1. Engagement: (September 15th, 2023).  The Growing Benevolent Agricultural Communities team, including Advisory and Key individuals meet to establish connection, build community and contribute ideas, questions and concerns to the entire program. 
   Status: Complete
   
   
2. Engagement: (September 15th, 2023). New project website is unveiled at www.smallfarms.cornell.edu  
   Status: Complete
   Accomplishments: The public facing project name is "Growing Together" and the new website was completed and is available here: https://smallfarms.cornell.edu/projects/growing-together/ 
   
   
3. Engagement: (September 15th - October 15th, 2023) Outreach and open application period for the Practitioners Preparation Program. 
   Status: Complete
   Accomplishments: Below is our press describing the retreat and vision for the project. We had a robust application pool.  Our waitlist was full within 2 days of public announcement.  Our applicants included about half alumni from the prior  Reconnecting with Purpose program. 
   
   
   Coming Home: Recentering in Self and Community
   Date: December 1st, starting at 3pm through December 3rd, ending at lunch
   Location: Light on the Hill Retreat Center, Van Etten, NY
   Cost: Sliding scale from $0-$330 which covers registration, food and lodging.
   Description: 
    

   "Community . . . is an environment where you can find a home in each other’s heart and soul. It is a living entity with spirit as its anchor, where a group of people are empowered by one another, by spirit, and by the ancestors to be themselves, to carry out their purpose, and use their power responsibly."                       —  Sobonfu Somé, Welcoming Spirit Home 

    
   In this Retreat, you will recenter in self and community by journeying through a carefully curated arc of themes. Incorporating teachings from diverse wisdom traditions, clay, mosaics, movement, embodiment exercises, reflection, writing and more, "Coming Home" is designed to help us settle in ourselves and harness our gifts to serve our communities through bringing home the principles and practices to others. All content is grounded in the Courage & Renewal® approach which can be explored at https://couragerenewal.org/
    
    
   Project Timeline & Opportunities: 
    

   December 1	December 3	2023		“Coming Home” Retreat at Light on the Hill
   January	August	2024		Participants work in pairs to offer 1- 1.5 hour programs based on themes of their choice, drawing on the practices and principles, with support and mentorship. Some conversation guides/facilitation notes will be offered by invitation as models.  These programs may be offered to our Cohort group or to audiences in your community.
   September	March	2024-2026		During this 19 month period, interested participants will have opportunities to collaborate with project leadership to design and cofacilitate longer (.5 day - 2.5 day programs) open to the entire agricultural community. The following themes have been identified.  Others will arise according to participant interests.  Cultivating Farm Wellness, a program exploring how farmers can feed and care for themselves while feeding others.   A Changing World, a retreat for farmers and earthworkers to explore fear, grief and gratitude in an era of climate variability and mass extinction.   Creating Benevolent Agricultural Communities, a retreat for farmers and earth workers of all backgrounds exploring identity and integrity, connection, care and trust in the context of our urban or rural agricultural communities.   Cultivando Bienestar, a similar program to “Cultivating Farm Wellness” offered en español and adapted to better serve the needs of the Latino/Latina/LatinX farming community.  Leadership Embodiment. An interactive, experiential program for educators, change-makers and activists to engage with inclusivity, centering practice, centered listening, inspiration and advocacy.
   April	June	2026		The entire "Growing Together" Practitioners' Cohort, including Alumni and all Program participants from 2023 - 2026 attend a Community Celebration honoring the stories and experiences we've shared, the growth and evolution we've undertaken and the joyful impact of our work to build a culture of agriculture that fosters interconnectedness, allyship, and power.

    
4. Engagement: (September 1st  - November 30th, 2023) Facilitator/Mentoring team designs the Practitioners Preparation Program, a 2.5 day in person retreat. 
   Status: Complete
   Accomplishments: I worked with Marcia Eames Sheavly, my mentor and long time highly skilled facilitator to design the preparation retreat which was ultimately titled "Coming Home to Self and Community.  The agenda and resource packet are below.  Look over the Coming Home Retreat Packet
   
   
5. Engagement: (October 30, 2023). 22 Reconnecting with Purpose Alumni who expressed passion and enthusiasm to become Practitioners of Inner work using the Courage & Renewal Approach are officially welcomed to the Course. We will use the same standard formula to award needs-based, sliding scale scholarships to off-set registration fees as in the previous project. 
   Status: Complete
   Accomplishments: Just over half of our attendees (14) were Reconnecting with Purpose Alumni. Since we had room for 27,we opened the course up for outside applications. Here is a bare bones version of our Coming Home Retreat Participants . 
   
   
6. Learning & *Evaluation: (December 31st, 2023) 17 new Practitioners complete the 2.5 day Preparation Course. They learn how to:

• Deepen their capacity to hold space with whole attention and open-heartedness
• Explore Rhythm and Energetics in Program Design
• Incorporate Third Things to Frame Themes
• Hold Tension and Paradox while Holding Space
• Design Open, Honest Questions for Reflection
• Lean into their unique Facilitator Voice, Style and Presence
• Uphold Touchstones with both ferocity and grace
• Thread and Sequence Program Themes
  
  Status: Complete
  Accomplishments: Our facilitation team and group photo are below. The evaluation results are here. Coming Home Retreat Feedback Anonymous. 
  
  Excerpted quotes: 
  "I just want to express that utmost gratitude for this space, the ability to grow together, and to come home to ourselves. I look forward to curating more workshops, sharing my gifts, and to be connected to community in these very inspirational ways. I believe that there is so much continual growing potential in this space... I'm so excited to grow, expand, and elevate as I bare witness to other in shared communal space being able to do the same and achieve their own personal journey of expansion."
  
  "The was a magic to this group. Each time I attend, it gets better. "
  
  "To me, the most important benefits of the Retreat were having the opportunity to join in a community of people from different backgrounds with common goals. The circle of trust and open and honest questions afforded me the ability to truly listen and gain better perspective of others and my goals."
  
  "Some of the most beneficial sharing took place over meals where I learned and shared so much about how other famers have approached growing and building soil health as well as learning about small farm resources that could be very helpful in my own farm. And then there was the deep, deep dive within, exploring what truly matters for me and how I express this."

FACILITATOR TEAM

7. Engagement, Learning & Evaluation.  (January 2024 - July 2024).  12 newly prepared practitioners work in pairs to design and facilitate a total of six 1.5 hour virtual programs to the Practitioners' community based on Inner Work themes of their choice. These short programs will take place each month and be an opportunity for newly prepared Practitioners to begin experimenting with the skills learned.  These 1.5 hour programs will not be open to the general public to ensure a supportive space for these practitioners to debut as facilitators. 
Status: Complete
Accomplishments: We used funding from a different grant to invite participants to work in teams or solo to create short programs drawing from retreat practices during the 2024 year.  Below are short summaries of the programs participants offered with photos:

Pause, Rest, Be: Community Lunch and Conversation Circle at the Massachusetts Avenue Project, Buffalo, NY
Join Shontaé Cannon-Buckley and Violet Stone on Saturday, May 11th, from 11:30 am – 2:30 pm, for a community lunch served by Breva Kitchen followed by conversation and restorative yoga drawn from the book “Pause, Rest, Be. Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change” by Octavia F. Raheem. Our gathering will take place in the Community Room at Massachusetts Avenue Project, 387 Massachusetts Ave, Buffalo, NY 14213. Facilitators will share excerpts of Raheem's wise words to inspire large and small group conversation. Raheem writes "With so much shifting, now we are ready to go deeper. Alone and together. Let us begin with the end." This gathering will focus on the theme of "Endings". After some reflection and sharing, a restorative yoga teacher will guide us spaciously in and out of the Pose for Endings, Savasana. All are welcome; no yoga experience is necessary.

Sounds, Silence, Stillness at the Ellenville Community Library with Jamillah El Bey
Join Jamillah El Bey for a reflective program on July 13th, 2024 titled “Sounds, Stillness and Silence: Tools of the Inner Teacher”. We will start the program by opening our throats and clearing ourbodies and minds of stagnant energy.  Then, through a series of breathing techniques and universal sounds the group will be invited to experience the calm of releasing blocked/ stagnant energy. The program will include invitations to write, draw and share in small groups. (No photo available) 

Getting to the Root of Fear for Urban Gardeners and Urbalists with Jawhara Taitt and Angel Torres
Join urban earthworkers and herbalists Jawhara Taitt and Angel Torres for a transformative virtual workshop on Tuesday, September 17th, from 5pm - 7pm EST called "Getting to the Root of Fear".  An important element of this workshop is trust.  We invite all participants who strive toward being attentive and present for the entire 2 hour session. Please join us from a comfortable, quiet space where confidentially is possible.

Vibe’O’Clock with Meliq August and Jamillah El Bey at Rabbit Hole Farm
Join Meliq August and Jamillah El Bey for Vibe’O’Clock, a vocal jam/rap/poetry performance bout plant life and the earth around us. Hosted at Rabbit Hole farm in Newark NJ October 5th from 5-8pm. Reflective circle incorporating herbs and activities. 

Asha Laaya Regional Support Network Meeting

Maryellen Sheenan and Violet Stone designed and cofacilitated this meeting with the intention of building connection, trust, appreciation and understanding between rural service providers and the deaf new Americans at Asha Laaya Farm. 

8. Engagement, Learning & Evaluation. (September 2024 -  March 2026)  During this 19 month period, an additional 6 of these new practitioners will receive support and mentorship from the Facilitator Team to design and cofacilitate longer ( .5 day - 2.5 day programs/retreats) open to the entire agricultural community.  We have intentionally not placed specific deadlines on these events because they will be scheduled according to venue and practitioner availability.  Program coordinator and lead facilitator Violet Stone will work closely with these 6 new practitioners to arrange venue and facility needs, develop press and outreach, register attendees from the sustainable agriculture community, arrange scholarships, coordinate carpool and travel arrangements and other event planning logistics.  We offer once again below themes that have been identified. Other themes may arise.  

• Cultivating Farm Wellness, a retreat exploring how farmers can feed and care for themselves while we feed others. We can accommodate up to 25 sustainable agriculture community members in this retreat. 
• Earthworkers: Grieving Loss, Remembering Reverence, a retreat for farmers and earthworkers to explore fear, grief and gratitude in an era of climate variability and mass extinction. We can accommodate up to 25 sustainable agriculture community members in this program. 
• Creating Benevolent Agricultural Communities, a retreat for farmers and earth workers of all backgrounds exploring identity and integrity, connection, care and trust  in the context of our urban or rural agricultural communities. We can accommodate up to 25 sustainable agriculture community members in this retreat.  
• Cultivando Bienestar, a similar program to “Cultivating Farm Wellness” offered en español and adapted to better serve the needs of the Latino/Latina/LatinX farming community.
  
  Status: Complete
  Accomplishments:

The first full retreat facilitation collaboration took place from November 22 - November 24.   Our facilitation team was comprised of myself, and 3 alumni facilitators of former retreats.  A short description of the retreat and our team's biographies are below:

Farming can bring joy, delight, and awe, from apples reddening to lambs leaping. It can also be tireless and demanding. The energy and attention required to tend and harvest abundant food on any scale can make it hard to live in balance with life’s many other demands. When we consider the additional stresses of living during these times — extreme weather, hurried schedules, distracting technology, and distressing world news running in the background, it’s not surprising many of us are feeling pulled in too many directions. 

If you’re feeling the need to pause, rest and lay some things down, our Growing Together project will be hosting an in-person retreat titled “Teachings of Leaves: Let Go, Lay Down, Rest & Rejoice.” This retreat is especially for farmers, growers, earth-workers and tenders who live in New York. 

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Start: Friday, November 22, at 3 p.m.
End: Sunday, November 24, at 1 p.m.
Location: Light on the Hill Retreat Center, 209 Blake Hill Rd, Van Etten, NY 14889
Registration Deadline: October 4 or until the waitlist is full.
Retreat Participants Announced: October 11

Apply Now

Teachings of Leaves Facilitation Team

Damon Brangman (he/him)

Born and raised in the island of Bermuda, Damon Brangman a farmer/educator and musician founded Roots Rising Farm to offer hands on garden education through school and community gardens.  Damon started farming at a young age, and his inspiration to grow food was his grandmother’s love of fresh vegetables. Through the curiosity of other youth in the community, he felt inclined to share the knowledge he was gaining from gardening, and also give them the opportunity to connect to the land. Damon traveled to New York City to study music production in 1997, and while there he became sick, and decided to attend a body/mind retreat in Ithaca, NY during the summer. The experience of a raw food diet, meditation, and yoga, encouraged him to make changes in his lifestyle, and eventually move to Ithaca a few years later.  Having a strong background in music, and determined to continue healing from Crohn’s disease, he produces music with the intention of healing himself while also assisting others on their own personal healing journey.  The earth is healing itself, and we play an important role in allowing the process to heal us, if we can only stop for a moment and listen.

 

Himanee Gupta (she/her)

Himanee is a farmer, writer, and professor who sows seeds to provide food, uses words to form ideas, and creates thoughts to help guide herself and others through learnings to sustain future generations. She is the author of Muncie, India(na): Middletown and Asian America, which blends memoir, ethnography, and critical thought on the question of what it means to be an American. She also has written, spoken, taught, and pondered extensively on the relationships between land, food, and spirituality and has drawn on her own experiences as a farmer and daughter of immigrant Indian parents in reflecting on her place in North American settler-colonialist spaces. A desire to contribute to the healing of historic intergenerational violence and ongoing trauma led her in 2022 to the Cornell Small Farm’s Reconnecting With Purpose Retreat, from which she was motivated to rekindle prior work with Reiki and to fulfill a long-held desire to transform her practice of yoga into teaching it herself. Since becoming certified through the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, she has led yoga workshops at numerous academic conferences and in community classes in the Saratoga area, where she lives, farms, and teaches at SUNY Empire State University. Her hope is to meet students where they are at, and to guide them to find peace, grounding, rejuvenation, contentment, and hope.

Kate Cowie-Haskell (they/them)

Kate comes from a background in anthropology, storytelling, and farmworking. They spent three years as a farm worker (working with vegetables, hops, and alpaca) before transitioning into a technical assistance role. Many conversations with farmers about crises like poisoned soil, extreme flooding, and prolonged droughts led Kate to wonder how the spiritual care network for earthworkers could be strengthened. This interest brought them from their long-time home in Massachusetts to Minneapolis, where they are pursuing an MDiv in Interreligious Chaplaincy and Eco-Justice. Kate loves to help people find words, rituals, and actions that connect them to a greater whole. They are particularly interested in helping to heal the disconnect that whiteness creates between individual health and collective wellbeing. Growing natural dyes, dancing, and reading sci-fi are some of their current personal healing practices.

Kate has been involved in Reconnecting With Purpose and Growing Together since 2022, and is deeply grateful for the exploration and expansion this community has offered.

Violet Stone (she/her)

Violet leads a wide range of retreats and workshops for the agricultural community drawing on themes of connection, wellness, purpose, integrity and courage. She sees this work as contributing to a more inclusive ‘culture’ of agriculture where all voices are warmly welcomed, honored and celebrated, including the  voice of our intuition or inner teacher. In this highly technological age of automation and artificial intelligence, we have much to gain from the act of offering one another genuine listening, open-hearted attention, and wonder. Violet has led programs for the Cornell Small Farms Program since 2007 and has also served as the New York Northeast SARE Professional Development Coordinator since 2009. All of her programs are aligned with the principles of the Center for Courage and Renewal.

Here is a photo of our group:

AGENDA & RESOURCES

Here is our agenda and resource packet.

Evaluation and Quotes:

Here are some quotes excerpted from the evaluation: 

"I spend so much of my life and work life looking outwards - to see what needs to be done, who needs to be fed, which balls need to be juggled, who needs to go where - that I don't spend much time looking inwards, to see what I need, where I am, where I want to go. The retreat helped me to get back in touch with myself, to let me recenter and find my grounding."

"When I arrived home, I held back from racing into preparing the farmhouse for winter chores, the seasonal late fall transplanting, & figuring out the expenses from now to around February.  I simply prepared food, sat with the woodstove listening to its relaxing, restful sounds, drinking in its warm embrace & wrote a wee bit in my journal reflecting my falling leaves retreat experiences"

"I was very pleased to see the diversity of folks involved, from ethnicity, gender, background, field of work. I'm glad it wasn't just the usual "white" farmers that I find myself surrounded by. I truly appreciated the inclusivity and making the retreat available and fun for so many different people. Diversity is refreshing to me, important, and I imagine... hard to curate and design for! Thank you!"

"I was surprised by how accessible a state of rest was for me once I was supported and encouraged to get there."

"I haven’t  felt a sense of peace and joy in recent time yet the Retreat helped me realize that from the genesis of these themes, peace and joy are possible."

Here is our complete evaluation. 

Most of our facilitation team continued to work together in the Spring to host a mini-retreat. 

Agenda

The Agenda is attached.  

Attendance

The attendance roster is attached. 

Evaluation 

We conducted a closing circle in which we took notes on verbal feedback, but we did not distribute a paper evaluation.  Participants expressed:

1. surprise at how quickly they relaxed, stretched and settled into ease
2. gratitude that service providers at Cornell are offering opportunities like this
3. gratitude for being seen and cared for by service providers/facilitators
4. gratitude to gather with other farmers, enjoy fellowship and practice self care together

Our next event was a Community Farm Supper for farmers of different racial and cultural backgrounds.  This was a collaboration between alumni Bari Zeiger and the team at CCE Erie County, and Futuro en Ag, a project which serves spanish speaking farmers.  Below is a description.

Bilingual Community Farm Supper

August 27 @ 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm 

Evaluation: 

Farm Supper Facilitator Evaluation

9. Engagement, Learning & *Evaluation (June 30th, 2026) The entire "Creating Benevolent Agricultural Communities" Practitioners' Cohort, including Alumni and all Retreat/Program participants from 2023 - 2026 will be invited to a Community Retreat and Celebration honoring the stories and experiences we've shared, the growth and evolution we've undertaken and the joyful impact of our work to build a culture of agriculture that fosters interconnectedness, trust and love. 

*Overall Evaluation Strategy: After each program and Retreat, we will collect feedback from our participants verbally via a closing circle, and written via a feedback form.  Each facilitator team will meet to offer one another peer feedback via rose, bud, thorn immediately after each program.