about

We are a collective of farm workers with varied experiences with vegetable production, livestock management, and agricultural librarianship. Some of us were born here, some have lived in the Connecticut River Valley for more than 15 years, and others have only just arrived. 

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While queer and trans folks have been integral in stewarding this fertile valley for decades, there is currently almost no documentation of our contribution to the region’s agricultural industry! The result is a contrived reality in which we have no context for ourselves. There’s a gap in our collective story and as we move to fill this gap with our griefs and joys we must place it within broader histories of dispossession, genocide, and violence.

 

What is now known as Western Massachusetts is the ancestral homelands of the Nonotuck, Nipmuc, Agawam, Mohican, Pocumtuc, Woronoco, and Abenaki. Our relationships with land just as commonly are marked by grief, rage, loss, guilt, and ambivalence as they are by joy and belonging. This should be enough to make us ask who ‘we’ are, if a we can be formed out of these dissonant positions and experiences.

 

We understand this project as an ongoing conversation, of which this is hopefully only the very beginning. So, if you think this is a fraught idea, have feedback on the direction of the project, friends to contact, or a topic you’d like to see addressed, email us!