27Planting Leadership Seeds
Cheyenne Sundance is a greens and squash farmer who sells wholesale in Ontario. Cheyenne started Sundance Harvest, an ecological farm in southwestern Ontario in 2019. With a strong interest in incubators, community land trust and cooperative farming she co-founded Sundance Commons, a non-profit that provides the tools, long-term land access, markets, and training for new farmers historically-excluded from the agricultural sector. Sundance Commons provides all these resources at no cost to new farmers and aligns with the spirit of community land trusts. Aside from farming, Cheyenne likes puppet theatre and dancing at discotheques.
(Highlights from our interview, recorded July 26, 2023.)
I FOUNDED SUNDANCE HARVEST IN 2019, when I was 22. Founding the farm and forging that path has been difficult. The common suggestion was to find a mentor, but no one else was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I had to mentor myself, put together elements of what I needed and put those together. I went to farms that were doing winter greens and asked questions about winter greens, went to friends who were good communicators and asked how to become a better communicator. More recently, I went to Virginia and hung out with my friend Chris Newman, who runs a successful pasture-raised poultry operation. He mentored me on chicken production and helped me make a profit and loss sheet. I had to be realistic and figure out what my demographic wanted, so I went to farmers' ...