Featured Voices - Earth in Color

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Featured Voices

Contributed pieces exploring the various intersections of Blackness and Greenness

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@earthincolor.co

For a simple (and delicious) way to incorporate mo

For a simple (and delicious) way to incorporate more plants into your diet, look to legumes! Roasted chickpeas are versatile and can be used in dishes such as salads and rice bowls, or as a standalone crunchy snack. In fact, our EATS recipe for roasted chickpeas comes in seasoned, BBQ, and salt & vinegar—just like potato chips.

📸: @thegr8justinian

“I started loving the land at an early age in DC

“I started loving the land at an early age in DC, and I tried to get out as much as possible. I played little league baseball for a couple of years, just so that I could be on dirt for a while every week. I moved to West Virginia after eighth grade, and my friends in high school taught me what it was like to really grow up here—where everyone is in community with each other and the land. When I first got here, the land was something I had a connection to. It was a release and an escape, but I only saw it as property, a thing you have. What I came to realize is that the land here dictates a lifestyle, and at the same time, it’s your partner.

My mother had bought our land recently, and before we got there, it belonged to somebody else. If you live next to a river, you can’t control any part of it; when there’s high tide after snowmelt or heavy rain, the river is going to destroy lots of things that you don’t want to be destroyed. But the river also provides the subtle sounds that you love, good fish, clean water. It provides fertile land next to you, recreation, and peacefulness. I had to consume the land, through my eyes, nose, and ears, to understand that. I learned to coexist with the land.”

Read the rest of our interview with John Paul “JP” Castells and his mother Sheila by visiting the UNEARTHED tab on our website.

🎨: @kelssweetie

“If you’re not from the South, you may be unfa

“If you’re not from the South, you may be unfamiliar with boiled peanuts,” says Earth in Color founder @duurrl. “They are a soft and salty snack that takes me back to my childhood. All of my biological family is from South Carolina. And as a youth, I spent summers washing away the red clay that accumulated from a long day outside, getting ripe watermelons off the back of pickup trucks, and buying boiled peanuts from the flea market.”

Visit the EATS tab on our website to find the recipe for Cajun Boiled Peanuts and to read about Black people’s long history with this salty snack 🥜

Our Earth Curiosity story series goes deep on a ra

Our Earth Curiosity story series goes deep on a range of topics to uncover the often overlooked connections between science, innovation, nature, and Black communities. Our people have a long history of sustaining ourself through our connections to and deep knowledge of the natural world.
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First up: Oysters!

Did your mouth start watering while you were makin

Did your mouth start watering while you were making heart eyes at this photo? Make a beeline to the EATS tab on our website to get the recipe for this Dill Chickpea Salad sandwich.

📸: Justin Weathers (@thegr8justinian)

Have you listened to our new Radicle Sounds playli

Have you listened to our new Radicle Sounds playlist? This spring, we collaborated with Houston-based sound curator @by.womon on a playlist that embodies our intentions for this season: renew, rejuvenate, reroot/reroute.

"If I’m listening to “After the Party” or if I’m listening to “Dance Tonight” and then I switch over to “Rain” from the Sunday Service Choir and then I go listen to afrobeats, I can find an element of home in all of these different spaces," WOMON said about the Spring Radicle Sounds Playlist. "I just think it’s so beautiful that we, as Black people, exist all across the spectrum. We can do all of the things. There’s nothing that Black people cannot do, and music affirms that."

Listen to the entire playlist at the link in our bio 🎶

Ms. Sheila Coleman Castells and her son John Paul

Ms. Sheila Coleman Castells and her son John Paul “JP” Castells live in Eglon, West Virginia, a farming community right on the western border of Appalachian Maryland. They moved to their three-acre plot of land, which Ms. Sheila calls “the Holy Mountain,” after leaving their long-time home of Washington, DC. “It’s so rural that we have no street lights, only two stoplights, and most of our roads are made of gravel,” Ms. Sheila says about her home. “In the last census, our town had about 180 people.”

Visit the link in our bio to read the entire UNEARTHED story about this Black mother and son’s experience creating a home in the mountains of Western Virginia—and to check out all our other new pieces, of course!

If you’re craving a plant-rich snack that’s bo

If you’re craving a plant-rich snack that’s both salty and spicy, try our EATS Cajun Boiled Peanuts 🥜 This Southern staple has a rich history—in fact, boiled peanuts are actually the official state snack of South Carolina. Is your stomach rumbling?

Meet Demetri Broxton (@the_botanical_blasian), an

Meet Demetri Broxton (@the_botanical_blasian), an artist and plant expert with over 200 plants. As Demetri explains in the excerpt below, his love of houseplants is rooted in family history 🪴🌱

"My mother always kept our home filled with houseplants. She was born and raised in Louisiana, but her family moved to Oakland when she was twelve. One of her neighbors gave her a cutting of Dieffenbachia (Dumb Cane) before the family packed up their car for the long trip to California. My mom was able to successfully root the cutting and over the years, one plant became several new plants that filled our house. Dieffenbachia can grow as tall as ten feet, but we had standard eight-foot ceilings. So she would cut the tops of the plants and root them to make more. When I was twelve, my mom taught me how to cut the Dieffenbachia and propagate them. I still have that original plant and several of its offspring, so one could say I began collecting plants at the age of twelve!"

Check out the link in our bio to read the piece and explore our new website!

To celebrate Earth Month and our digital relaunch,

To celebrate Earth Month and our digital relaunch, we’re dropping some tees in two colorways: watercolors and fiddle leaf. In addition to representing the beauty of our connections to the Earth, these shirts are ethically sourced and made from 100% organic ring-spun cotton. And in order to reduce waste, we’re selling our tees through @everpresshq, a sustainable printing service that allows us to print only what’s needed and nothing more. Visit our new site to shop!

Welcome to Earth in Color! We are a creative studi

Welcome to Earth in Color! We are a creative studio and multi-layered storytelling platform dedicated to cultivating and nourishing community (both digitally and in-person) rooted in experiences that connect Blackness and Greenness.

Earth Day = Relaunch Day 🌱✊🏾🌍 🌈 I'm

Earth Day = Relaunch Day 🌱✊🏾🌍 🌈 I'm so excited to share that @earthincolor.co has just launched its new website—a digital home for Blackness and Greenness!
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I founded Earth in Color right after college, truthfully, not knowing what was ahead. I did know that I wanted to help my community deeply connect to the natural world and its healing and be reminded of our beautiful cultural connections to the Earth. These past three years have been exhilarating, exhausting, and expansive. So much has developed and shifted since 2019. We started as a festival, we dropped a print publication, and are now going digital. Through it all what’s remained the same is the mission to celebrate and uplift Blackness and Greenness.
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This new media platform is doing just that— through stories, recipes, artwork and much more soon. I may be biased but our digital home is truly a work of art. I encourage you to read the stories, cook the recipes, and join us. We are just getting started.
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And finally, I wanted to give a special shout-out to the audacious group of women—Nia, Justice, Cameron, Tiana, Amanda, Laurie, Sophie, Hali, Olga, Meisha, and Martha—whose strategic thinking, brilliant writing and editing, intentional designing, and unwavering spirits made Earth in Color’s evolution possible. 🌱💚
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#EarthDay2022 #EarthDay #EarthInColor

Happy Earth Day! Today, in addition to dropping a

We’re Inspired by @ttumie’s striking self-port

We’re Inspired by @ttumie’s striking self-portrait, which is the first in her two-part series entitled “Portraits of a Mad Black Woman.”

If more conventional outdoor activities like hikin

If more conventional outdoor activities like hiking or cycling aren’t for you, try bringing an indoors hobby outside! What are your favorite non-traditional outdoor activities?
📸: @walesbonner

We know spring just began, but we’re already dre

We know spring just began, but we’re already dreaming of summer harvests — like @mrs.wayincredible’s beautiful spread! 🌼🌱💐

It’s almost April! We’ve been sowing some seed

It’s almost April! We’ve been sowing some seeds and preparing for a busy springtime over here at Earth in Color 👀 What are you ready to harvest this season?
📸: @blackmenwithgardens
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#EICInspiredBy #farm #farming #farmers #nature #keepingitnatural #backtoournature #weoutside #naturephotography #photography #blackmen #harvest #earthincolor

It’s impossible to talk about Black history in t

It’s impossible to talk about Black history in the U.S. without also talking about Black geographies. Whether you’re talking about the great migration or redlining, our history is one shaped by our connections to land and place.
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#EICRadicle #radiclemagazine #earthincolor #intersectionalenvironmentalism #sustainabilitymatters #blackhistory #earth #nature #land #environmentalism #healing #blacksustainability

We’re Inspired By the stark beauty of this tree

We’re Inspired By the stark beauty of this tree against the turquoise blue sky witnessed by @evelyndragan.
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#EICInspiredBy #nature #art #keepingitnatural #backtoournature #nature #naturephotography #earthincolor #trees #naturephotography #tree

It’s just a few days until the official start of

It’s just a few days until the official start of Spring and we can’t wait to be soaking up the sun out in nature. How are you planning to embrace the outdoors this season?
📸: @najablu
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#EICInspiredBy #flowers #nature #keepingitnatural #backtoournature #weoutside #naturephotography #photography #blackwomen #flower #flowerstagram #flowerphotography #purpleflowers #earthincolor

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