The urban farm uplifting Black and Brown communities in Seattle
Yes Farm is on a mission to nourish on an educational, nutritional and spiritual level, changing the culture of urban farming.
By Jas Keimig; photos by Raphael Gaultier
i-D
17 December 2021
Excerpt:
Yes Farm is a one and a half acre Black-led urban farm near the heart of downtown Seattle, established to nourish Black and Brown folks on an educational, nutritional and spiritual level. The project was born five years ago, when the Black Farmers Collective — the farm’s parent organization — along with the Seattle Housing Authority won a bid to lease the strip of land abutting I-5 from the Washington Department of Transportation for free. It took a couple of years for the owners to sort out the paperwork, but the farm hit the ground running in 2018. Replete with dozens of gardens, a beehive, a greenhouse and a covered shed, Yes Farm is now a green gem amongst the gray concrete of the city.
The day-to-day operations are run by Hannah, a queer, deaf and Black 24-year-old, who has worked on the farm for more than two years. Originally from California, Hannah came to Seattle for school and started working on the farm in 2019 as an intern, eventually working their way up to farm manager the next year. As the pandemic hit in March 2020 and Black Lives Matter protests followed that summer, they have felt further grounded in the farm’s mission to create a safe space for Black folks to commune with the land.
