The most well-known of the migratory butterflies, the Monarch, makes an epic journey each year between Mexico and the United States, on the North American continent. The butterflies, and then their children, follow a route that is linked to the basic needs of every live being: food, shelter, and warmth.
Favianna Rodriguez, artist and co-founder of the migrationisbeautiful project explains their use of the Monarch Butterfly to support justice for migrants: “To me, the monarch butterfly represents the dignity and resilience of migrants, and the right that all living beings have to move freely.”
Migration is part of 3PH founder Gail Taylor’s agricultural history. “I didn’t grow up with family members who farmed. My grandfather was part of the Great Migration, a time in which more than 6 million Blacks left the rural south in search of a better life and a more dignified source of employment in the industrial north. He left the cotton fields of Mississippi for the railroad yards of Illinois, and he discouraged his children from toiling in the fields for the benefit of others as he had. Young Black farmers of my generation who don’t grow up in farming families must make an intentional decision to come back to the land. We are the Return Generation, smaller in number but equally determined to find dignity in our search for nourishing food while at the same time being able to pay for the roof over our heads.”
The Monarch Butterfly is not only a symbol of migration. People play a role in the species’ survival by helping to feed, nurture, and offer respite along their journey. We extend hospitality at our farm by choosing plants that attract butterflies, pollinators, and a wide variety of beings that make up a healthy ecosystem. We also facilitate a place where human beings are nurtured. Garden tasks are a vehicle to still your mind and eventually be at peace. We, the people of the Three Part Harmony Farm community, are like the Monarch Butterfly and the farm itself is like a field of milkweed. As travelers on a journey, we are drawn to the farm’s food, shelter, and warmth and renewed by the companionship of the other butterflies who are on the same path. Here there are no borders, no nations, just flowers.