Big Black Brunch

🌻 FREE SEED & PLANT GIVEAWAY THIS SUNDAY, AUGUST 23, 2026!

🌿 Join us for the final week of our Seeds of the Future gardening experience and take home FREE seeds or a plant to start your own garden!

📅 Sunday
⏰ 1:00–3:00 PM
📍 Candlestick State Recreation Area 1150 Carrol Ave SF, CA 94124 (Community Garden Area)

Come learn, grow and build the future harvest with us! All ages are welcome. 💚

🪻 We’ve got Bed 1 almost completely planted and now it’s time to bring Bed 2 to life!

🐝 Join us next Sunday, August 23, 2026 from 1PM-3PM for Week 4 of Seeds of the Future and help us fill Bed 2 with herbs, host plants and seeds that support butterflies, bees and other beneficial insects. The flowers feed the butterflies, but the herbs help raise their babies!

🐛🦋 Pollinators across California are losing habitat, and the western monarch population has declined by 99% since the 1980s. This matters because pollinators help produce many of the fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and spices we eat every day.

🪴A garden patio or window sill planter box may seem small, but each pollinator-friendly space gives bees and butterflies another place to eat, rest, lay eggs and complete their life cycle. Together, we’re creating a healthier garden and helping protect the future of our food.

🧑🏿‍🌾👩🏾‍🌾👨🏾‍🌾 Come plant with us, learn something cool about Black innovators in agriculture and help finish our pollinator garden! At the end of the day, everyone will receive their own seed packet or plant to take home and start growing.

🌿 Urban gardens may be small, but together we can form important habitat corridors across San Francisco, giving pollinators places to eat, rest, reproduce and travel. So, let’s keep Building the Future Harvest together, one pollinator, one plant and one young environmental steward at a time. 🌱

🌱✨ Week 1 of Seeds of the Future was a buzz-worthy success! 🐝🦋

This week we explored the incredible world of pollinators and beneficial insects—from butterflies, hummingbirds, wasps, and native bees to the vital role each plays in growing the food we eat.

🍯 We even tasted and compared honey from Africa, Paris, Mexico, and Vallejo, California, discovering how flowers, geography, and climate create unique flavors from around the world.

Our attendees were introduced to our new Pollinator Garden:

🌸 Bed 1: Nectar & Edible Flowers
🌿 Bed 2: Herbs & Butterfly Host Plants

The flowers feed the butterflies and the herbs raise their babies. Together they create a thriving habitat that supports the entire butterfly life cycle.

💡 Fun Fact: Humans can be pollinators too!

One of history’s most important pollinators was 12-year-old Edmond Albius, an enslaved boy who discovered the hand-pollination technique for vanilla orchids. His innovation transformed vanilla into one of the world’s most valuable spices and helped launch a global industry that still depends on his method today.

🐝 Our two raised beds are already attracting bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds—and next week you’ll help us plant even more herbs and companion plants to make them even more vibrant! 🌎 NEXT SUNDAY: Seeds Across the Oceans.
We’ll explore how food, geography, migration, and culture shaped the fruits, vegetables, and herbs we enjoy today while uncovering more stories of innovation from around the world.

✨ Registration includes complimentary brunch bites!

🔗 Sign up through the link in our bio and grow with us.

🌱 Something special is growing at Candlestick State Recreation Area! 🌼🦋🐝

This August, Big Black Brunch is excited to launch BBB Harvest: “Seeds of the Future”, a FREE four-week garden series where youth, families, and community members of all ages will discover that every plant has a farm-to-table story!

Together we’ll explore:
🌎 The incredible journey of crops from around the world
🐝 Why pollinators are essential to our food system
🌿 How to grow and care for herbs, flowers, and pollinator gardens with the help of your local Lowe’s Garden Center
👩🏾‍🌾🧑🏿‍🌾 The science behind healthy ecosystems
🎨 Hands-on art, nature journaling, and garden projects
🌱 How gardens can nourish our bodies, strengthen our communities economically through entreprenership, and inspire the next generation of environmental stewards

We’ll also celebrate Black Business Month by recognizing that farming is one of human’s oldest professions and one of the first organized economic activities. Long before restaurants, grocery stores, or technology companies existed, people grew food, saved seeds, traded crops, and built communities through regenerative farming.

🪴 This program is designed for beginners and experienced gardeners alike, because no matter your age, there’s always something new growing in the garden.

🖤 A heartfelt thank you to our incredible partners OMI-CPP Candlestick Point State Recreation Area for helping make

BBB Harvest possible. Your support is helping connect our community to nature, healthy food, environmental education, and one another.

Together, we’re planting seeds that will grow for generations. 💚🌻

DAY 5 — Reclaiming Our History 🐎📜
(8 Years Strong | Anniversary & Community Roots)

The American West didn’t begin with erasure—but too often, that’s how it’s been told.

“People of African descent were present in California as early as the 1700s and made up a significant portion of Yerba Buena’s early population, contributing directly to the founding of San Francisco and the rise of its politics, land systems, and global trade—long before U.S. statehood.”
— Bivett Brackett, Founder

At Frontier & Field, we reclaim the full story of the West—one where wealth, power, and cities were shaped by cowboy cultures, horsemanship, and control of land and livestock.

The often-erased founding fathers and mothers of California’s frontier—including William Leidesdorff, Mary Ellen Pleasant, Pío Pico, Juana Briones de Miranda, Juan Bautista de Anza, and Manuel Nieto—amassed influence and wealth tied directly to land ownership, horse and cattle economies, trade routes, and port access. Their leadership helped transform Yerba Buena into San Francisco, a hub of maritime trade, global exchange, and frontier capitalism.

These Black leaders didn’t just ride alongside history—they rode at the front of it, shaping the economic foundations that made San Francisco a world-class city.

🐎 Frontier & Field: Black Cowboys from Gold Rush to Super Bowl LX
📍 Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
📅 February 4 | 5–8 PM
🎟 https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-02-04/frontier-field-black-cowboys-gold-rush-superbowl-lx-2026

To understand the future, we must reclaim who held the reins.

FOR A FREE COMMUNITY TICKET USE THE CODE: cowboyfree

DAY 3 — This Moment Matters ⏳🐎

“While the world celebrates, we’re choosing to reinvest in community—ensuring youth don’t pay the price for policy decisions beyond their control.”
— Bivett Brackett, Founder

This year isn’t just another moment — it’s a crossroads.

📚 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of Carter G. Woodson’s creation of Black History Month.

🧧Chinese New Year, 2026 is the Year of the Fire Horse 🔥🐴, a symbol of courage, movement, and bold transformation.

🏈 It’s also Super Bowl LX — the 60th Super Bowl — which brings billions in global attention, tourism, and spending to the Bay Area at a moment when San Francisco faces a historic budget deficit, deep cuts to youth services, and rising food insecurity—placing celebration alongside austerity. This contrast matters because the region hosting the world’s biggest stage was built by Black labor, Black entrepreneurs, and Black culture, much of which was erased from frontier narratives despite Black people making up a significant portion of California’s population before the Gold Rush. A Super Bowl hosted here demands we reckon with that buried history—and reinvest in the communities that helped build SF but continue to be underfunded today. Specifically, our youth are being asked to absorb the cost of multiple policy failures.

✂️ 35% cuts to DCYF grants and 40% cuts to the Human Rights Commission are stripping support from afterschool care, meals, mentorship, and youth-centered programs.

🥣 At the same time, federal SNAP cuts hit families who rely on these youth programs for daily nourishment.

Organizations like GLIDE are always expected to do more with less when systems fall short—feeding families, supporting youth, and holding community together.

🖤 We are choosing a different response — one that does not wait for government systems to realign with the moral imperative to equitably fund basic human needs. JOIN US https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2026-02-04/frontier-field-black-cowboys-gold-rush-superbowl-lx-2026