Episode 11: Agency, Power and Planting

Healing While Black Podcast

In this episode, we have a conversation about the sense of empowerment and agency we can gain through learning to grow our own food, even with sometimes limited space and resources. Quiana and Misty speak with a special guest, Skye Ellis, who is a beginning farmer in ECO City Farm’s Growing Urban Farms and Farmers Program. Skye speaks about her experience learning to grow food for her own sustenance and the resourcefulness she is gaining through learning to grow food in small and urban spaces. She also shares her perspective about the healing and grounding benefits that Black people can gain through planting food and being in touch with the land.

Thank you all for joining us. Let us know what you think about this episode. Follow us on instagram at hwbpodcast. You can also email us at [e-mail].

About our Guest:

Throughout her childhood adventures and equally imaginative adult life, Skye Ellis has been led, moved, and shaped by curiosity. Ellis moved from MA to D.C. to explore community care, identity, free play, human-to-nature connections, and the art of organized rebellion. Questions about the society in which she's expected to conform to stimulate her work as an earth steward, healing artist, and storyteller.

About ECO City Farms & The Beginning Farmer Education Program:

ECO City Farms is a nonprofit urban teaching and learning farm in Prince George’s County that grows great food, farms and farmers in ways that protect, restore and sustain the natural environment and the health of local communities. Working with area children, youth and adults, ECO educates and trains the next generation of urban farmers and eaters.

ECO City Farm’s Growing Urban Farms and Farmers Program is a 10-month-long training program designed to help aspiring, new, or beginning farmers learn about farming– from the ground up. The program uses a culturally­-appropriate curriculum that incorporates everything from hands­-on experiences to mentoring to crop production to business and administrative skills and more. Upon completing the program graduates earn a Certificate of Urban Commercial Agriculture and continuing education credits.

Learn more about programs of ECO City Farms and how you can get involved here!

This podcast series “Farming While Black” is created by Healing While Black, LLC as a partnership with the Healing While Black Podcast and ECO City Farms with special funding from the USDA-financed Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Training Program. Every effort has been made to appropriately credit the sources. The content of this podcast episode reflects the opinions and experiences of the speakers and podcast hosts and does not necessarily reflect the views of ECO City Farms or USDA.