go into a community and distribute food and expect that

00:10:11.840 to work so we're actually getting the community to grow a lot of their own food as well eventually

00:10:19.140 we want to be able to use additional donations to support small farms that are generally

00:10:25.880 stewarding the land well because there's a ton of small farms that end up throwing away a lot

00:10:30.340 of their produce um which is terrible i mean when you go to the farmer's market you see these tables

00:10:36.200 filled with abundance and a lot of that food never gets eaten or sold so eventually what we

00:10:42.380 want to do is start acting as a financial safety net for these small farms as well some of these

00:10:50.880 farmers markets i mean a lot of people are like yeah it's great farmers markets will offer fresh

00:10:55.100 match for snap recipients that's awesome but if you are a single mother with like i don't know

00:11:01.780 a toddler at home and you have no way to get to the farmer's market, you don't have access to 0.97

00:11:06.540 transportation, whatever, what good does that do you? You can't get there. So we are trying to work

00:11:12.840 on all of these problems because it is such an intersectional, food access is such an intersectional

00:11:19.640 issue. So we're kind of working to fix all of these things and working them out.

00:11:25.840 So we've kind of gotten a bunch of people mobilized and harvest or harnessed that momentum.

00:11:31.780 by collaborating and working at some of the same types

00:11:35.140 of projects with them together.

00:11:37.460 And that's really been life-giving to the farm.

00:11:39.980 I mean, we hold so much more power

00:11:42.480 and so much more powerful medicine

00:11:44.220 when we can struggle together to get things done.

00:11:46.940 And it's been absolutely amazing watching everything change

00:11:50.440 and so many people get that on a regular basis.

00:11:53.040 So we've got community gardens going in

00:11:55.020 and those community gardens are stewarded

00:11:57.180 by the people that live there.

00:11:58.800 We're not just coming in and dropping food and leaving.

00:12:01.780 because that doesn't do anybody any good and it's important to involve the community because the

00:12:06.140 community really knows what they need to heal themselves but a lot of times people don't listen

00:12:12.380 there's a lot of this like white savior complex stuff that comes in and they'll like the food

00:12:19.900 pantry food of not knocking food pantries I think they're fantastic they're necessary but

00:12:24.460 a lot of the stuff that gets donated is shelf stable garbage food that really is not good for

00:12:31.760 us and doesn't do anyone any good. So we're trying to kind of overcome that. I mean, everyone loves

00:12:39.000 a good box of macaroni and cheese every once in a while. I'm not going to lie. I love that.

00:12:44.300 I grew up in a family where like, I don't know, I'm sure you've heard about the stereotypical

00:12:48.880 commodity foods going into tribal households. I grew up with commodity foods in my grandmother's

00:12:54.100 kitchen. I remember those black and white boxes. Sometimes that gross government cheese is so

00:13:00.040 satisfying, but it's not good for us. And it's really killing us. And that's dependency. And

00:13:05.420 what I want to do is create a measure of self-sufficiency and liberation from that food

00:13:11.840 dependency for the people in my community. And hopefully beyond, I've had people reaching out

00:13:17.620 to me from Maryland recently to create the same thing in that state as well. So hopefully we can

00:13:23.520 gain momentum and replicate it everywhere because it's so easy and it really is the most fulfilling

00:13:30.780 thing ever. I love hearing that. I see, yeah, just people everywhere really wanting to step

00:13:40.080 into the work. And another thing that was coming up for me was the word rewilding. And I know that

00:13:49.240 rewilding is really at the heart of so many conversations I've had over the years. And

00:13:53.920 often on the program, we talk about the scale at which wild places have been infringed upon

00:13:58.880 by development. But I've had less opportunities to discuss how development has infringed upon

00:14:05.120 rural landscapes and communities. And I'm really curious to hear if you've seen sprawling

00:14:10.920 development, urbanization, and gentrification change the place you now call home. And if this

00:14:18.640 development impacts large and small scale farms differently? So I guess I could only really speak

00:14:25.020 from my own perspective on that. I guess I don't know about like small or large scale farms versus

00:14:32.600 small scale because we're pretty small. I've got 26 acres but only six of them are under cultivation

00:14:37.780 because it's very important to me specifically to have set aside land for wildlife. So a large

00:14:45.060 portion of our farm is actually wildlife or a wildlife habitat when you pull down broad street

00:14:52.140 so you're talking about sprawl so we actually have frontage on broad street which is the main

00:14:56.980 road that runs through um richmond virginia on the way out to charlottesville charlottesville

00:15:03.580 and richmond are gradually growing each direction that kind of makes me a little bit nervous but um

00:15:10.880 there are things available like our county actually has um development you can like

00:15:17.540 sell the development rights or promise that you they won't be developed i'm not really sure there's

00:15:23.000 a program here in virginia i'm not sure whether it's uniform universal across the u.s but there

00:15:28.880 is a program that you can take your um agricultural land and make it so that even if the land is sold

00:15:35.160 it can't be developed in that way i'd have to get more information on that but i can't remember off

00:15:40.280 the top of my head what that is called right now but i do know that like for us when i moved here

00:15:46.960 we are at the very tail end of the york river watershed the creek that runs through my property

00:15:53.860 is called roundabout creek and it flows into i believe it goes south anna river then pamunkey

00:16:01.120 river then the york river and then out into the out into the atlantic ocean and you know everything

00:16:08.100 trickles downstream everyone's heard that phrase our water here was a mess um it had been driven

00:16:15.660 through and the front fields um i don't know it's kind of like a ditch it's not very deep here but

00:16:21.680 the end of roundabout creek where the headwaters of this all these rivers run are here on our

00:16:28.220 property and they had been destroyed like absolutely destroyed by tractor traffic and

00:16:35.000 And so I've been here, I believe, six years now, going on seven years on this property.

00:16:41.300 And we purposely kind of set that area aside.

00:16:46.160 There's big signs when you come down the road and turn onto the farm driveway that say,

00:16:50.840 do not mow wildlife habitat.

00:16:53.360 And now we have where it was muddy, mucky mess and there was nothing there.

00:16:57.740 Now we've got standing perennial water and the Maryland Meadow Beauties are returning.

00:17:03.320 the bottle brush bushes are returning and it's really beautiful to witness it's kind of one of

00:17:09.520 the most magical things but it also works with me on the farm paying attention to our water sources

00:17:17.060 and our wildlife around us is so incredibly important i mean we see tons of birds returning

00:17:23.440 to the area from the habitat area we let things grow up and very strategically managed the

00:17:29.200 undergrowth and the woodlot area with prescribed burns and clearing we've had so many birds

00:17:37.020 returned and that really actually helps us because we do not spray pesticides and we do not till

00:17:42.380 so the birds help us keep our pest pressure down tremendously I love hearing that it's amazing I

00:17:50.820 was thinking about in terms of the birds like when I interviewed Peter Wellenbin and we were talking

00:17:55.920 about planting oak trees and he had mentioned I think the scrub jay is the best at planting

00:18:03.840 oaks and it's just such a beautiful reminder to get out of my narrow human mind frame when it

00:18:14.740 comes to tending the land and all of the kin that's around us that are tending all the time

00:18:20.920 that some of us aren't even aware of oh my gosh yes we evolved in nature I think we've forgotten

00:18:26.460 that so many people have forgotten that don't you think yeah absolutely I mean and modernity just

00:18:35.840 continues to support us in the forgetting and uh yeah um but I'm yeah I'm thinking about

00:18:46.200 the many histories of extraction in relationship to what we might identify as a rural America.

00:18:54.420 You know, industries that really propped up economies for several decades, but were ultimately

00:18:59.720 detrimental to community and kin. And I know this is a really complex history that I don't

00:19:06.260 want to oversimplify, but we know that rural America has been largely left behind in the

00:19:12.640 dust of globalization. And there's been a great loss of young people who moved to surrounding

00:19:17.980 cities, joined the armed forces, etc. And just that sort of legacy and the very real impacts

00:19:25.000 that has on a place. Yet Virginia Free Farms is an example of radical transformation

00:19:30.720 through regenerative farming and perhaps even working toward changing the trajectory of rural

00:19:37.920 homelands and what wildlife preservation and restoration can look like in conjunction with

00:19:43.880 farming. Because in other parts of the world, wildlife restoration and farming are mutually

00:19:49.020 exclusive. So I wonder if you could speak to any thread here that piques interest.

00:19:55.540 I am actually one of those people that poverty is a really great recruiter for the armed forces.

00:20:01.280 so I actually ended up joining the army I found my way to farming kind of like later in life

00:20:10.360 it was weird I spent a lot of time in nature I mean my journey here to farming has never been

00:20:16.020 a straight path it's been as meandering and imperfect as the Appalachian streams I spent

00:20:21.720 the weeks of my youth overturning rocks and crayfish before um like I don't know you're

00:20:28.360 talking about the brain drain and the industries that are controversial now I actually got into a

00:20:35.880 fight with my mother this weekend about the Keystone XL pipeline and it was not pretty but

00:20:44.200 oh man I don't even know where to start because it's so big and there's so much that I could

00:20:49.860 you know pick on each one of those things I think the overarching feeling needs to be that if we

00:20:56.300 fail to make current decisions for those that are yet to come or the unborn more so than those

00:21:03.160 that are currently alive this is what i was trying to like impress upon her that we are

00:21:07.540 categorically unfit to make these decisions because we need to think about what who are

00:21:14.300 who's coming after us and we cannot let these things go unchecked or the unchecked destruction

00:21:21.380 of our natural resources continue you know water soil animal plant life they are more important than

00:21:28.520 anything else but i feel bad because we are living in i feel bad saying that because at the same time

00:21:35.120 we live in this capitalistic like western society where the value of a forest is greater when the

00:21:42.000 trees are cut down than when they are standing so it's very hard to reconcile those two things

00:21:47.820 or to know like what is the answer to bridging the gap between you know how will our leaders

00:21:55.300 affect the change needed to repair the damage ecosystems and also continue to allow people to

00:22:04.040 maintain the lifestyles that they expect in modernity as you said like how do we find that

00:22:10.320 i think that's the big thing that we really need to um we really need to answer but i also think

00:22:17.120 that like at the same time there's a lot of this extractive agricultural practice that goes on out

00:22:24.080 here too where it's sad because those big tractors can practically drive themselves and not knocking

00:22:30.600 big farmers because there's some big farms that are considered quote-unquote family farms that's

00:22:35.860 not what you think of when you think of like the Rockwellian beautiful rolling pastoral

00:22:40.780 you know scenes in our head but those farmers that farm that way they're little more than

00:22:47.180 technicians they're not artisans they don't it's not the same thing that it used to be

00:22:53.660 and that I think that the regenerative crowd is trying to kind of bring back so I think that like

00:23:00.840 by revitalizing these agricultural traditions and really planting with more of an ecological

00:23:10.020 mindset maybe we can start to bring some of that back or people can find value in that simple

00:23:17.820 lifestyle um i don't know what the um i don't know what the solution to that is but i'm hopeful

00:23:24.420 that by getting that or getting better understanding for what's going on with this

00:23:31.140 agricultural revolution right now that we might be able to turn a corner because i know that this

00:23:37.340 industrial farming nonsense is not the answer especially that we don't need it to feed the

00:23:42.660 world because we throw away so much food and yet leave people starving like you said it's perverse

00:23:48.300 it's absolutely perverse and so why are we ever trying to produce more and more and more and push

00:23:55.160 and push and push for no reason it's to sell more chemicals and to put to line more people's pockets

00:24:02.580 with patented seeds and herbicides and pesticides that we don't need right and it's making us sick

00:24:10.100 right all about that boom and bust cash flow bs yeah and the bad thing is like so we are

00:24:18.420 we are commodity we have become nothing more than a product for those people to make more money off

00:24:25.140 of us and then send us right over to big pharma so that we can take some pills and create a feedback

00:24:30.940 loop in that food and pharma you know cycle we're like a hamster on a wheel

00:24:38.140 there's a world where we long to be known it's where we've gotta go in this world

00:24:53.820 is the key to our growth, it's where we've gotta go, tangled up, out of you, beyond the growth of you,

00:25:06.700 In the shadows, in the shadows, in the shadows, in the shadows, in the shadows, in the dark lie the clues, all these hues of us tucked away.

00:25:36.700 it's so true and yeah thank you for reminding us of those truths because i'm sure many of us if

00:25:49.000 not all of us listening know that and it's just a good reminder and um yeah i i came across an 1.00

00:25:59.260 interview you gave on Mother Earth News where you're quoted saying, I realize one woman can't

00:26:07.080 single-handedly transform an entire regional food shed. Luckily, women from matrilineal systems are 1.00

00:26:13.960 taught from a young age to take up space and use their power by design. We have little trouble 1.00

00:26:20.220 unapologetically embracing the positions of leadership and strength meant for us.

00:26:24.940 My ancestors have willed this resistance into existence. I'm instinctively led by the wisdom

00:26:32.760 and blood memory of all the matriarchs that came before me, end quote. And this notion of ancestral 0.72

00:26:41.860 willed resistance is so powerful. And I wonder if you could speak to the importance of taking up

00:26:48.900 space and using power thoughtfully and impactfully, especially in areas like agriculture,

00:26:56.900 where there are these sort of perpetual questions around scaling up or staying small?

00:27:03.000 So for me, really, the intention behind this and the deliberation of living kind of like every day

00:27:14.160 as ceremony every day as prayer is kind of seeking to honor my ancestors i mean for me i'm a big seed

00:27:22.460 nerd i love plants so that's where i focus a lot of my energy on is preserving growing out preserving

00:27:32.780 and distributing seeds um kind of my ancestors protected these seeds for millennia through

00:27:40.620 profound adversity. And so we as a people are an endangered species. So it's vital to protect our

00:27:48.940 traditional seeds and our indigenous foodways. These seeds to me represent a commitment to be

00:27:55.720 a good ancestor, to preserve them for future generations, to come to protect the future

00:28:01.480 biodiversity of our land. But I can't do that unless I am making sure that the wildlife around

00:28:09.160 my farm also protected biodiversity because all of these systems work together. And I think that

00:28:15.240 a lot of times farmers don't, or traditional farmers don't remember that. And there's just

00:28:22.120 like wholesale herbicide spraying, or even like the, the railways that run through our towns and

00:28:30.140 cities, that's harmful too. And so all of that, there's a lot of barriers put up for us as

00:28:38.960 Native people for reclamation of our traditional food ways, be it people being cut off from

00:28:45.820 traditional lands or subsistence lands, damage from resources extraction, climate change,

00:28:52.360 political or legal regulations, or local resource control. But, you know, so this is a small way

00:29:01.880 that I can remember them in a way and make sure that my children and their children's children

00:29:09.520 remember them as well because if we don't do this work no one else will do it for us

00:29:17.280 and it's so important especially considering like our food ways where they have arguably

00:29:25.540 more influence over current world cuisine sounds ridiculous because when you think of native

00:29:33.380 american food what do you think of fry bread no that ain't it but approximately 75 percent of

00:29:40.040 everything that we chow down on or put on our plates right now is indigenous to the americas

00:29:45.660 so for ancestor for millennia or millennia my ancestors cultivated this like vast agroecology

00:29:53.600 of food crops and we've all been but forgotten so I guess that's part of why that's why I am

00:30:00.680 the way I am I don't know how else to see or say it other than that but it's kind of like a lived

00:30:06.360 legacy for me I feel silly saying that's why I am the way I am no but I get that I feel that in my

00:30:14.540 own ways that this is yeah there's so much that has made us who we are and and I just love the

00:30:26.680 way you speak to that type of empowerment so um yeah but I'd like to transition our conversation

00:30:35.020 to seed saving you brought that up and it's something oh my favorite subject yeah I love

00:30:40.720 this subject too. And lately, I've been thinking about how many scientists and researchers are

00:30:46.880 scrambling to create new breeds of plants that are sturdier in the face of increasing temperatures.

00:30:53.240 Things like heat resistant seeds or changing a plant's capacity for photosynthesis.

00:30:59.500 And small scale farmers and foragers are doing this as well, but coupled with an effort in

00:31:05.240 repopulating local native seed and preserving genetic diversity. And so I'd like to ask you

00:31:11.680 about this, but perhaps you could speak to it through the lens of how Virginia Free Farms is

00:31:17.900 assisting the rematriation of seeds from the USDA and universities back to the Rappahannock tribe

00:31:25.700 and the Monacan Indian nation. Oh my gosh, this is the best. And so we actually work with the

00:31:33.140 richmond indigenous society too which is good it's uh kind of like a little or loose organization

00:31:38.560 in richmond virginia that serves to kind of create family and a community and indigenous community

00:31:46.060 and fellowship for tribal diaspora that's that are no longer living on their ancestral homelands

00:31:52.400 of which i am one i am penoscott and abenaki living on monican land um so seeds are and

00:32:00.720 Seeds and foodways are an awesome teaching tool. I have kids, so it's a great way to teach language, culture, all that sort of stuff. So revitalizing these agricultural pathways is something that I'm very passionate about.

00:32:18.500 And I actually reached out, I don't even remember what brought me to this, reaching out to the Rappahannock and the Monacan last year about really making a concerted effort to get this going, to preserve their agricultural legacy.

00:32:39.500 and i mean i guess because i no longer live in my family's ancestral lands between quebec

00:32:47.260 and vermont new hampshire maine um so they were they bit and it was awesome i started

00:32:55.940 communicating with the university of maryland and vcu and the usda and i will never forget

00:33:01.280 we arranged these uh meetings with the tribal council from the rappahannock and um some members

00:33:08.420 of the monacan nation i think they're one of their administrators there um and i my assistant

00:33:16.900 and i went up to meet with the rappahannock um tribal council and they were great and we went

00:33:22.120 over to they we left their tribal center and followed them over to the hereditary chief's

00:33:28.160 home they were working on um restoring and they were interested in setting up a medicine garden

00:33:34.620 there and i had actually as soon as they wrote back saying yes we were interested in doing these

00:33:39.620 things i immediately started petitioning these different places um to um give up any of their

00:33:49.940 sessions that they had in their germoplasm repository that were attributed to these tribes

00:33:56.160 and when i got home from a day of driving around out in stevens church virginia which is where

00:34:04.060 um the monican winter hunting grounds are and where their tribal center is i got a package in

00:34:10.480 the mail from the usda with seeds that belong to the rabbinic nation and it was like just

00:34:19.080 magical so it was it felt like yes a small victory if that makes any sense i feel so silly

00:34:29.060 because it's like making the hair on the back of my neck stand up and i have the biggest smile on

00:34:33.420 my face but it made me so happy i could have cried um so we are the pandemic hit and kind of

00:34:41.560 you know threw a monkey wrench in all of this so i'll be working with kirk richardson um who is

00:34:50.340 one of their tribal council members and getting that going for them this year um with the help

00:34:56.340 with some volunteers and a little bit of fundraising and hopefully that will be a good

00:35:02.200 teaching tool for the tribe to kind of inform the community around them that like hey we're still

00:35:09.760 here we're not some image in time adrift somewhere in your imagination that's sitting around dressed

00:35:16.480 in beads and buckskin we're still here we still live here we exist we're not just something in

00:35:22.380 your history books from elementary school or you know a mascot for your sports team we're people

00:35:29.140 with a rich cultural history and unfortunately because of the way things went down a lot of our

00:35:35.540 food ways were lost and if it's one thing that I can do with my life helping to reclaim some of that

00:35:43.000 that'll be enough for me I will probably do this this work until the day I die it is the most

00:35:49.520 fulfilling thing ever but I'm very excited about that because we've actually been able to get

00:35:54.040 somewhere and had really great um response from these institutions and i mean some of the seeds

00:36:00.160 in my own seed bank are extremely rare we were one of two um one of the corn varieties we grew

00:36:07.000 last year we were one of two growers in all of north america this year i think i'm going to

00:36:11.780 intensively be growing out um pima white corn which is very water thrifty very short stocky

00:36:18.340 um 60 day corn that doesn't need to be irrigated very much and seeds like that like you were saying

00:36:24.880 these people are trying to adapt seeds to deal with climate change all of that sort of stuff

00:36:30.760 i mean think of the potential for that it matures quickly doesn't need water i mean doesn't need as

00:36:37.160 much water can kind of left be left to its own devices but you can't buy it commercially from

00:36:43.120 seed companies or anything like that. What's to say something like that is not going to be our

00:36:48.400 answer to adaptation to what we all see in the grocery store that we know is not going away

00:36:52.920 anytime soon to kind of overcome these climate changes. I think that sometimes the things that

00:36:59.060 have been sitting right next to us this whole time might be the answer to our problems. So

00:37:03.500 preserving these native varieties that were very meticulously adapted for a particular

00:37:09.340 for very particular growing climates or microclimates over millennia are going to be

00:37:16.800 key i mean i can't even tell you how many people i talk to because we do sell some seeds on a web

00:37:22.820 store as um fundraisers because we don't sell food i can't even tell you the amount of people

00:37:28.740 that have told me or asked me sent me messages on etsy asking me can you eat this corn or they'll

00:37:36.660 start off by saying I know not all corn is edible and I'm just like beside myself yes absolutely

00:37:42.760 all corn is edible just because it's not yellow and in the grocery store does not mean that it's

00:37:47.240 inedible I promise you my ancestors were not sitting around saying what can we decorate our

00:37:52.160 wiggle max with like no but these things might actually be the answer as you said to circle back

00:37:59.640 to climate change because there are so the depth and breadth of different characteristics is

00:38:06.840 astounding and it's beautiful especially in the different phenotypical presentations of

00:38:13.200 the varieties of different native tomatoes so amazing it's captivating and it's really

00:38:19.420 motivating to getting kids to learn about these sort of things too kids love color and all that

00:38:25.160 fun stuff and i think that if we can get our children involved in this sort of stuff because

00:38:30.140 they're the ones that are going to have to deal with what we're doing right now you know i think

00:38:34.240 that's also a clutch is them involved and getting them working on it now so they can take up this

00:38:39.400 work and continue

00:38:40.460 We'll be right back.

00:39:10.460 oh gosh there's so much in that response thank you for

00:39:38.840 taking us to all those places and I'm thinking about how Virginia Free Farms

00:39:46.040 you know really emphasizes the importance of disseminating and democratizing education around

00:39:52.700 agriculture especially as it has become a commodified field and so in recognition of this

00:39:59.700 I wonder if you could maybe outline or share a bit about the practicality of starting your own

00:40:05.840 small scale farm and what your journey was like starting Virginia Free Farm oh I feel like I feel

00:40:13.560 like I'm doing a bad thing or like by by making all of this stuff shareable and open source online

00:40:21.460 because okay so for me I had a conversation with one of our teammates teammates um the other day

00:40:29.020 she actually I stole her from the city of Richmond but got her to come out here um so she's a very

00:40:35.700 talented grower and she now lives three doors down from me and has her own mini farm over there

00:40:42.080 that's going to be helping with some of the things that Virginia Free Farm is doing and she's

00:40:47.340 Charua so she's going to be focusing on a lot of the South American varieties things that are

00:40:53.560 you know of interest to her but we were talking about the whole education aspect and sharing that

00:41:00.660 information and not hoarding information or lording over information for yourself because

00:41:07.600 or to stay in power because to be honest with you like this is why collaboration is so important

00:41:14.040 I have no interest in I want to do all of the things but I understand that I might be a little

00:41:21.580 ADHD and I have no interest in lording over this project for the rest of my life I just want to

00:41:27.800 facilitate people to be able to do this for themselves and so that was the whole reason

00:41:32.760 I started aggregating um some of the information to empower other people to be able to do it for

00:41:40.060 themselves because if we make the commodification of these things like obsolete by everybody's got

00:41:50.100 access to it anyway you know what I mean I mean I've even got stuff on there about like

00:41:55.220 getting your finances in order and figuring out how to market your products even though we don't

00:42:00.860 market I did at one time sell commercially um but my life changed so that I didn't need to do

00:42:09.180 all of those things and so I just want to be able to empower other people and we were talking about

00:42:14.780 the other day and my ideal setup is that whole not being able to tell who's the boss type thing

00:42:22.440 I don't you know what I'm talking about like the concept of like everyone is so good at doing what

00:42:29.340 they're doing you don't know who's in charge right like everybody's doing their you know doing

00:42:35.500 staying in their lane and being amazing and we're all coming together with our skills and

00:42:40.060 our yeah like that collaborative effort I love that oh yeah absolutely so like one of the things

00:42:46.880 that we were starting this year anyway was the RVA fridge program I'm sorry I'm diverging a little

00:42:51.540 bit but i'll tie it back in i promise so to that end i had because of farmer's footprint i had

00:42:58.140 spoken to amber tam on the phone and she was talking about the fridge program that her and

00:43:03.080 her partner were doing and i'm like yes we're gonna do that here in virginia i started i'd

00:43:08.080 already started making arrangements um with my team and a local chef and so and the satellite

00:43:15.040 farms because our plan was to empower the satellite farms to run on their own independently of us but

00:43:21.240 but but you know doing the same exact thing and just facilitating them helping them and then do

00:43:27.680 this fridge program found a girl who had just graduated from vcu and this was her thing she

00:43:34.460 wanted to do an rva fridge program and so we just started funneling things to her and we actually

00:43:42.220 ended up getting one of our um one of our sponsors to commit to providing a refrigerator a month for

00:43:49.280 the next 12 months but i'm not going to be in the middle man she's going to be i'm just literally

00:43:54.960 facilitating i like to facilitate and i like to network um i've been called the spider because i

00:44:00.660 like to connect people together and weave that web of human interaction i think that's really

00:44:05.380 the most important thing that we can do is to help each other be the best possible worker

00:44:12.640 facilitator i don't know facilitate each other to do the best possible job that they can do um and

00:44:18.220 it's amazing because we literally, I just started talking to Taylor a few weeks ago and already

00:44:24.980 there's a massive plan underway and it's already making an impact on the community. It's really

00:44:31.640 great. Like that's why I'm doing it. That's why I'm doing the knowledge dissemination. And I

00:44:36.240 understand people want to like put out those programs for like permaculture certificates and

00:44:41.880 sustainable agriculture programs and all of that sort of stuff but also I don't want like I've

00:44:48.540 already done things and I don't want anyone else to have to struggle so like why not help people

00:44:55.260 I know I'm not getting anything out of it but it's not about me anyway I do none of this

00:44:59.860 because of me I guess that's why also I want to share with everyone I want to make everyone's

00:45:06.980 life better i mean we the the whole thing about the amount of food we throw away and the insolvency

00:45:15.180 and small farms and um the hunger is just crazy to me especially when we have the philanthropy

00:45:22.020 dollars in the u.s to fix these problems but they're not given there's there's a huge disparity

00:45:32.080 in demographics of where philanthropy dollars go we could literally solve these problems

00:45:38.560 if the funding went into the right places but

00:45:42.300 uh it's always got to be filtered through this the letter through the um i guess through the pipe

00:45:52.520 of like i don't know middle-aged white i'm sorry i'm not trying to be alienating by saying this

00:45:58.760 but like a lot of the philanthropy dollars go to organizations run by middle-aged white men

00:46:04.120 I've noticed that a lot of women are leading food uh sovereignty and food security pushes and a lot

00:46:12.220 of women of color are leading these pushes but like black women and brown women do not get the

00:46:17.520 funding that other people get and it's really unfortunate because I've almost everyone I work

00:46:24.060 with that is leading this project or the groups that we are working with are women and probably

00:46:30.500 half of them are women of color and we just do not get the attention and we do not get the same

00:46:37.460 fund equal funding um I mean we apply for grants all the time but but um yeah we just don't get

00:46:44.880 the same attention that the ASPCA gets yeah I feel like in terms of the white dudes getting

00:46:57.820 the funding it's just this this way that trust has been built around money and mistrust and who

00:47:06.240 is trusted with money and it's usually white men and uh it's really like this self-perpetuating

00:47:17.900 loop uh that we are breaking and that's wonderful and um you know i have

00:47:24.740 a type of confidence that things are changing but yeah i i i know that they

00:47:33.600 are still in that transition. And I'm appreciative that you spoke to those pieces. And

00:47:41.220 yeah, I'd be remiss not to highlight some of your upcoming work, particularly with Virginia

00:47:47.860 delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy and the creation of green housing and equitable food forest.

00:47:54.520 And I'm really thinking about the importance of us getting involved in green housing initiatives

00:48:00.060 before climate gentrification starts to dictate everything.

00:48:04.220 So I wonder if you either could share some of the concrete work you're doing

00:48:08.280 or perhaps what your vision is for green, equitable housing in places like Virginia. 0.62

00:48:13.520 Yeah, so originally, Lavisha Rollins from C5, 0.99

00:48:20.500 which is she is actually one of my Women's Earth Alliance sisters, 0.92

00:48:25.780 and she is a green architect located in Charles City County.

00:48:30.060 which is on the other side of Richmond here.

00:48:32.340 So this whole thing came about

00:48:36.220 because of her imagination,

00:48:38.400 sitting at lunch at the daily in Richmond one day.

00:48:42.420 And so her vision was kind of like green, tiny housing.

00:48:47.260 And what we're thinking,

00:48:49.440 because all of these things are intersectional.

00:48:53.180 So what we had dreamed up was

00:48:56.040 city of Petersburg to be kind of a set test site because there's a lot of um there's a lot of very

00:49:04.960 very low income individuals and families in that area and that's one of the areas that a lot of our

00:49:10.280 food goes to um and this all came about I want to say around Thanksgiving we had taken

00:49:17.440 we had worked with a local restaurant to turn a whole ton of our pumpkins into hundreds of pumpkin

00:49:24.860 pies and some of those went to our um the uh thanksgiving food that went down there and

00:49:31.340 there's like whole families living in one room you know those little motels that are up and down

00:49:36.420 like the old the old roads before the highways came in yeah we have a lot of those and we have

00:49:43.220 i don't know what it's like where you live but we have a lot of those and there's whole families

00:49:46.180 living in those i mean like those hotel rooms they have a microwave maybe a hot plate but you

00:49:52.580 really cook for a family or like really live in that. So what we were envisioning was

00:50:02.580 green housing with food forest planted in between it and intensive wraparound services

00:50:10.040 with education, mental health, transportation, child care, because you cannot

00:50:15.100 disentangle these things from one another to break the poverty cycle or to heal these families.

00:50:22.580 that have ended up in this situation

00:50:26.020 because of hundreds of years of inequities

00:50:29.940 and the system being stacked against them.

00:50:32.640 I mean, they say that right now it is, I think,

00:50:35.580 217 years for women to reach financial equity with men

00:50:40.740 and 250 years for black families

00:50:42.980 to reach financial equity with white families.

00:50:46.160 Why would we, so we had approached Carol Ford

00:50:50.420 Because of the way the governor's race is going right now, I don't think that's going

00:50:54.040 to be moving forward with her as much as independently with LaVisha and I, because

00:51:01.020 the politicians, you know, they need to do what they're doing.

00:51:04.220 They're playing the game.

00:51:05.680 Their vision of bringing in economic stability, what was said to me was jobs need to come

00:51:11.760 here and these people need to slowly pull themselves out of poverty.

00:51:16.520 we have the ability through visioning that is big and bold and fundraising

00:51:22.900 to like why wait for the titanic to turn itself when you can hire a tugboat to turn it turn that

00:51:30.880 thing around right now by instituting all of these things and there is the money out there

00:51:35.720 we as a country spend money on way more foolish things than this there is the possibility to

00:51:42.520 really changed the trajectory of family's lives within a generation by doing these things.

00:51:49.400 So the fact that anyone would even hesitate to say, yes, this is what we're doing is just beyond me.

00:51:56.980 So that is what we're going to be working towards. That's going to be like now five or 10 year plan,

00:52:03.080 unfortunately, because we're getting everything else up and off the ground. And it is, there's

00:52:07.300 only so many hours in the day. Oh my gosh. If I could do all of these things or hire an army of

00:52:12.340 people to do them, I would do them tomorrow. But unfortunately, that's going to be slower going

00:52:17.720 than some of the other things that we have going on right now.

00:52:23.440 I know there's so many moving pieces and so much to coordinate and implement. And yeah,

00:52:30.860 I really appreciate you. And gosh, well, Amy Rose, you know, during the course of our conversation,

00:52:39.660 I've been reminded of the importance of networks of connectivity and how it's really only through

00:52:47.000 their leveraging that we're able to accomplish really transformative work. But I also know that

00:52:53.220 for many, this may feel like the greatest hindrance because of our cultural attitudes

00:52:57.780 towards individualism. So as we come to a close, I wonder if you could end by speaking to the

00:53:05.120 reality that these networks of connectivity are going to be what assist us in writing out systemic

00:53:10.860 collapse. I was of that mindset that you talk about, like the rugged individualist, pull yourself

00:53:18.180 up by the bootstraps, not in that same way that like, who's the same kind of person that's typically

00:53:26.240 thought of when you say that. But my thing was, I was, because of that, I was afraid to ask for

00:53:33.200 help or assistance because I didn't want to be perceived as weak especially because I'm a woman

00:53:39.560 doing this work and that made me nervous it's why I sought out an ivy league education in

00:53:47.240 sustainable agriculture because I didn't want anyone to look at me as a native woman and say

00:53:52.440 you don't know what you're talking about or think of me as less than them but by doing that and

00:53:58.700 failing trying to do everything myself. I learned the real true value of community. I mean, and it's

00:54:05.120 just like I said earlier, it's the way that we are supposed to live. We are herd animals for lack of

00:54:11.020 a better description than I can think of right now. But I guess it's, sorry, I'm like trying to

00:54:22.040 collect my thoughts around it because there's so much I want to say and I'm not sure where to go

00:54:26.660 with that first and I know that I can't I could talk forever on it but really it's kind of coming

00:54:34.080 back to that tribal collectivism where we all survive together clan mothers take care of

00:54:41.040 everyone they make sure that everyone is housed and everyone is fed so I feel like coming back

00:54:48.380 to the networking and collaboration aspect and tying it all in with disseminating information

00:54:55.060 and empowering other people to do these projects that we are shooting off onto and really take the

00:55:03.700 reins and step into their own power in these projects is really kind of coming full circle

00:55:11.160 and fulfilling that legacy of what many many generations of my grandmother's pasts did with

00:55:18.640 taking care of everyone it's like the whole thing the whole tribe survives together and we make sure

00:55:24.520 that our cache of food is full and we take care of every single last person no matter what we're

00:55:31.060 all in it together and I don't know it's this has been a great tragedy for so many families I can

00:55:41.380 only imagine what some people are going through we have mile-long lines of food pantries here

00:55:47.240 some of the food pantries cannot keep up around the counties surrounding us so i cannot imagine

00:55:54.960 the dread they feel not being able to supply their people or the dread that the families that

00:56:00.460 rely on them feel so i guess it's kind of making sure that i collaborate and work with other people

00:56:07.600 kind of is a survival technique or survival method that we're all we all need to kind of

00:56:14.660 get over ourselves um and work together to be a little bit better about in a way i guess i could

00:56:21.780 say i think that the medicine for tragedy is community we have everything that we need

00:56:28.000 if we share and we need to come back to that mentality of collectivism and because it doesn't

00:56:38.120 just benefit that person it if our community is stronger as a whole it benefits all of us

00:56:46.800 and i think people really lose sight of that because of that attitude of individualism and

00:56:53.720 we have to have i mean america is a has the like worships the hero or the you know that sort of

00:57:03.520 thing. Well, Amy Rose, this has been such a uplifting and energizing conversation. I feel

00:57:13.160 so empowered after speaking with you. I just, I love your passion and the confidence that you

00:57:21.300 bring to this work. I think it's so important for us to have leaders that are just going for it,

00:57:27.880 no matter how complex and complicated and challenging the issues may be.

00:57:33.700 So I thank you for that.

00:57:35.660 And thanks for spending some time with us today.

00:57:38.920 Dakagwi.

00:57:39.680 Thank you.

00:57:41.060 Thank you for listening to For the Wild podcast.

00:57:48.540 The music you heard today was by Ian George and Edie.

00:57:52.120 For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, and Francesca Glaspell.

00:57:57.880 You

For The Wild - June 16, 2021

AMYROSE FOLL on Free Food for Liberation ⧸238

Episode Stats

Transcript