NEWS + EVENTS

Let’s make this off-season a time of farm reflection, making soup, and BODY RECOVERY!

Agricultural workers endure some of the highest rates of injury in the food system. While some of these injuries are a result of systemic and unsafe conditions, musculoskeletal injuries are also a result of mechanical and repetitive stress that can be mitigated with progressive mobility training. This session will overview muscle groups most susceptible to injury and overexertion through farm work, some of the systemic factors at play, and recommend exercises to prevent injury and increase mobility of these muscle groups.

Join us virtually on Thursday, November 19 at 4pm PT / 7pm ET where we will be joined by Melanie Canales of Colmena Movement, a movement practice for working class people centered on strength training and functional mobility.

REGISTER HERE

Facilitator Bio: Melanie Canales (she/they, ella/elle) was born in New Jersey, and has had the privilege of finding home over and over again wherever her work has taken her. Their experiences working as a beekeeper, land steward, and writer while also navigating chronic illness informs their work as a NASM-CPT. Melanie established their movement practice, Colmena Movement, in 2025 to empower working-class communities to come back to their bodies through functional mobility and progressive strength training, with an emphasis on managing occupational stressors. By taking a holistic and liberation-oriented approach to movement, Melanie supports you to get through the work you must, so that you can focus on the work you love. When not running Colmena Movement or advocating for farmers at her day job, Melanie can be found scribbling, doodling, and generally lolly-gagging with their grumpy dog.

RAFFLE! We will also be raffling a virtual or in-person (if based in central North Carolina) movement consultation with Melanie; this will include a conversation about your history, work, and movement goals, a movement assessment, and training recommendations customized to your needs and goals.

Accessibility information: This session will be facilitated in English and simultaneously interpreted into Spanish by Cooperativa Brujúlas. Chat will be translated by Jeanette Ramirez. ASL interpretation will be offered by RGC Access. Closed captioned will also be available.

Please note that Free School for Farmworkers sessions are reserved for farmworkers and those who work directly with farmworkers. This is not a space for traditional farm owners and operators.

*We define a farmworker as someone working on a farm they do not own, for or without pay, including interns, apprentices, cooperative or collective workers and aspiring farmworkers. If you have questions about whether you are eligible to participate, please contact Anita at anita@notourfarm.org

Free School for Farmworkers strives to create pockets of opportunity to skill share, connect and learn about parts of agriculture that can be overlooked, forgotten or hoarded due to the nature of working on farms under capitalism.

Co-hosted by Not Our Farm, SHALL, Colmena, and FairShare CSA Coalition.
Flyer designed by Olivia Wischmeyer