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Portland’s Urban Farmers Find Community, Remain Unified Through Pandemic

Malcolm Hoover and Mirabai Collins are husband and wife and co-directors of Black Futures Farm. The farm started in 2020 and Hoover said urban farmers are “a cool community to be a part of.” Courtesy Of Black Futures Farm

“COVID in a lot of ways was hard financially, but I think the fruits of that trial we will be seeing for years to come of how it has shifted the way we think and interact with one another,” they said

By Aliya Hall
Portland Mercury
Jun 7, 2021

Excerpt:

Urban Farmer Letty Chichitonyolotli Martinez wants to change the face of farming and herbalism in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest by bringing farming back to its roots. As a queer, Indigenous veteran, Chichitonyolotli Martinez’s farm, Flying Dogheart Farm, gives people an opportunity to buy from Black and Indigenous farmers. They said that’s especially important to them living in Oregon, a state that had Black exclusion laws on the books for much of its history.

“Oregon is an apartheid state established as a white haven, so African and indigenous land ownership was not possible,” Chichitonyolotli Martinez said in a recent interview with the Mercury. “Urban farming is really the biggest way we can make an impact and show people farming has always been our way. Whether we live in cities, it’s something we have not just a right to, but obligation to participate in.”

Flying Dogheart Farm was founded in 2018 and is located on Wapato Island, otherwise known as Sauvie Island. Chichitonyolotli Martinez works with two other farms, Scrapberry and Chalchi, in the Raceme Farm Collective, which believes in food and community as medicine. Chichitonyolotli Martinez is just one of Portland’s many urban farmers who support the movement of localizing food production, diversifying the farming industry, restoring land, educating consumers on growing food, and uplifting each other during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the complete article here.