A Black and Brown femme-led cooperative farm and community sanctuary for connection, creativity, education, and wellness.
Mumbet’s Freedom Farm is a BIPOC-led farm cultivating food networks and community sanctuary that sustain and uphold right relationship to land and one another. This project exists as a model of what is possible when we come together to be in the living practice of liberation, guided and directed by land, heart, and spirit.
Our farm is nestled at the base of a mountain in the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Nation, also known as Sheffield, Massachusetts – the town where the revolutionary Elizabeth ‘Mumbet’ Freeman resided.
Mumbet was an enslaved African nurse, midwife, and herbalist who sued for her freedom in Sheffield, MA and won. Mumbet’s Freedom Farm is in community with a flowing brook, natural spring, waterfalls, forest trails, an array of plant and animal life, and Race Brook Lodge.
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At Mumbet’s Freedom Farm, we aim to create a sustainable home and sanctuary for Queer Black, Indigenous People of Color, animals, insects, birds, and all of Earth’s beings and elements. We currently practice Afro-Indigenous, regenerative, and biodynamic agriculture strategies & are inspired by our personal + cultural gardening and food way experiences. We understand & continue to cultivate a relationship with Earth as a living and sovereign being, we acknowledge the need for authentic and reciprocal exchange of nourishment. We seek to produce biodynamic preparations & diverse amendments to cultivate the health and livelihood of the soil of this land. We understand that nutrient-rich soil produces nutrient-rich food, & we strive to harvest + distribute nutrient-rich foods & medicine to BIPOC communities and kindred community members.
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The Earth provides the basis, inspiration, and resource for our connection with Spirit. We are committed to holding space for & embodying spiritual practices rooted in Black and Indigenous traditions which center sharing, song, dance, & making offerings. As we continue to grow, we open our spaces for those from all spiritual traditions to find and seek Sanctuary.
Mumbet’s Freedom Farmily
Ashni, daughter of Cynthia and Allan, was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY with rich roots in the island of St. Vincent & The Grenadines.
Ashni is a private practitioner of Flower Essence Therapy, Somatic Experiencing® method, which is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. She is also a member of the Heart Centered Operations Team at MINKA. She facilitates ceremonies, meditations, and experiences permeated with love that cultivate radical awareness, appreciation of self, and overall ecstatic wellness within participants and their community with the intention of re-cultivating a deep connection with the Earth.
Find out more about Ashni at www.sunderashni.com
Sunder Ashni - Vision Builder and Steward
Rachel (Ray) N. Ellis (they/them, beloved, love, moonchild, ray of sunshine, sistar) - Farm Admin & Cultivator, Current Season
Ray is child of Grace and Guy Ellis, grandchild of Wilma Porter, Corden Porter, Annie and Robert Ellis; moonchild of Arnett and Lena Bell, Corden and Ethel Porter, Saphronia, and Mabel.
Ray is a Black, queer, neurodivergent, and gender expansive creative who has been living in the northeast for the last ten years. Originally from the south in Kentucky, Ray’s love and connection with the earth beneath their feet runs deep. Along with being a child of the mud, they come from a family of sharecroppers and land stewards. Much of what Ray remembers of land tending comes from conversations with or watching their maternal grandmother, Wilma in her garden.
Ray is also a being of faith, a body-spirit worker, herbalist, medicine maker, ritualist, wailer, ancestral archivist and writer whose work is informed and inspired by their connection to ancestors and spirit. They are a forever student, both self-taught and with trusted teachers and guides. Most of their current work revolves around threshold honoring and crossings. After finding out about their paternal great grandmother’s violent transition to etheric space, Ray began writing a body of work that, at its core centers finding new and expansive ways of processing grief. Ray’s favorite way of sharing their work is through encouraging crafting of stories by way of scent, sound, and intuitive movement.
This is Ray’s first season at Mumbet’s Freedom Farm, committing to consistently stewarding land and learning more about what that means here in so-called Massachusetts. It feels sacred to Ray for QTBIPOC/Folks of the Global Majority to have space specifically for (re)connecting to the land. They believe that these connections and information haven’t been lost, they have simply been interrupted. At every turn they find something new to learn that deepens their connection to the earth, all this through talking with the plants, the people, and growing food to share with community.
Ayomide Jasmine Chinemerem Ikenga Eniola (AYO), Steward: 2023 & 2024
Ayo is a visual artist, dancer, writer, thespian, farmer, and Ifa practitioner. They were raised in Lagos, Nigeria where they learned to value the natural world and ancestral spiritual traditions, specifically from the Yoruba and Igbo tribal lineages.
Ayo sees art making as a ritual which becomes more powerful in community. Their work contains themes of interspecies relationships and intergenerational connection, reminding viewers of their biological and metaphysical bond with the natural world and their innate responsibility to protect the Earth.
Ayo was a land steward at Mumbet’s Freedom Farm for two seasons. At Mumbet’s, they were reminded of the importance of having spaces for people of color to be in relationship with the land as an alternative to capitalism and a remedy for climate crisis.
Ayo is the director, choreographer, and vision keeper behind Symbiotic Futures. The first iteration of the project was set at the Book and Plow Farm in Amherst, MA and the second at Mumbet’s Freedom Farm as part of the Vunja! Carnival. Ayo recently moved to the Netherlands where they are hoping to set a third iteration of Symbiotic Futures and continue to develop themself as a creative earth-based being.
Jordan Stewart, Steward: 2024
I’m a queer, neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist who balances play and curiosity with emotionality, perspective, and creativity. Much of my work pays homage to my many inspirations and obsessions; nature, poetry, childlike wonder, dreams, animals, humanity, and the limitless possibilities of imagination. I enjoy many varied modes of expression; like photography, writing, drawing, painting, and stickering, to name a few.
Outside of my artistic engagements, I also have a deep reverence and care for nature and the Earth. My time at Mumbet’s was one of deep healing, community, and kinship. It’s always been a childhood dream of mine, to care for the land and learn to grow my own food. Being able to be immersed in the practice of land caretaking felt like a full circle moment for me, a return to a vision I’d nearly forgotten amongst the noise of life. I left feeling reinvigorated in my passion, with a deep sense of gratitude and more direction for my future.
It is a new dream of mine to someday cultivate a community space where folks can rest, play, and learn together- all while uplifting art, music, and vital education.