Rhize Up Community Farm
Rhize Up Community Farm is a project of Khuba International’s Quarter Acre for the People (QAP) project. QAP was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein communities of color, after having been siloed into urban environments and reservations, experienced higher mortality than other communities due to the health impacts associated with living under urban food apartheid and in reservation environments.
The steering committee of Rhize Up Community Farm meets weekly with the aim to create an intentional community in Ithaca, New York in the township of Danby. This committee is in the process of working with planning and design, engineering, and architecture partners to create a plan for four houses and a welcome center to be built on the 14-acre parcel on Hornbrook Road. The proposal is currently being drawn up, and there is a plan to submit it for approval by the town of Danby board in mid-2023.
This project is led by BIPOC community members, primarily black women, in solidarity with other marginalized community members and white allies.
Though the future residents of Rhize Up Community Farm are all U.S. citizens, this farm stands in solidarity with immigrant and migrant community members, some of whom actively collaborate and support this project.
The welcome center that is planned will support the important work and programming of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫʼ Learning Project as they strive to keep Gayogo̱hó:nǫʼ youth education and indigenous language scholarship and the re-homing of indigenous families on their homelands in the Finger Lakes.
Rhize Up Community Farm is a cooperative farming project with objectives to preserve the ecological integrity of the land, the soil, trees, and shared creek, and to be good neighbors to the local residents neighboring the farm and those living in the region.
Ultimately, the goal of the farm is to live in a multi-generational community, support the sharing of ecological farming with the next generations of farmers, plant a small number of fruit trees, grow mushrooms, and raise bees, chickens, and a small number of sheep for silvopasture, as part of a forest farming enterprise.
We hope you will join us in uplifting and moving forward the back-to-land movement that is currently happening in communities of color and other marginalized and ally communities around the world.