We hope you have found some moments of beauty, joy or comfort as the Solstice opens us up into a season of short days and long nights of Winter time. As we send prayers and move in solidarity with movements in our communities and worldwide may we be nurtured and reinvigorated by the presence of loved ones or by a hot bowl of soup.

Thank you for following along and supporting Iron Path Farms 2023 season. This past year began with a generous donation from Open Collective Foundation for our inaugural Tree Program. We were able to utilize these funds to purchase 1,000 native hardwood trees that were dispersed across Haudenosaunee communities, such as Akwesasne.

Through the ongoing financial contributions of our supporters, we were able to sustain two garden plots focusing on four different types of Haudenosaunee heirloom beans. We also grew Onondaga Sunflowers and Mohawk Red Corn for seed, along with herbs and vegetables for food consumption and mutual aid projects. We will be making our second annual winter batch fire cider distributed for free as mutual aid to our indigenous and BIPOC communities.

We named our plot in Kingston, NY,  "Garden Divine". While our other plot in Wurtsboro, NY at Bashakill Family Farms is lovingly referred to as "BFF".  We made this happen in tender collaboration with our dear friend Angelica Vargas. From these two locations, we were able to grow several pounds of each strain of beans. We increased our seed capacity and grew enough for our food lab projects.

This fall, we were excited to host an organizational retreat, food lab and art residency at Denniston Hill. This event brought together Rad Pereira, Dioganhdih Hall, Sinuda Hall, Vreni Michellini, Tess Kim, Mia Sterbini & Angelica Vargas to work on collective organizational structure, relationship building, seed threshing and concluded with a harvest dinner for community members, friends and supporters. We were grateful to utilize this time to thresh and sort the various heirloom strains of corn, beans and squash seeds. The dinner was led by Chef Tess Kim after months of collaboration on an intercultural menu of Korean x Haudenosaunee dishes.

The seed sorting will continue through the winter months along with the planning for our 2024 season. We continue to strategize towards a decentralized farm by having 3-5 different plots next year across Lenapehoking and Haudenosaunee territory. Each plot will grow different strains of Haudenosaunee and Lenape, heirloom corn, beans and squash to build our seed capacities. We are continuing to build inter tribal solidarity, and strengthening our relations as indigenous people in our homeland, growing food and uplifting our sovereignty. We are also continuing to build our BIPOC network with new friends and loved ones.

We are in continued collaboration with Pace Law Clinic and Braiding Seeds Fellowship. We hope to keep building with more longstanding institutional partners and will share more as these relationships solidify.

We are grateful to our supporters via Open Collective who fund our organizing, research, labor, mutual aid distribution across our communities, collective rematriation, food sovereignty initiatives, BIPOC network building, agriculture production, seed saving production, seed keeping and organizational infrastructure.

We look forward to finding a farm and home base in 2024! Much love from us and the seeds <3