Episode 4: Black People Don’t Use Measuring Spoons ft. Leah Penniman

‘Black People Don’t Use Measuring Spoons’ is the third installment of our Women’s History Month series. In this episode, Tracine talks to Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer, mother, soil nerd, author and food justice activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York. Together, they explore the connections that Black communities, Indigenous Communities, and Communities of color have to land and the land has to us. Leah is the author of Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (released in 2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (released in 2023), which she describes as love songs for the land and her people.

*The music you hear on the podcast is provided by Blue Dot Sessions and is used under a Creative Commons License

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Further Reading:

• Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

• Farming While Black | Leah Penniman | TEDxBoston

• Leah Penniman: Farming While Black (Food Tank Summit)

• SOIL HEALTH 3D by Soul Fire Farm

•  Why Are All The Black Farmers Vanishing? by AJPlus

• The Anti-Racist Farmers Market Toolkit

• 2017 Census on Agriculture: Black Producers by USDA

• 2022 Census of Agriculture is geared to show positive trends for Black farmers by AgDaily

• 2017 Race, Ethnicity and Gender Profiles - Minnesota | 2017 Census of Agriculture by USDA/NASS

• The BIPOC Project, which defines the use of the term BIPOC

• How 'nature deprived' neighborhoods impact the health of people of color by National Geographic

• We’ve Been Out Here: BIPOC Leadership Points the Way to Mental Health in Nature – Justice Outside

• ‘Mental Health’ by Yrsa Daley-Ward

• The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

References:

• Find Leah & Soul Fire Farm:

• Books: Farming While Black | Black Earth Wisdom

• Twitter: @blkfarmer | @soulfirefarm

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soulfirefarm/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulfirefarm/

• Website: www.soulfirefarm.org

• Message to the Grass Roots by Malcolm X

• “Everything of value comes from the land,” Phillip Barker, Operation Spring Plant

• Uprooting Racism, Seeding Sovereignty - Virtual Keynote by Soul Fire Farm

• What must we do to be free? On the building of Liberated Zones by Ed Whitfield

• Booker Leads Colleagues in Reintroducing the Justice for Black Farmers Act

• The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter Godwin Woodson, Ph.D.

• History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, National Archives

• George Washington Carver’s contributions to agriculture in the U.S. - 4-H Global & Cultural Education by Michigan State University

• Cotton Bales and Jail Beatings: The Civil Rights And Farm Activism Of Fannie Lou Hamer by Essence

• “I was raised pulling food out of the earth. I know where joy comes from. How to make it.” – Yrsa Daley-Ward, from Bone