Each year April 2nd is International Children’s Book Day, which is a wonderful awareness and celebration of children’s books. We rejoice in the many books written about gardening, farming, and the outdoors. The importance of introducing young children to growing food and enjoying outside is immeasurable. When children learn about outdoor customs, soil, plants, water, and animals, they discover natural science concepts they can use life long. Watching and waiting patiently while the planted seed grows into a sprout, to a seedling, to a plant with small leaves, and finishing with a flower, fruit, or vegetable are akin to birth, infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood looking forward to an awesome future.
One of the finest ways to bond and support childhood development is to introduce food and farm product cultivation through books. Imagine the stories about fingers in the soil, the first bite into fruit off a vine, or feeding carrot to a horse. Listen to the many questions about where food comes from, the sounds of a chicken, and fruit or vegetable. Children benefit from knowing how food ends up on their plate, how things grow, and who does all the hard work to feed them healthy, nutritious, and tasty bites.
Children’s books about growing food include lessons on responsibility, preparation, caring for plants and animals, outdoor safety, awareness about natural cycles, and appreciation of our environment. There are countless traditionally published garden and farming children’s books to be found by a quick internet search. Here, we share hidden gems with diverse characters written by diverse authors.
Zora’s Garden by Rae Chesney is a charming fictional fact-based garden and storytelling book featuring a young Zora Neale Hurston in her Eatonville, Florida garden. Read in historical voice, “Now some barely get off de ground and some just reachin’ up like dese here plants” makes the expressions as visual as the wonderful and bright colored illustrations by Rae Chesny
The Old Truck by brothers Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey is a loveable story about an old red truck and a little girl on a farm. The truck is worn out over time and rusts in the field. The little girl grows to run the farm and restores the truck back to life. The soft colors and whimsical retro design are ideal for toddlers through pre-schoolers.
Fern and Ginger by Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance members Kathy Anderson and Karen Bowlding tells adventures in foraging, gardening, and farming settings. The siblings enjoy the outdoors while they learn from their Grandma and multi-generational landowner Farmer Sass. Creative colorful illustrations compliment lessons on edible wild plants, farm vegetables, and seeds. Home (karenbowlding.net)
Please be sure to start a child’s journey at UJAMAA SEEDS and UCFA GOODS. Order seeds and books today!
Beans, peas, lentils, soybeans, and peanuts. These are all members of the legume family. Growing legumes in your garden is a great way to provide high-quality protein for you and your family. Black-eyed peas have a different name in each section of the country. Black-eyed peas, also known as cowpeas, field peas, and crowder peas, are a common legume cultivated around the globe.
Several varieties have historically been cultivated in Africa and were transported to the Americas via the transatlantic slave trade, hence a new term is becoming popular, African Peas. By whatever name you call them, they’re an old favorite in the South and can be grown where both days and nights are warm for a period of 60-90 days. Check out our varieties of beans and peas.
CLICK on our BEANS & PEAS link and begin or expand your Legume Garden this year.
Winona LaDuke is part of the New Green Revolution. She runs Winona’s Hemp Farm and partners with the Anishinaabe Agricultural Institute to rematriate seeds, restore foodways and support an economy based on local food, fiber, and energy. They have committed to growing and processing hemp and want to change the textile industry.
Winona (meaning "first daughter" in Dakota language) LaDuke was born in 1959 in Los Angeles, California. LaDuke attended public school and was on the debate team in high school. She attended Harvard University, where she joined a group of Indigenous activists, and graduated in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics with a focus on rural economic development. While working as the principal of the local Minnesota reservation high school in White Earth, Minnesota she completed research for her master's thesis on the reservation's subsistence economy and became involved in local issues. She completed an M.A. in Community Economic Development through Antioch University's distance-learning program.
In 1989, LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP) in Minnesota with the proceeds of a human rights award from Reebok. The goal is to buy back land in the reservation that non-Natives bought and to create enterprises that provide work to Anishinaabe. By 2000, the foundation had bought 1,200 acres, which it held in a conservation trust for eventual cession to the tribe.
WELRP is also working to reforest the lands and revive cultivation of wild rice, long a traditional food. It markets that and other traditional products, including hominy, jam, buffalo sausage, and other products. It has started an Ojibwe language program, a herd of buffalo, and a wind-energy project.
LaDuke is also executive director of Honor the Earth, an organization she co-founded with the non-Native folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls in 1993. The organization's mission is:
to create awareness and support for Native environmental issues and to develop needed financial and political resources for the survival of sustainable Native communities. Honor the Earth develops these resources by using music, the arts, the media, and Indigenous wisdom to ask people to recognize our joint dependency on the Earth and be a voice for those not heard.
Ms. LaDuke lives on the White Earth Reservation and spends time farming, working with Honor the Earth and the White Earth Land Recovery Project, as well as participates in environmental justice and social activism. Part of Ms. LaDuke’s vision includes restorative agriculture based on Anishinaabe knowledge and farming with minimal fossil fuel use. The goal is to grow organic fiber, food, and industrial products. In 2022, she received the “Mother Earth (Lady of Agriculture) Award for expanding entrepreneurial hemp operations.
Legacy and Honors
1994, LaDuke was nominated by Time magazine as one of America's fifty most promising leaders under forty years of age.
1996, she was given the Thomas Merton Award
1997, she was granted the BIHA Community Service Award
1998, she won the Reebok Human Rights Award.
1998, Ms. Magazine named her Woman of the Year for her work with Honor the Earth. That same year she also received the Ann Bancroft Award for Women's Leadership Fellowship.
2007, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
2015, she received an honorary doctorate degree from Augsburg College.
2017, she received the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance, at the University of California, Merced.
During the month of March Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, and Ujamaa Seeds are honoringWangari Maathai, Delores Huerta. Winona LaDuke,andVandana Shiva, four inspiring women who have made an enormous difference in agriculture, environmental activism, and more. Hopefully their stories inspire you to honor the Earth and preserve it for future generations.
For the week of March 12 - 18, we honor and feature Delores Huerta.
Dolores Clara Fernández Huerta is an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Cesar Chavez, is a co-founder of the National Farmworkers Association, which later merged with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta helped organize the Delano grape strike in 1965 in California and was the lead negotiator in the workers' contract that was created after the strike.
UFW HISTORY & ACHIEVEMENTS
United Farm Workers (UFW), is a labor union for farmworkers in the United States. It originated from the merger of two workers' rights organizations, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) led by organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) co-led by Dolores Huerta and César Chávez.
Cesar Chavez was organizing campaigns against discrimination and voter registration with farm workers at the center of his efforts. He and thousands of farm workers wanted to learn about farm worker rights and to build a union. Delores Huerta was an experienced union organizer. Together, they co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) in 1962, which later became the United Farm Workers of America.
Huerta led a national grape boycott in protest against dangerous pesticides and her work led to the adoption of safer grape management practices. Also, she negotiated the first farm worker collective bargaining agreement to secure better work conditions and wages.
Huerta and Chavez became allied and transformed their organizations from workers' rights organizations into a union as a result of a series of strikes in 1965, when the mostly Filipino farmworkers of the AWOC in Delano, California, initiated a grape strike, and the NFWA went on strike in support. As a result of the commonality in goals and methods, the NFWA and the AWOC formed the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee on August 22, 1966. The organization was accepted into the AFL–CIO in 1972 and changed its name to the United Farm Workers Union.
The NFWA participated in voter registration activities, sit-ins, and fought for just wages, improved living conditions, and medical protection. Huerta also coordinated nationwide lettuce, grape, and wine boycotts in the 1970s and her work efforts led to the 1975 Agricultural Labor Relations Act which recognized the rights of California farmworkers to collectively bargain.
According to the UFW’s website the United Farm Workers has achieved historic gains for farm workers. Among them are:
The first genuine collective bargaining agreement between farm workers and growers in the history of the continental United States, beginning with the union contract signed with Schenley vineyards in 1966.
The first union contracts requiring rest periods, toilets in the fields, clean drinking water, hand washing facilities, protective clothing against pesticide exposure, banning pesticide straying while workers are in the fields, outlawing DDT and other dangerous pesticides, lengthening pesticide re-entry periods beyond state and federal standards, and requiring the testing of farm workers on a regular basis to monitor for pesticide exposure.
The first union contracts eliminating farm labor contractors and guaranteeing farm workers seniority rights and job security.
Establishing the first comprehensive union health benefits for farm workers and their families through the UFW’s Robert F. Kennedy Medical Plan.
The first and only functioning pension plan for retired farm workers, the Juan de la Cruz Pension Plan.
The first functioning credit union for farm workers.
The first union contracts regulating safety and sanitary conditions in farm labor camps, banning discrimination in employment and sexual harassment of women workers.
The first union contracts providing for profit sharing and parental leave.
Dolores Huerta currently has about 15 honorary doctorates.
On November 17, 2015, Dolores Huerta was bestowed the Order of the Aztec Eagle, the highest decoration a foreign national can receive from the Mexican government. Huerta was lauded for her years of service helping the Mexican community in the United States fighting for equal pay, dignity in the workplace, and fair employment practices in the farms of Northern California.
Huerta received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama on May 29, 2012.
Huerta was named one of the three most important women of the year in 1997 by Ms. magazine.
She was an inaugural recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights from President Bill Clinton in 1998.
In 1998, Ladies' Home Journal recognized Delores Huerta as one of the '100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century', along with such women leaders as Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, Rosa Parks, and Indira Gandhi.
Huerta was conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from California State University, Northridge on May 29, 2002.
On September 30, 2005, she became an honorary sister of Kappa Delta Chi sorority (Alpha Alpha chapter – Wichita State University).
In May of 2006 Delores Huerta received an honorary degree from Princeton University in recognition of her numerous achievements.
In the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Huerta formally placed Hilary Clinton's name into nomination.
Also in 2008, Huerta received the "Maggie" Award, the highest honor of the Planned Parenthood Federation, in tribute to their founder, Margaret Sanger.
In 2008 the United Neighborhood Centers of America honored Delores Huerta with its highest individual honor, the Jane Addams Distinguished Leadership Award at its National Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.
She was awarded the UCLA Medal, UCLA's highest honor, during the UCLA College of Letters and Science commencement ceremony on June 12, 2009.
Huerta was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by Mount Holyoke College, where she delivered the commencement address, on May 21, 2017.
Huerta was honored by California State University, Los Angeles in October 2017 with its highest honor, the Presidential Medallion.
Four elementary schools in California and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma; one school in Fort Worth, Texas; and a high school in Pueblo, Colorado, are named after Delores Huerta.
A middle school in the major agricultural city of Salinas, California, which has a dense population of farm workers, was named in 2014 after Delores Huerta.
Huerta received the Ripple of Hope Award from the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights in 2020.
Pitzer College, in Claremont, California has a mural in front of Holden Hall dedicated to her.
In July 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law AB 2455, by Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, designating April 10 each year as Dolores Huerta Day.
The intersection of East 1st and Chicago streets in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights is named Dolores Huerta Square.
In Fort Worth, Texas, a portion of State Highway 183 is named in honor of Huerta.
Asteroid 6849 Doloreshuerta, discovered by American astronomers Eleanor Helin and Schelte Bus at Palomar Observatory in 1979, was named in her honor.
During the month of March Ujamaa Cooperative Farming Alliance, and Ujamaa Seeds are honoring Wangari Maathai, Delores Huerta. Winona LaDuke, andVandana Shiva, four inspiring women who have made an enormous difference in agriculture, environmental activism, and more. Hopefully their stories inspire you to honor the Earth and preserve it for future generations.
For the week of March 5 - 11, we honor and feature Dr. Wangari Maathai.
Dr. Maathai Maathai observed that rural Kenyan women were struggling to find adequate food, firewood, and water, because these resources were impacted by deforestation and insufficient rain.
As a biologists she recognized the links between food insecurity, ecological circumstances, and eroded soil conditions. Dr. Maathai encouraged tree planting to restore the degraded rural environment and reduce soil erosion.
“When we plant trees, we plant the seeds of peace and seeds of hope."
- Wangari Maathai
To reduce Kenyan rural poverty, in 1977 Dr. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement and grew a tree planting crusade nationwide to improve the environment and safeguard human rights. The Greenbelt Movement takes a bottom-up approach to community empowerment, environmental conservation, and improved livelihoods. The Movement is best known for planting 51 million trees, but it has many other projects as well, including protection of public lands from private land grabs, and training farmers in watershed-based practices to grow and harvest native fruits and vegetables suited to local conditions.
The movement’s achievements include succession training spread through communities and the Community Empowerment and Education program focused on the environment, natural resources, and civic empowerment. Dr. Maathai’s daughter, Wanjira Mathai, is on the board of the Green Belt Movement-US, which continues work in tree planting and water harvesting, climate change, mainstream advocacy, and gender livelihood and advocacy.
EARLY LIFE and EDUCATION
Dr. Wangarĩ Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri County in the central highlands of Kenya on April 1st, 1940. She spent much of her childhood in the rural Kenyan countryside and later began her higher education studies in the United States. She completed her Bachelor of Science in biology in 1964 at Mount St. Scholastica College, she continued her education at the University of Pittsburgh and completed a master's in biological sciences.
In 1971 Dr. Maathai became the first woman in East Africa to obtain a doctorate, receiving a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in veterinary anatomy. Dr. Maathai became a chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and served as an associate professor from 1976-1977 for the University of Nairobi.
Dr. Maathai was an active member of the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) from 1976-1987, she served as a chairman from 1981-1987. Dr.Mathaai introduced concepts of community-based tree planting to address community concerns about deteriorating environmental conditions in the region. She further developed this idea into the grassroots organization known as the Green Belt Movement.
ORGANIZATIONS & AWARDS
Dr. Mathaai held deep commitments to environmental conservation and development, she served many integral roles, such as:
Director, Kenya Red Cross (1973–1980)
Founding member, GROOTS International (1985)
Representative of Tetu constituency in Kenya’s parliament (2002–2007)
Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in Kenya’s ninth parliament (2003–2007)
In 2004 Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in leading the Green Belt Movement and for providing a peaceful and equitable methodology as it pertains to conservation.
Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest Ecosystem by the eleven Heads of State in the Congo region (2005)
Founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative (developed in collaboration with her sister laureates: Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Betty Williams, and Mairead Corrigan) (2006)
Co-Chair, Congo Basin Forest Fund (2007–2011)
Appointed to the Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group (2010)
Trustee of the Karura Forest Environmental Education Trust (2010)
Founder of the Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies (2010)
UN Messenger of Peace (2009–2011)
2004 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARDEE
In 2004 Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in leading the Green Belt Movement and for providing a peaceful and equitable methodology as it pertains to conservation. This is a significant achievement seeing how she was the first African woman to ever receive this award. The Nobel Prize Committee congratulated her for her accomplishments in promoting "sustainable development, democracy and peace."
Through the grassroots actions of Dr. Maathai, she successfully mobilized women and environmentalists to share collective, intersectional space — redefining the work of conservation forever. She was also noted for bridging the gap between local and global action, thus generating a holistic ecological perspective.
Closely associated with the cuisine of the American South, soul food is a celebrated feature of mainstream American foodways. Strongly influenced by the traditional practices of West Africans and Native Americans and originating in the southern regions of the United States, soul food is an American cuisine traditionally prepared and eaten by African Americans. Soul food originated with the foods that enslaved Africans in the Americas grew in their gardens along with the discarded foods given to enslaved people by their owners during the Antebellum period.
Through both necessity and creativity, enslaved peoples were able to transform these discarded foods into what some foodies today view as gourmet delicacies. As the United States during the 20th and 21st centuries has become a destination for many African and Caribbean immigrants, soul food today includes several traditional dishes from the global African diaspora.
CLICK on our SOUTHERN SOUL GARDEN link and begin or expand your Soul Food Garden this year.
