To feed my soul, I went back to my roots
Volunteering on a farm in Seattle taught me that urban gardens provide more than food. They foster healthy communities and teach us to love, respect, and uplift each other so we might bring lasting change.
By Syris Valentine
Grist
Sept 13, 2022
Excerpt:
This acre-and-a-half urban farm nestled in central Seattle isn’t what most imagine when they picture a farm. Instead of the crow of a cock, the moo of a cow, and the baa of a sheep, the air of Yes Farm is filled with the din of cars cruising by on I-5, the occasional chop of a helicopter landing at Harborview Medical Center, and the discordant drumbeat of hammers falling at a construction site next door. Even among all the sounds that, much like a middle school marching band, never quite come together, the work soothes. As soon as I dig my hands into Yes Farm’s soil, all the noise fades away.
The farm is tended by the Black Farmers Collective, which was founded in 2016 to acquire land adjacent to a Seattle Housing Authority redevelopment on Yesler Terrace to create the farm. After two years of navigating a maze of paperwork, the collective began tending the soil of Yes Farm in 2018. Over the past four years, it’s grown collards, corn, squash, spinach, arugula, and other vegetables. It’s set aside plots for medicinal herbs traditional to the Asian and African American communities who have historically called this neighborhood home. It even has raised-bed gardens specifically for BIPOC community members without space to grow food at home.
