Our PURPOSE
Rock Steady Farm is a queer* and trans led multiracial worker cooperative. We grow culturally meaningful foods, train Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (QTBIPOC) farmers, and catalyze structural and political change in the food system. We center QTBIPOC farmers in our work to build a liberatory future.
*Queer for us contains and includes multitudes of identities and expressions – lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, intersex, transgender and all expressions of our gender rebel siblings, including those who identify as gender non-conforming, non-binary and two-spirit.
Our VISION
Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color farmers are thriving.
Queer joy is abundant in rural spaces.
Everyone has access to culturally meaningful foods.
Wealth and resources are equitably distributed.
Physical and social infrastructure is abundant and interconnected.
There are no barriers to food sovereignty.
All our actions are grounded in reverence for the Earth.
Note: The above vision is to be presented in a spiral. Like below image. The statements here are listed starting from the center and moving outwards.
Our VALUES
Respect, care and reverence for the natural world around us, including land, soil, microorganisms, and all life.
Equitable access to nourishing, high quality, nutritious, locally grown culturally meaningful food for everyone.
Respect and care for complex, intersectional experience in our multi-racial, cross-class, gender-diverse, intergenerational community.
A relational culture of care, connection, curiosity, and play to uplift our team’s rich diversity of identities, experiences and expressions.
Joyful inclusive learning and empowering education that celebrates QTBIPOC wisdom.
Our WORK
We were founded in 2015, and manage a total of 12 acres in Millerton, NY. In addition to our holistic, sustainable farming and land stewardship practices, we increase equity in the food system through food access in the Hudson Valley and NYC, and affirming training and support to enable queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color (QTBIPOC) farmers to thrive. Our work is grounded in close community partnerships with food pantries, mutual aid projects, peer farms, advocacy organizations and local and regional networks.
QTBIPOC farmers lack representation and safe, affirming spaces to exist and learn within the agriculture industry today. Food insecurity continues to be a public health crisis in the Hudson Valley and NYC. As climate change progresses, the importance of food sovereignty and community-based foodways - particularly for marginalized populations - cannot be understated. Through our various farmer training and support programs, we disrupt and address this web of interconnected systemic barriers by training and supporting QTBIPOC farmers and their ventures to ultimately help feed our communities.
We believe that all people have a right to healthy, delicious produce. Our vegetables feed our sliding scale CSA, which includes no-cost and subsidized shares made possible through our Food Access Fund. We distribute 70% of all food grown for food access, through solidarity shares as well as wholesale distribution to food pantries, community organizations, and mutual aid projects. In 2024, we plan to distribute over 35,000 pounds of project for food access.
Our work is grounded in close community partnerships with other land based projects, neighbors, and non-profits who are also working to build equity in our region and beyond. We are increasingly finding our role in advocacy for food and land sovereignty, and the multitudes of intersecting issues, both locally and globally. We utilize oral history and storytelling through our documentary films to amplify the stories and perspectives of QTBIPOC farmers.
Since the beginning, our work has been community-driven and community-accountable. Members of our staff come from and thus reflect the communities we work to serve. Every season, we welcome community members to the farm to connect them to where their food comes from. Community celebrations such as Pride and autumn-time convenings and festivals ground our work, connect our collaborators and partners, and nourish our community.
More about us: Farmer Bios | In the Press | Job Opportunities
“Rock Steady was created with a vision that as farmers, we can — and must — create a new paradigm in a deeply unjust food system and escalating climate crisis.”
