- I'm Madeline Hooper.

I've been gardening for over 20 years.

And of course, with gardening comes a lot of aches and pains.

So I finally decided that maybe I should find a fitness trainer to see if I could fix my problems.

And a fellow gardener introduced me to Jeff Hughes.

After working with Jeff, it dawned on me what would be more exciting than to travel all over America, visiting a wide variety of gardens and helping their gardeners get garden fit.

[upbeat music] Taking care of your body while taking care of your garden, that's our mission.

[upbeat music] So today we're going to Soul Fire Farm, which is in upstate New York, and they're all about creating a community that absolutely can sustain itself and eat healthy because there is sort of a lot of poverty in the area around them.

They've identified families that really could benefit tremendously from healthier food than they maybe could afford on their own.

And, let me get out my bag.

- [Jeff] Oh, here we go, the bag.

- Yeah, my bag.

So the woman who founded the farm is Leah Penniman.

She wrote this book called "Farming While Black."

Her insight here is that there's a whole community of people that have never been brought up with farming, that it could be a career.

It could be a life.

It's important to know where food comes from and how to eat correctly.

- Absolutely.

- So what this farm does is that they have lots of programs that they're developing, but one is for youth.

So they have these kids really from inner cities, they show the kids how to dig and put seeds in the ground.

And then at a certain point, something clicks in, and then they see that these kids are really connected to the ground.

- They just connect and go.

- Yeah, and the other lady who's a big part of this, is the woman we're gonna work with today, Brooke Bridges.

- Brook Bridges, okay.

- And Brooke is pregnant.

- Oh!

- So that's gonna be, - That'll be fun, yeah.

- So to celebrate that, - Oh, there's more.

- There's more.

In the bag is a t-shirt for you, and then this is a quote from Malcolm X, which I found really quite inspiring.

- [Jeff] "All revolution is based on land."

Yes it is.

That's great, it's a great shirt.

- So now let's use the land correctly to literally eat healthy.

[upbeat music] So here we are, Soul Fire Farm.

- That's a real farm.

- This is a real farm.

I'm really looking forward to meeting Brooke.

- [Jeff] I think that's her.

- [Madeline] Here she is.

- Hello.

- We finally get to meet in person.

How are you?

- Good, how are you.

I feel great.

- Hi, Brooke, Jeff.

- Hi, Jeff, nice to meet you.

- Nice to meet you.

- Brooke Bridges, Jeff Hughes.

- You look beautiful.

- Thank you.

- You do, look at you.

You've got a real belly.

- I know, it's definitely there.

- Well, we're so excited to be here.

I told Jeff a bit about the farm, but it would be nice to hear from you.

Tell us kind of big picture about Soul Fire Farm.

- Yeah, so Soul Fire Farm is a nonprofit organization, a non-profit farm, and it was co-founded by the Leah Penniman and Jonah Vitale-Wolff.

We drop off food to families that don't have access to fresh food.

So we deliver that food to them for free.

And then we also do educational programming.

So we have youth come onto the farm and learn all about the farm and the land, you know, in ways that they've never engaged with it before.

But we also do immersion programs that are week long.

And people come from all over the world really to stay here and learn about sustainable farming practices.

- Yeah.

- So this is a real educational situation here across the board.

- Yeah, that's really where we plug into this, you know, this movement and this mission is education, is teaching people how to grow their own food.

- [Madeline] So maybe tell us a little bit how you have the farm setup.

- Sure, yeah.

So like this half of the farm is our perennial plants.

So medicinal herbs, things like mint, you know, so they come back every year, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and then this half is all of our annual stuff.

You know, potatoes, collard greens, basil, chilies, kale, tomatoes, cabbage, you know, just a whole bunch of stuff.

And then we also have a lot of cultural foods.

So things like, okra and amaranth and things that you won't probably find in a grocery store around here because we wanna make sure that the food that we introduce to our community is culturally appropriate, you know.

So things like amaranth are, have a lot of history in the African diaspora, so, yeah.

- I didn't even know you could eat amaranth leaves.

- Yeah, yeah, you can eat the greens.

- Okay, so let's get into the garden - All right.

- Let's go.

- Great, yeah.

- All right.

- Yeah, we can start over section one and two.

- [Madeline] Terrific.

- [Jeff] Okay.

- [Madeline] So I see that you did something to keep the raspberries up.

- Yes, last year was the first year that we got these particular plants.

And I don't think we were expecting them to just burst as quickly as they did, but they were abundant and beautiful.

And so what we did just this past work and learn day was we put in these trellises.

So these are like called t-posts, and you just have to.

- [Madeline] These big metal posts.

- Yeah, you have to use this like big hammer thing that kind of looks like a battering ram, like a tiny one.

And it's very loud.

You have to like wear ear muffs.

You have to protect your ears, and we'll put those into the ground.

And then we use twine, like if you can see on either side of the raspberries, there's twine to hold the plants together.

- Yeah, this is really.

- So, you know, obviously that makes it so that they're not so wily.

Cause they will just sprawl and sprawl and be really bushy.

And that makes it really hard to harvest.

- Yeah, and that's cool that you can kind of pick up the twine.

- Right, and then it makes it, you know, the more contained it is, the easier you can access the raspberries.

So you don't lose any that, you know, you might overlook if everything's bushed out.

- You can get down below.

- [Brooke] Yeah, exactly.

- [ Madeline] They're really great.

It's great.

- [Brooke] And they're more productive that way.

- And they look great next to the mint.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

- I bet you could figure out a drink to have mint in Jeff.

- Raspberry mint.

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And so this.

- It could make a big combination.

- This mint actually too, we worked on it the same day, harvesting it and then stringing it up and drying it for our tea.

We have two rows there, two rows here, I think a couple rows of different kinds of mint down there, and we use these herbs, which are perennials that come back every single year for our teas.

So we have one that's like mint, mint tea, where it's just like mint and then a different kind of mint and another kind of mint.

And that's what we use this one for.

And so you just, you know, snip it off.

It loves getting a haircut.

Smell it, taste it, you know.

- [Madeline] Smells divine.

We always ask the kids and participants to taste it and smell it because it's really, it's great.

- And because they're organically grown, so you can eat it right from the ground.

- Exactly, exactly.

- Which is nice.

- You don't even have to wash it.

- I have nice breath now.

- You do, well, I can smell it from here.

- So when you have these learning days, do you just sort of have everybody do the tasks that are on hand that day?

Like what you wanna do?

There isn't a prescribed like, you know, 101, this is what you have to learn about connecting to the ground.

- Right, so during our work and learn days, Leah, since she's the farm manager, she'll, you know, outline everything that we need to do that day.

But when we have our immersion programs, we do some of that as well.

So like our hands on the land, you know, one day it's not gonna be strawberry harvesting.

It'll be planting or transplanting.

But we also do specific things on those, during those programs that are like action planning, and you know, soil testing and like some specific things that we just want everybody who comes for that week long immersion to know about your farming.

- [Madeline] Don't you love Hands on the Land?

- [Jeff] I love that.

- [Madeline] I just love that.

I mean, that says everything really.

- [Brooke] Yeah.

- Really, it's fantastic.

- Yeah, they come up with some really great names.

Soul Fire Farm is a good name.

- Soul Fire Farm started maybe the whole good name thing, a new trend.

- [Brooke] Yeah, yeah.

- I love walking through this, it's-- - Magical, like this beautiful corridor.

- I must tell you that, you know, we bought some of your tea.

- You did?

- Yes, online.

- Great.

- Yes, and we didn't get a chance to make it.

I didn't share it with Jeff yet.

- I'll be over.

I'll be over for some tea.

- Yeah, I love that you're trying it.

- But they're beautifully packaged.

So they look like the tea is gonna be delicious.

I thought that was very well done.

- Yeah that's all made with love.

[upbeat music] - [Brooke] Okay.

- So what's in that tray?

- So this is Chinese cabbage, and now it's coming to the hardening off table.

So this table is where we put all of our seedlings once they're about ready to be planted.

And the reason why we do this is because we want them to get kind of acclimated to the weather, you know, prior to coming directly out of the greenhouse and straight into the ground.

But we will leave those ones here to get acclimated, but we can plant these.

We'll paint the collard greens.

- Great.

[upbeat music] So now we get to plant.

- [Brooke] Yes.

- [Madeline] This is exciting.

Is this the right place?

- Yep, stop right here.

Yeah, so the first thing I'm gonna do is actually remove this mulch.

So the mulch that we have is brown paper.

Like you can see this brown paper, underneath like craft paper and straw.

And so the reason why we do that is because we don't till our beds.

Putting the brown paper in the mulch, it helps suppress weeds.

And it also helps provide nutrients.

You know, the straw will break down and biodegrade.

The paper will also break down and biodegrade, and then it also retains moisture.

So it just helps keep everything together.

But the voles love it because it provides a perfect hiding space.

- They can go under.

- Yeah, they can go under, and they'll just like sneak underneath and just eat the whole plant, so.

- Is this a roll?

You buy just rolls of the paper.

- Yeah big giant roll of the paper.

- It's so clever.

I've never seen this used before, Brooke.

I think this is great.

- Yeah, it's great.

- 'Cause look it, you have no weeds!

- [Brooke] Yeah, you know, we get little ones that pop up here and there usually in the holes.

And now that we're exposing it, we'll get some more, but hopefully these will get big enough.

But I'm gonna rip this up because we want to not give the voles any places to hide.

- I can help push these under.

- Yeah, we're just gonna push one side to one side, and then this side over here.

And that'll just give us some space there.

All right.

So if you wanna pass me that.

- [Madeline] Tool.

- Hori hori.

Thank you, this is one of my favorite tools.

So brassicas need to be planted about 12 inches apart.

And so I just open up a little hole, and then, you know, one directly across, and this is about 12 inches long.

So I just lay that down, another one there.

With that down, we can do one more there.

Across and across.

- The soil looks great.

- Yeah, see and the soil is so rich.

You see there's a bunch of earthworms here, and that's because of the mulch.

We don't till here.

You know, it's an ancestral way of farming, no tilling.

So we're not turning up the soil, killing our amazing worms.

- I think that's so cool.

- You know, killing all the microbiome that's like in the soil that keeps it breathing and alive.

Yeah, so now I'm gonna just take the hose.

We like to just like pre.

- You pre-water?

- Yeah, we pre-water the hole 'cause we don't do irrigation all the time, you know.

- Right, this is your irrigation.

- So that's our little irrigation line.

- It's like a drip hose.

- Yeah, exactly, it's drip tape.

And if you wanna pass me.

- Yes.

- A collard, so these little things, we don't like to use a lot of plastic, but the voles are killing our plants.

So these we put, we wrap around this so that we can, we hope to, you know, keep the voles from being able to bite into them.

And now that the soil is open, they're less likely to like hop over it.

They can't see.

They're blind, but underneath the mulch, you know, they can reach it much easier with their little tunnels.

So, and then I just press it into the hole.

Press the soil around it.

And that's kind of it.

- I've never seen that kind of planting where you're planting into such a wet hole.

It really looks inviting for the plant.

- It is, it helps them, you know, just get established better.

And then we don't have to do an immediate watering right afterward.

- That's very cool.

- So I have a garden fit tip here that it's not actually to tell you something.

It's to tell you that you're doing it.

- Oh.

- These are so raised up that your feet are much lower than your knees.

So if we were on flat ground, that would really be killing your knee.

But the fact that this is so far up, you don't complain about your knees because you're not doing anything to hurt 'em with your feet so low and your knees so high.

This is helpful.

- Yeah, and raised beds, you know, that's an ancestral practice.

There are many ancestral, you know, cultures in Africa who use raised beds because they're just better for the soil.

You know, it reduces erosion and runoff.

- [Madeline] This is what they call black gold.

- [Brooke] This is black gold.

This is it.

- [Jeff] Nice looking dirt.

- [Madeline] You can't get better than that.

- Yep, soil captures carbon from the atmosphere, so it helps with climate change.

And so that's one of the primary reasons why we farm this way.

Healthy soil, healthy earth, healthy people.

- [Madeline] Great.

We'll come back and see it completely mature.

- [Jeff] Absolutely.

[soothing music] Brooke, I really enjoyed the tour you gave us, and everything that you're doing here, the kids that come in and so forth, and you're gonna be a great mom.

- Thank you.

- With all the stuff you do, you know, the seeding and all the walking around and spoofing over and everything, what are some key parts of your body that just bother you a little bit or aches and pains?

- Yeah, so I think, you know, especially in the greenhouse, primarily it's my back.

And then occasionally my hips will hurt.

I also find that my feet hurt, which I think might be something that, I don't know if we can fix that, but.

- We can fix that.

- Okay.

[both laughing] But yeah, I think those are the primary things.

And then I think that'll probably balance out my upper body because occasionally I'm crunching 'cause I just don't know how to get comfortable.

- Okay, so I saw every single one of those things you just described, and its a really easy fix.

To understand where it's coming from is the fix.

- Right.

- Basically your body is stuck in a very restrictive environment, that corridor that you walk down and then the wheelbarrow.

Now the corridor gets smaller, and you gotta go in between the handles of the wheelbarrow and you have to bend over and you have to do that, and that's where a lot of this comes from in the center.

Then of course you're pregnant.

So you have a belly that's kind of in the way, and it's naturally restricting some movement.

And then you're wearing rubber boots.

You can buy $500 rubber boots, but they're still rubber boots.

They feel good on your foot, but your ankle is not able to do what it likes to do.

And I was watching you as we were walking.

When somebody doesn't let their foot finish the roll when they're walking, like you have great posture, you're upright, but your ankle doesn't get to finish the roll, so you end up picking your foot up prematurely.

So you're taking smaller steps.

You're coming down on your foot instead of moving and rolling.

On days that you don't think you're gonna be in deep mud or anything, if you can find the low cut ones so that your ankle is not stuck here, it can actually, - Flex, yeah.

- It can actually flex a little bit when you're doing things.

There's this old saying, listen to your body when it whispers so it won't have to scream at you, and it's starting to talk louder, right?

Also, I noticed you got a lot of curve in your lower spine.

- Yeah.

- What's happening is your hips aren't lining up straight.

In a good, perfect world, your knee, your hip, and your armpit should be in a line.

And yours are a little bit like this.

You're just a little forward, but what you're doing to compensate then, instead of going to this hinge, you're going to your lower back, and you're pulling yourself up.

So in a way, instead of these being lined up and you being upright, you're here, but you're right here, and you're digging into this.

And that happens a lot with people that are pregnant, that's called your hip flexor.

And I wanna give you some stretches.

If you're aware that you're correcting it, it's like there's two hinges.

You have a hinge here and a hinge here, just that you're not correcting it here, that you're correcting it here.

That would change everything.

Because when you allow yourself to be in a shortened position, your body adapts to it.

And what it's adapted to is these little movements.

And it's getting really good at that.

But what happens is you follow comfort.

Those little movements when you do them small, they're even more comfortable, and they're even more comfortable.

And so it's so uncomfortable to even go back to where you were before.

It's like a little rabbit hole you go down.

- Right, yeah.

- So what I wanna do now is just go through some exercises.

So if you don't mind, you can take your boots off and just put them out of the way.

We're gonna work right here.

And so we're gonna do a little something here.

Step out just a little bit away from the bench.

And I'm going to fake your balance.

Just put your foot back there on the bench and let your knee hang dead.

So it's just comfortable that you feel, you automatically feel that stretch right there.

Now just start pushing your hip forward, but don't let your body get involved.

You can even have, dump down a little bit with your body and keep pushing your hip forward.

There, take that right knee and just bend it a little bit there.

Now by this leg going forward, you're keeping your pelvis in neutral, and you're causing it, you feeling that stretch?

And it should be tight.

You have good balance there.

How good of balance do you have?

Are we good here?

Because I want you to take your arms.

I want you to come all the way above your body and reach up high.

So now you're stretching all the intercostal muscles and your ribs.

Your whole body is reaching up, and you can pull on that hip.

The further you take your arm up, the more you're gonna feel that stretch on that hip.

- Right.

- Reach tall, and then bring them down and grow tall as you bring them down.

Just like you're swimming through water and just relax for a minute and feel that.

And we'll go up one more time.

Way back, pull back behind you so that when your arms get up there, that they wind up back where your ears are.

Pull back, stretch, stretch those ribs and down around.

Good and keep all your weight on that foot.

So you can pick that one up.

Set it down slowly.

Good, and now just feel your body.

And you just opened up a lot of little tight places from all the wheelbarrowing and digging and everything.

You're always going down.

And it just needs a little bit of this.

Whether it's while you're working or whether it's just at the end of the day, the beginning of the day, just to balance it out.

Balances is the key here is, if that's what you're gonna do when you work, when you're not working, try to find a little bit of time to do the opposite, and then that leaves it not just here all day, this, you know.

- Today was wonderful.

We love being on the farm with you and seeing everything that you're growing and seeing how authentic it is.

I mean, not only your respect for the ground and the sustainable things that you practice, but just that, you know, you're not worried about how it looks.

You worried about what you're growing.

I find that just so impressive.

- Yep, we're one amongst, you know, a network of beautiful farms doing this work.

- And you had your fix.

- I did.

- How did that go?

- It was great.

I'm really excited to, you know, move my body in safer, more comfortable ways.

- So all that stuff, I unloaded on you, you know, your hips, your back, your ankles, all that.

Did that process?

Did that make sense?

- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I never thought about my ankles being constricted in my shoes.

Like that never crossed my mind.

- I'm not actually fixing your problems.

I'm teaching you how not to cause them.

That's why it takes about four weeks because as you stop doing things, that restricting your ankles, restricting your hips and so forth, then it just stops hurting.

- Yeah, it's gonna make a huge difference.

You'll see, so what does she have to do?

- Well, you know, we talked about, you have to do the stretches three times a day, and I need a promise, you have to do this for four weeks, so when we come back, there's not only something new growing in the garden and something bigger growing in you, but your body's going to feel better because of the way you've been treating it.

- Yeah, I can do that.

- All right, so we have a deal?

- Yep, we have a deal.

- Enjoy.

- [Brooke] Thank you, thank you so much.

[upbeat music] - I was very impressed when we went to Soul Fire Farm and met Brooke that you noticed immediately that she was living in very restricted areas.

- Yeah, you know, talking to her and then walking through that seed house with that narrow aisle, and she's walking around in those boots, and her ankles couldn't move, and on top of all that-- - She was pregnant.

- Yeah, Brooke's restrictions were in her ankles and her hips and her core.

And I gave her stretches and exercises to alleviate all of that.

- Those would help all gardeners because gardeners are always in restricted places.

So do you have more ideas of what they could do to kind of keep their body not light?

- Yeah, well, for the hips to start with, one thing I do with people, we do the exercise, it's called hopping the fence.

- Yes.

- So the way you start is just simply taking a long step.

Don't just take a short step, really relocate your body somewhere else.

And then you add the fence, and you take your leg over the fence.

You just hop the fence.

Now to keep from swinging the arms all over the place, simply think of carrying the picnic basket over the fence.

Do you have anything shorter?

Yeah, sure, we can switch that out with a two foot tube.

- Well, that's a nice height.

That's like the height of a wastebasket.

- Exactly, yeah.

You can do this in the office.

You can, you don't have to have tubes to do this.

Now I also said stuff for the shoulder.

You know, you want to, you want to work the range in your shoulder.

So there's something we do when we have shoulder days.

- Six points.

- Six points, exactly.

So go ahead, you bring it up, so out, and then up, and you want knuckle to knuckle, and you're just working the range of the shoulder.

So you're working a certain range, and now I'm going to do just the opposite.

When you come up, I'm gonna go out instead of forward.

When you go out, I'm gonna come in, and I'm gonna get to the top from a different place and back down.

So we call it six points simply because it's one, two, and three, and then back down from a different direction, four, five, and six.

- So these warm-up exercises.

About how many times a day should you do them?

- If you're having shoulder or hip restriction, you know, once a day, twice a day, something like that.

[upbeat music] - It's so nice to be back on the farm.

And now I can't wait to see how Brooke looks.

- Yeah, I can't wait to see how she feels.

- [Madeline] I know, she told us to meet her in this tunnel.

- [Jeff] There she is.

Hey, Brooke.

- Oh, hello.

- Still working, huh?

- Always.

Hi.

- It's so good to see you.

- Nice to see you.

- Look how great you look.

- So I'm dying to hear, how are your feet?

How's your back and all that good stuff?

- They're good.

Yeah, my feet, you know, I know I'm wearing these boots, but as you can see, it's quite rainy, and it has been, but when I'm not wearing these, when it is sunny, I am wearing sneakers.

My feet hurt way less.

- And the lower back?

- Yeah, lower back feels good.

The hip flexor stretches have been helping a lot.

I'm having a lot less pain there.

- Well, that's great news.

I'm really glad it helped.

- Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

- So now that you've hardly grown.

- [Brooke] Yeah.

- Maybe we should go out and see how the plants that we planted have grown.

- [Brooke] Yeah, let's do it.

- Maybe go take a look?

- Yeah, they're all really big and healthy and surviving.

Here we are.

- [Madeline] Here we are.

- Are these ours?

- Here's the section, yeah.

- [Madeline] Our babies.

- The little collard green patch that we planted in between the kale and the broccoli.

All survived which is very exciting.

- [Madeline] Really good.

- Yeah, they're healthy.

When you harvest, do you just pull it out and take it in and cut it up?

- No, you actually just harvest it from the bottom.

Yeah, and you just snap them off.

And if you see dead ones, trimming them off is a really good idea.

Then all of their energy, isn't going to-- - [Jeff] To that.

- It's going to regrowing the plant.

- [Madeline] Get more leaves.

So speaking of leaves.

- Yes, speaking of leaves, I remember you said that you wanted to learn how we make our mint teas?

- Yeah!

- I would love to learn that.

- Yeah, so we can do that.

Let's go to the kitchen.

- Let's go.

- I'll show you what we've got.

- So remember when we walked through the mint field the last time we were here.

- Yeah, I think I was tasting while we were here.

- Yeah, and it tasted delicious.

So what happened to those leaves?

- So I took some, I harvested it.

I put them in a bunch, and then I hung them to dry.

Then you take a mesh strainer, and we put it over this bowl, and then we just take some of these leaves off and you just put them in here and you just rub your hands.

- I wanna garble.

Can I garble?

- Can you garble?

- [Jeff] Can I garble, Brooke?

Can I?

- You can garble if you want to.

And then this is what you put into your little diffuser.

- [Madeline] Okay.

- Here you go.

- [Madeline] We're passing the garble.

- [Jeff] Okay, oh, this is really dry.

- Yeah, and it can be drier than that, but this is what we got.

I wanted to show you today.

Yeah, you really get in there.

- It's very delicate for a strong person.

He's just like press those leaves.

- And my hand smells good.

- [Brooke] There you go.

- You do, it just is amazing the scent that it gives off.

- And then you just put them in.

- [Madeline] Put the tea in.

- [Brooke] Put them in there, and then put the top back on.

- That seems simple enough.

- Well, let's go have some tea.

- Let's get some more of that tea.

- [Brooke] Sounds good.

- We finally get to have our tea.

- [Brooke] We get to have the tea.

- [Jeff] Yes, we do.

- [All] Cheers.

- And that is fresh.

- Oh, that's delicious.

- It is so good.

- So good.

- But you know what else is great?

It stopped raining finally.

- I know.

Thank goodness.

- We've had such a good time.

- Me too.

- It's been just a fantastic second day.

- Yeah, yeah, it has.

- [Madeline] It's been great.

- [Jeff] When you were talking about the kids that come in and the teaching that you guys do here, that is just needed worldwide.

- [Brooke] Yeah, I'm really lucky.

Leah and Jonah have created a beautiful organization.

- [Madeline] Soul Fire Farm is a beacon.

It is a really great example of how communities can really be self-sustaining.

[upbeat music]