At Ancestral Healing Farm’s Harvest Festival in Orinda, ‘Land Is Medicine’

Freedom Community Clinic is all about connecting people with ancestral healing approaches from Indigenous, African and Asian traditions. At their two apothecaries, one in Fruitvale and one in downtown Oakland, they offer free and sliding-scale herbal remedies, massage services, workshops and community gatherings. And now, Freedom Community Clinic is getting ready to welcome the public to its newest resource: Ancestral Healing Farm.

The one-acre plot of land in Orinda is where the FCC team will grow herbs and teas for their apothecaries. Once a month it will host community work and learning days, plus special events. The farm’s first public offering is an Oct. 6 Harvest Festival, a day of celebration and education that centers on the theme “Land Is Medicine.”

“Black and brown communities have been systematically disconnected from the land, and we have been disconnected from our heritage and our histories,” says founder Dr. Bernie Lim.

“We at the clinic are all about helping people come back to themselves,” she adds.

Lim graduated from medical school at UCSF but became disenchanted with the inequities of the American healthcare system. Instead of following the traditional path to a residency with a hospital, she founded Freedom Community Clinic in 2019. Her team’s philosophy is whole-person, trauma-informed wellness that takes into account physical, mental and spiritual health. In addition to its free offerings for the community, FCC now serves Oakland schools and provides healing services to violence interrupters in the city’s Department of Violence Prevention.

The farm is the latest expansion of its vision. At the Harvest Festival, there’ll be a farm-to-table lunch, tincture-making stations, vendors and a panel featuring local beekeepers, farmers and herbalists, all of whom are people of color.

“The land and the farm really is an opportunity for people to realize that a lot of the ancestral recipes and traditions and medicines of our mothers, our grandmothers and our families actually come from the land, and that we can actually cultivate a lot of those medicines for our health as well as the health of communities,” Lim says.

The Harvest Festival takes place at Ancestral Healing Farm (1000 Fish Ranch Rd., Orinda) on Oct. 6, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.