June 16, 2020 --- A Commitment to Anti-Racism

Yesterday, we sat down to write our quintessential Morning Star Newsletter for Week One of the CSA. The one where we share photos, and a recipe highlighting a favorite item in the box this week (in this case Garlic Scapes). That letter quickly started to feel inadequate and out of touch with the current happenings in our country and in our hearts.

Each day here on Morning Star we are met with beauty and bounty.
There is a harsh juxtaposition between this reality and that of so many others. We are privileged and we feel called to confront this privilege now more than ever. Our country is experiencing the collision of two crises. One has been going on for four months, the other four hundred years.

In these four months of pandemic, we, as a farm, have been working to respond to the needs of our island community in new ways. Many of our discussions in this time are based in conversations of food justice and food sovereignty and how to respond to those issues in our community. This work cannot be done in isolation, it must be done alongside the work of anti- racism.

Over our 33 years on this farm the day to day reality and immediate demands of farming have been all consuming. However, it is becoming all too clear that we need to contextualize our work, and our farm, within the systems of institutional racism. The beauty and bounty we experience each day exist alongside, and within White Supremacy, the injustice and the oppression, on which our country was built and continues to operate. After all, the Coastal Salish People were the original stewards of this land we now call ours. This is why farming must be political. This is why we feel we must join the calls of resistance echoing across our country right now. Black Lives Matter.

As we dedicate this space to anti-racism, we recognize that this work, like farming, will require constant learning, listening, reflecting and shifting. With this we acknowledge that we do not have the answers. However, we must take an active role to engage with these issues. We look to the leadership of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) who have long been, and continue to do this work out of necessity.

These are the voices we must amplify.

We will continue to update this statement as we learn and solidify our actions.

Moving forward with open hearts,

Morning Star Farm