2nd, 3rd and 4th Quarter Newsletter

recognition-remembering-reconciliation-restoration

Our first year was a busy time full of wins and lessons. We hosted volunteer days EVERY Saturday of the summer and even on the days we tried to take breaks, volunteers would show up and call us to ask what tasks they could work on. The love, support, time, labor, and joy that our community has shared with us can’t be calculated. We were super busy with the primary focus being that we wanted to meet our obligations with the Detroit Land Bank authority so we don’t risk losing our land but still we were able to facilitate multiple events during the seasons. We have yet to develop metrics for calculating the level of impact were having in working towards our goals, mission and purpose, but we served a minimum of 500 meals and provided programming and meaningful activities to multiple demographics at no out of pocket costs for our visitors.

  • On April 16th we signed our preliminary closing documents with the Detroit Land Bank Authority and began our 18 month compliance period. The compliance period is a requirement within our purchasing process. It’s a timeline assigned to us to complete phases of our project with milestones we have to meet before we are officially owners of the land

  • After our appointment at the Detroit land bank authority, we left downtown and went straight to the site to meet with members of the local Indigenous community for permission and guidance for our Recognition exhibit. Our Recognition exhibit is a demo of an indigenous method of growing called ‘Three Sisters’ in which corn squash and beans are grown together create a symbiotic ecosystem

  • After getting the results of our soil tests letting us know that it was safe to grow food, we ordered a delivery of compost to begin enriching the soil. Volunteers helped us move yard after yard of compost with shovels and wheel barrows provided by the East warren Tool library

  • Following many unsuccessful attempts to link with arborists and reaching out to tree cutting services and the city utility companies to locate free wood chips/mulch we ended up ordering a delivery. Unable to fit a rock path in our budget as planned we used cardboard as a barrier and topped it with plenty wood chips to create pathways. Unlike plastic landscaping fabric, the cardboard will eventually compost itself into the soil and as long as we keep a good layer of mulch on there every. year we should be able to avoid too many problems with grasses growing in the pathways. Though we still plan to get the rock paths installed when funding allows us to.

  • To ensure the longevity of our hand built sheds/barns we had a rock pad installed that will allow water to drain directly into the soil instead of pooling at the base of our wooden structures.

APRIL

MAY

  • We hosted the DBFLF Work and chill event where awardees show up to work and chill at each other’s sites. We had music, food and fun with our community

  • It took 3 volunteer days to get 8 of them together and filled but our starter plants were sure happy to get out of their nursery pots.

  • We began transplanting our seedlings in the raised beds as soon as they were put together and filled. On mother’s day we seeded the Recognition 3 sisters garden.

JUNE

  • THe Neighborhood Art School hosted their spr-ummer meet up at the Joy project. Themed around past present and future there was an open mic for poets musicians and storytellers. We had a windchime work shop, food and music.

  • Our Juneteenth event was geared towards foks who would be event hopping throughout the day. So we started early inviting people to come start their day with some movement lead by the Movement ministry, thecovenofroses lead a figure drawing workshop, Julion deangelo taught us how to make shekere instruments and we ate seasonal red colored foods.

  • We had a little free library installed and put out calls to community to help us keep it stocked with culturally centered offerings and it gets plenty visitors.

  • A team from Keep Growing Detroit came out and added gutters to our shed to create a water catchment system into our two IBC totes. We do not have city water so being able to capture water for our plants is imperative. If you know a reliable plumber that likes to do work in community let us know as we will be looking to invest in city water in the future, we will need it to build out a planned kitchen space and wash station for the produce we grow

JULY

  • We held a volunteer day with the specific agenda of getting our fencing installed but on the day of we were so hot and tired we didnt feel like pounding stakes in to the ground. But one of our day one supporters and neighbors came and championed for us by installing 40+ T stakes.

AUGUST

  • Watermelon Day

    Folks came out and had a good time under the trees, catching a breeze on what was a pretty hot summer day. We listened to music, shared stories about our current and historic relationships with watermelon. We ate soo much watermelon including picked watermelon rind and homemade watermelon popsicles

  • We were honored to be the host site of the return of Sage Smoke, an event curated by Ada of House of Adaornment. Of course we had good food, a marketplace of natural products and a DJ. There was also a workshop on caring for house plants lead by Alesia of Alesiasgarden.

  • We were the 1st stop on this year’s biking tour with KGD where we gave the riders a quick tour and tastes of our chile pepper garden

  • One of our regular volunteers, Sierra, hosted a back to school clothing swap. One of neighbors showed up with a truck load of quality clothing and there was so much that there were boxes and bins left over that got donated to local distribution sites.

SEPTEMBER

  • Kojo and the Family First Solar co-op team installed 2 solar panels and batteries with enough wattage to power our water system pump and more.

  • In early September DTE had a power outage that lasted several days in the North End. Our friends and neighbors congregated at the joy project to use our newly installed solar power to charge electronics and cook and eat meals together.

OCTOBER

  • Fannie Lou Hamer Day functions as our Fall Season closing event. We invited folks out to celebrate the life and legacy of our treasured ancestor. We were out at the joy project site from 5am to 11pm roasting a whole hog, cooking up collard greens, pickling collard stems and making hot pepper vinegar with produce grown at the joy project. We opened the days programming with a community altar and prayer led by Kemit and movement and drums lead by Imami Maat. Volunteers Amanda of Fennigans farms and Kori helped us lead presentations/ workshops during the day. We screened the film ‘Fannie Lou Hamer’s America’ and Gabby held a talk on basics of Co-op structures. Folks helped us keep the wood burning and shovel the coals to tend the hog and when it was done we ate together around the fire and chilled (literally) into the night.

  • DTown Farms is the 2nd largest urban farm in the country and its a black lead and run operation. Folks around the world look to DTown as a pillar of the Urban Farming world. We were incredibly grateful to be invited to be panel guests for the return of their Harvest Festival, speaking on diasporic foodways along with Konjo me and Baobab Fare

NOVEMBER

  • While fannie lou hamer day was the official closing event, there was still plenty work to do to put the farm to bed for winter. Folks from Xavier Colleges who were studying human conflict came by to check out our project and ask us questions and while they were there, they helped us pull up plants and harvest beans, peppers and okra. We hung some okra plants to dry with the goal of making okra fiber paper, pulled up the irrigation drip system and covered the beds with silage tarps and said goodnight till next season.

DECEMBER

  • While there was no physical work do at the site, December wasn’t necessarily a break for us, after a summer of spending EVERY saturday working the land. We spent december doing admin and accounting tasks like collecting receipts and creating a report to submit to Ioby. Part of the platform usage agreements is that we are required to account for how every cent of the 20k we raised was spent. We also did some work to follow up with the Detroit Land Bank Authority to continue the process towards officially owning our land. We held meetings, conversations and interviews with other community orgs including folks like the Detroit Justice center and The Detroit Public Library, looking to collaborate including ‘The Archivists.’ The Archivists’ is an art exhibition in which a collective of folks doing archival work in non conventional ways create installations. We spent the last weeks of December dreaming out and collecting materials to create our installation which is on view now till Feb4th