Farm-site managers Luz, left, and Senija Davis, right, pose in front of one of the dozens of hand-painted murals lining the perimeter of Sankofa Community Orchard. (Photo by Evelyn Zelmer)
By Evelyn Zelmer
After receiving a gardening task from farm-site manager Senija Davis, I use my bare hand to overturn decaying logs and unlock the soft mounds of compost beneath them— remnants of plant material, wood chunks and bits of bark, that are decaying back into the earth. In doing so, I disturb the slumber of a five-lined skink, who scurries away in shock. Its writhing tail is blue with youth, and it flashes to the open sky for just an instant before burrowing quickly back into the pile of wet logs. I pause in awe of the ephemeral connection we’d just made, and I choose a different spot in the wood pile to prod with my shovel.
I’m volunteering today at Sankofa Community Orchard, which occupies two acres of previously-vacant city land on the Southside of Richmond, Virginia. This community garden is a part of a larger network of communally-maintained farm sites managed under the non-profit Happily Natural Day, a Richmond-based Black food justice and climate resiliency organization founded in 2003 by community activist Duron Chavis.
Named for a Ghanaian Akan word meaning to ‘go back and fetch it from the source,’ Sankofa is the largest and newest of these gardens, and its mission is not only to supply the surrounding marginalized community with fresh, free food but also to restore the historic Black connection to the land— a bond which has been eroded over many decades by a host of targeted disinvestment strategies, including redlining policies, the disenfranchisement of Black farmers by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the monopolizing force of grocery corporations.
Every Thursday and Saturday, Sankofa opens its acreage to community volunteers through a work program called “Dirt Therapy.” Our tasks on this chilly April Saturday included burning holes into geotextile crop covers, planting nutritious brassicas like turnips and cabbage, and hauling compost in wheelbarrows to disperse over rows of freshly-planted seeds. While shoveling and toting and dumping the compost, I spoke to Senija, along with her fellow farm-site manager and “steward of the earth,” who goes by Luz.
Who uses it?
Both Senija and Luz noted that community members on the Southside often interact with the orchard by picking plants, donating seeds and seedlings, and forming reciprocal relationships with the RVA Community Fridge which operates a location onsite to collect and distribute free food. They also noted that many of the site’s patrons are also the volunteers who come to this work out of lived experience with food insecurity.
After criticizing the ways that corporate greed and poor agricultural practices can de-nutritionalize our food and cause food insecurity, Luz explains their relationship with the orchard as both a farmer and a patron.
“I love working here, because I get food. I get to come here and I get to go to the community fridge, I get to pull food out of the ground. I am a person who comes here, and I eat the food that I grow,” they said. “To me, that is really the deepest connection that I have.”
“It’s sovereignty,” Senija added. “It’s bodily autonomy. Having the autonomy to go and plant what you want, plant it how you want, plant it when you want, without having to depend on a system that doesn’t even work for you.”
Luz stands with a mural of Regina Brave, a Lakota Sioux land rights activist and member of the American Indian Movement. Luz painted this mural to honor her protection of land and water for generations to come—and to pay tribute to their own indigenous heritage as a Brazilian person.
Connecting People to People
While there are other NGOs who support this reclamation aspect of the food justice movement, Senija noted that Sankofa and Happily Natural Day are especially committed to “connecting people to people.”
I asked if they’d ever had a pivotal moment on the farm site that proved the power of this person-to-person connection.
“I remember I was volunteering one day,” Senija said. “I was pushing a wheelbarrow, just observing everybody. And seeing people laughing and having fun while pulling weeds and really connecting. Coming from my background, seeing people of all ethnic backgrounds, people who presented so differently—it was just so beautiful.”
Luz gives another, more practical example. Someone stole a tractor from Sankofa, they said, and within a week the community raised $11,000 in donations to replace it. This caused them to admire the mechanism which has and will continue to sustain the orchard’s success: “a bunch of people coming together, giving little bits of something to get something really big in return.”
The Pressing Need for Magic
Echoing the lament of most grassroots nonprofits, Senija expressed that the most pressing need of this organization is money. She also pointed out that black and brown environmental organizations receive fewer grants than their white counterparts, a complaint that echoes trends of discriminatory philanthropic funding more broadly. “We have to make do and work with less funding.”
Despite this challenge, both attribute the organization’s fundraising success to its “magic man”: director and self-taught grant writer Duron Chavis.
“Or maybe we shouldn’t say ‘magic.’ It took hard work and sweat,” said Luz. “But I think real magic is hard work and sweat. It’s not like a snap of the fingers. Magic is slow. It takes a lot of time and intention.”
The success of this orchard—the fruits of community labor that feed the surrounding neighborhoods—is proof that this magic exists.
“Connecting to the land is a kind of magic that reconnects you to your own spirit,” Senija explained. “Nature, as an entity, should be taken care of, should be honored. For me, spirit is my inner compass that drives me to do this work.And it shows in the little signs, whether it’s a lesson that I see when I’m doing some garden work or an animal that passes by me—it shows up daily in life to remind you to keep going.”
I think hard about the process of lifting logs to assist them in their decay—about ensuring that their death could be repurposed as the fertilizer of new life. I think of the blue skink that darted from the home it was making in this dank, temporary fortress. That lizard showed itself to me. A sign from the universe, perhaps, to keep on digging.
Above: Luz and Senija speak on the concept of exchanging energy with the Earth. “When you’re putting your hands in that soil, you are being regenerated. You are being loved on.” (Video by Evelyn Zelmer and Cesar Cruz Requejo)