{"id":38295,"date":"2020-09-18T04:00:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T09:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=38295"},"modified":"2020-09-25T12:15:08","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T17:15:08","slug":"deepa-iyer-is-farming-for-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2020\/09\/18\/deepa-iyer-is-farming-for-social-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepa Iyer Is Farming for Social Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Ghana, when a person passes a farmer in the field, they call out, \u201cAyekoo,\u201d which loosely means \u201cI see you\u201d or \u201cI acknowledge you farming the land.\u201d In response, the farmer says, \u201cAye,\u201d to thank the passerby for the acknowledgement.<\/p>\n

When naming their new farm<\/a> in rural Washington, Deepa Iyer, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and her partner Victor Anagli, who grew up in the Volta region of Ghana, wanted to honor this call and response tradition, so they christened their 21-acre property Ayeko. Located in the town of Enumclaw, Washington\u201440 miles southeast of Seattle\u2014Ayeko is covered with fruit trees and raspberry and blueberry bushes and bisected by a creek.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s magical,\u201d says Iyer, who grew up in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

The couple\u2014who between them have two children and one full-time, off-farm job\u2014are currently growing organic vegetables on one acre and have started a U-Pick for the berries. But in the future, they hope to invite other farmers and families who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) to join them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to share this land with other people,\u201d Iyer says. \u201cOur vision is village-style, everyone growing food\u2014a life where kids can run out the door and don’t have to make an appointment to have a play date.\u201d<\/p>\n

As of today, however, Iyer and her family and community\u2014along with others across Washington state and along the entire West Coast\u2014are largely sequestered indoors as a result of the wildfires that are burning around the state and region. “We are concerned because there are fires very close to here . . . we are surrounded by dry grass and anything could happen,” Iyer told Civil Eats in an email. “Crops are looking affected by smoke; nothing has been lost to fire, but it feels like the season is over in many ways.”<\/p>\n

\"A

Before the fires, Iyer found out she\u2019d been chosen as one of 12 recipients of the Castanea Fellowship<\/span><\/a>, a two-year program that helps support a racially just food system. The fellowship comes with a $40,000 grant and a connection to a network of experienced farmers who get together for six \u201clearning immersion journeys.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Farzana Serang, executive director at the Castanea Fellowship, says Iyer is a valuable part of the cohort. \u201cWhat\u2019s incredible about Deepa,\u201d Serang says, \u201cis she\u2019s been farming for 20 years, making culturally relevant food more accessible, and still considers herself new to the work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Discovering a Love of Farming<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Iyer fell in love with farming the year after college, when she took a six-month soul-searching trip to India. While there, she visited botanical sanctuaries and worked on intentional farming projects. When she returned home, she found an internship with a watershed organization, Stony Brook-Millstone (now\u00a0<\/span>the Watershed Institute<\/span><\/a>), which also had an organic farm. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was there that she discovered environmental education. She would take school children to the pond and collect water samples that were full of tadpoles and dragonfly nymphs. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know that this type of work existed,\u201d Iyer says. \u201cYou can be out in nature with kids as they discover their<\/em> love of nature?!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

She also got hooked on organic farming. \u201cI would stand on the truck and the guys would come in with the harvest and throw pumpkins at me,\u201d says Iyer, who describes herself as \u201ca tomboy to the death.\u201d She caught all the pumpkins. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, at 42, Iyer still relishes manual labor. \u201cBending over and pulling weeds all day? I love that!\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iyer also spent a year as a teacher-in-residence at <\/span>Slide Ranch<\/span><\/a>, an educational farm on the coast north of San Francisco that connects children to nature. That experience put Iyer more firmly on the path of food systems education and led her to launch an urban farm collective in Oakland called (SOL), which she ran for six years before heading to Michigan State University to study the intersection of social justice and the ecological impact of our food and farming systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anagli, who she met in Michigan, comes from a long line of farmers in Ghana. One of the first questions he asked her was, \u201cHow do you want to change the world?\u201d <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never been asked that before,\u201d Iyer says. <\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, the couple moved to Oakland with their young son and began the hunt for a plot of fertile land. <\/span><\/p>\n

Twenty-One Acres in Enumclaw<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

They started searching for land with some friends, but everything they found within a two-hour drive from Oakland was out of their price range. Iyer, who has family in Seattle, shifted the search to Washington and in early 2018, she found the property in Enumclaw. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Sunflowers

Iyer also landed a full-time job at the <\/span>International Rescue Committee<\/span><\/a> in Tukwila, where she heads up a community agriculture and food security program with refugees<\/a> from Burma, Bhutan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Through this, she runs four community gardens in South King County, as well as two market garden production sites, and she co-runs the <\/span>Tukwila Village Farmers Market<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

At Ayeko, the couple farms using organic methods\u2014like composting and minimal tillage\u2014though they\u2019re not certified organic. They grow the usual suspects\u2014beets, carrots, kale, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, and tomatoes\u2014as well as foods that have roots in Iyer\u2019s family food traditions, such as bottle gourds, which are light-green, smooth-skinned and so neutral tasting they\u2019re \u201calmost bland,\u201d says Iyer. They\u2019re also growing amaranth greens, or callaloo, as well as long beans, fenugreek leaves, and peanuts.<\/span><\/p>\n

This kind of \u201ccultural rescue\u201d is very important to Iyer, who earned her master\u2019s degree studying the food and farming practices of elder women in the Himalayas. \u201cIf we lose a vegetable type or variety, then we lose all the things that go with it\u2014words, celebrations, colors, stories\u2014so much richness,\u201d Iyer says. <\/span><\/p>\n

Not long ago, Iyer invited a group of her mom\u2019s friends to Ayeko and one Indian-American woman in her 70s saw the long beans in the fields and grew animated. \u201cAll these conversations started happening about these recipes,\u201d says Iyer. \u201c\u2018Oh, my grandma used to make those!\u2019 she said. Those are my dream-come-true moments.\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Because theirs is such a bare-bones operation\u2014the crew is just Iyer and Anagli, and Iyer maintains a full-time off-farm job\u2014they don\u2019t yet have a booth at the farmers\u2019 market or even a community supported agriculture (CSA) program. <\/span><\/p>\n

So for now, their method of selling produce is very casual: they send e-mails to their community inviting them to come to the farm and get it or to access it at one of a few drop-off points in and around Seattle. They also started a U-Pick earlier this summer for their 400 raspberry bushes and hope to add blueberries soon. They have a number of fruit and nut trees as well, but those aren’t producing fruit yet.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Navigating Racism with a Dream of Bringing People Together<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Castanea Fellowship has been a boon, she says\u2014both financially and emotionally. The grant will help with basic support operations like fixing the well and purchasing supplies and equipment, like a tractor. Iyer also hopes it will help launch some of their more ambitious projects, like creating an outdoor school for BIPOC kids or a co-op venture with other farmers. <\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, the Fellowship\u2019s learning immersion journeys, which, for the foreseeable future, are all being conducted on Zoom, have been incredible, says Iyer. \u201cIt\u2019s been super inspiring,\u201d she says. \u201cThese are people who have been through so much and doing so much amazing work.\u201d
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>2020 Castanea fellows<\/a>, who include farmers, chefs, community organizers, and more, have been a source of inspiration for Iyer. Some, for instance \u201chave been able to take [challenging life] experiences and build themselves into strong, positive people with a deep critique of our system and strong analysis of systemic racism and how it manifests in the food system.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\"A

And although the work of running a farm in rural Washington has been deeply satisfying, living in a rural area as people of color has its challenges. \u201cThere are very, very few Black folks out here,\u201d Iyer says. When they moved to Enumclaw, she jokes, Anagli and their kids doubled the town\u2019s Black population. \u201cAll Lives Matter\u201d signage abounds. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two months after moving to the farm, Anagli was walking home from the bus stop when a white woman harassed him and threatened to call 911 because she didn\u2019t think he lived there. The family also had their house robbed on the same day. \u201cWe went into a deep state of fear, and I just started feeling guilt, regret, and doubt,\u201d Iyer says. <\/span><\/p>\n

And yet, she holds out hope for reconciliation and healing within their community. \u201cI keep thinking we can build community anywhere. If somebody is racist, it doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re a bad person. We\u2019re in a society that\u2019s committed to systemic racism\u2014it\u2019s everywhere.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Iyer is hopeful that the land and the food it brings forth can draw folks together. Before pandemic-times, the couple hosted the first of what they\u2019d hoped would become an annual cooking and capoeira event called Grounded in Freedom. Though they cancelled the event this summer, they hope it\u2019s safe to host it again next summer. In the meantime, Iyer hopes to connect with the <\/span>Muckleshoot Tribe<\/span><\/a>, which has a reservation nearby. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of opportunity to build community,\u201d she says. <\/span><\/p>\n

Lately, Iyer\u2019s vision of subdividing the property and inviting other families to live there in a cooperative farming village is also much on her mind. She imagines there would be a shared meal once a week. Except for the indigenous folks, Iyer says, \u201cThe reality is that everyone\u2019s grandma or great grandma is from somewhere else\u2014we can all share those stories of our grandmother\u2019s recipes.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Ghana, when a person passes a farmer in the field, they call out, \u201cAyekoo,\u201d which loosely means \u201cI see you\u201d or \u201cI acknowledge you farming the land.\u201d In response, the farmer says, \u201cAye,\u201d to thank the passerby for the acknowledgement. When naming their new farm in rural Washington, Deepa Iyer, the daughter of Indian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":38356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4632,4479,10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3383],"class_list":["post-38295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-farmer-profiles","category-farming","category-food-justice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDeepa Iyer Is Farming for Social Justice | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From her small family farm in rural Washington, the farmer seeks to build community and make culturally relevant food more accessible.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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