A free virtual event celebrating Black connections to nature in Colorado past and present. Join us for an agricultural reunion to acknowledge and amplify the Centennial State’s Black urban and rural farming communities.

** Click HERE to register for free this event **

Featured Storyteller

Alice Craig McDonald, descendant of The Dry in Manzanola, Colorado

Alice Craig McDonald, 87, is a former resident of the now abandoned farming community known in Colorado as The Dry. Black homesteaders settled the area in 1917, which once had 700 Black residents.

McDonald was born Dec. 4, 1934, in the area south of Manzanola, Colorado. After graduating high school in 1952, she attended Colorado State Teacher’s College (University of Northern Colorado), graduating in 1956 with a bachelor’s degree in elementary secondary education. Her first teaching position was educating first-graders in Kansas City, Kansas, public schools. She returned to Colorado and worked as a substitute teacher with Denver Public Schools.

In September of 1959, she began a career in the Los Angeles Unified School District. There, she taught all grade levels – kindergarten through Community College. While teaching, she attended Pepperdine University and earned a master’s degree in business administration in 1975. After completing her education, she became an elementary school principal. She also attended UCLA, USC, Los Angeles and Long Beach State Universities, acquiring licenses to teach children with physical and learning disabilities. McDonald retired from the Los Angeles Unified School district in 1994 and returned to Manzanola. There, she used her lifetime teacher’s certificate from the state of Colorado to continue working as a substitute teacher.

Hear her riveting account of her lesser-known home in history and the farmland lessons she has applied and carried with her for decades.

Homecoming Moderator

Zephrine Hanson, founder of Hampden Farms

A former Air Force photojournalist, Zephrine Hanson spent 20 years in media communications and public relations. When she medically retired in 2004, she began her healing journey. In 2016, she moved to Denver with her husband and children to continue that journey. After completing a life-changing therapeutic and horticulture farm program for veterans, Hanson pivoted into the agricultural community, focusing on food security and entrepreneurship for underserved communities in the Denver metro area. She is active in Colorado organizations that center around mental health and wellness, food equity, security and sovereignty.

Stories From the Soil

Fatuma Emmad, co-founder, executive director and head farmer of FrontLine Farming

Emmad was born in Denver and raised in both Denver and Ethiopia. She has worked farming organic and heirloom vegetables on her own acreage as part of a land co-op, setting up farms for restaurants, and as farm manager for multi-acre community farms in Milwaukee and Denver. Before becoming a farmer, Emmad was a political scientist who engaged in issues affecting farming communities such as the push for genetically modified seeds across Southern and Eastern Africa. She believes in resistance by the world’s land caretakers to single solutions for crop productivity and seeks to work on reframing ideas of food security. She serves as president of Mile High Farmers and is a co-convener for Project Protect Food Systems Workers. She is also a lecturer in the Masters for Environmental Studies Program at CU Boulder.

Nadia Brooks, Environmental Learning for Kids (ELK) Urban Ranger and Eaglecrest High School sophomore

Brooks is an emerging environmental leader in her local community. The 16-year-old student participates in ELK’s Urban Ranger program. Through a partnership among the National Park Service, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, and ELK, the program is a youth employment opportunity that provides extensive educational and professional development experiences to underserved and underrepresented youth from the Denver metropolitan area. The program also increases hands-on learning for youth in its community. Along with the environment, Brooks loves storytelling and solving riddles.

Terrance K Boyd, founder and CEO of Wild Boyd Farm

Terrance K Boyd is owner and operator of Wild Boyd Farm – a grass-fed, hormone-free, pastured-grazed livestock farm. The young producer raises cattle, poultry and swine. Raised in Denver, Colorado, Boyd now lives in Matheson, Colorado, where his agribusiness provides for his family. During the pandemic, the farm expanded as a community necessity and modern example of how 21st-century farming can sustain in a digital economy. Boyd is one of the only Black farmers in his area. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Black farmers account for 1 percent of the country’s 3.4 million farmers.

Sounds From

Norma Johnson, poetic storyteller and racial justice facilitator

Johnson is healer, inspirationalist, poetic storyteller and racial justice facilitator. She brings a creative background into her distinctive presentation form of activism and education. Using oral forms of storytelling as a spoken word artist and playwright, Norma highlights stories of our shared humanity, history and heart. She collaborates with a dynamic range of organizations, institutions, faith communities, arts, civic group, and educational forums such as the highly regarded Annual White Privilege Conference.