Ve ve imagery is rooted in the natural world and is part of the enchantment.

Thelonius Cook’s interest in agroecology is shaped by sensibilities that run along a broad spectrum: deep spirituality on one end and advanced technologies on the other.  And that spectrum balances on a fulcrum that equates land with empowerment for black people.

The technical aspect is Cook’s extensive knowledge of ICT (information and communications technologies) which he applies to his life’s purpose: “to continue to develop and utilize my skills to help improve the lives of the global citizenry, including the poor, disadvantaged and other often excluded groups.”

The spirituality is ecological and stems from Cook’s African ancestors and other agronomists rooted in tradition like the Amish. The human-natural environment-soul connection — the ”world soul” connection is the “re-enchantment” element of this story.

In built environments of manufactured things, nature spirits often are the aliens.  But they thrive in Mighty Thundercloud Edible Forest.

A computer scientist whose mastery of information and communications technologies includes digital data analysis, Theolonius Cook makes empowering connections between spirit and technology.  ICT can make informed decisions, and develop strategies for sustainable economic development, environmental protection, and conscientious agriculture. For example, data on weather patterns, soil quality, crop health, and market prices can be collected through sensors, satellites, and other ICT tools, and analyzed to optimize farming practices, minimize resource use, and reduce environmental impacts.

Theolonius applied ICT to African agricultural and health initiatives when he worked in international development. However when we visited his farm on November 16, 2022, the ICT scientist’s most handy digits were his fingers which he easily sunk into the loose soil.

**Welcome weeds!** On Thelonius Cook’s farm, kale grows the best way: among weeds! No herbicides are used. ( Photo taken by the author, November 16, 2022)

We —  Ecollective editor Margaret Gray Bayne, her son, Miles, and myself — were learning about our “home farm.”  Theolonius Cook’s administrative base for the farm is in Hampton, VA, a short distance from our homes.

Mighty Thundercloud Edible Forest’s total acreage is 7.5 acres: the farm’s five acres on Virginia’s Eastern Shore and the 1.5 acre backyard of his home in Hampton on the western peninsula, about 63 miles away. His home’s backyard has smaller plots and a greenhouse.

The farm provides super healthy food to homes (“from dirt to doorstep” in CSA lingo) and farmers’ markets,  and uses practices which reduce carbon emissions and promote agroforesty. During our visit, Cook took us to a thicket on his farm that he calls the “bird sanctuary.”

The “super healthy food” description is not hype. Cook’s produce is exceptionally robust because he cultivates his soil to be rich in naturally occurring micronutrients.  Also crops begin to lose nutrition and flavor as soon as they are pulled from the ground and Theolonius makes quick deliveries to consumers.

Cook’s land justice concern motivates his plan to build a land-based community for people whose ancestors were forcibly removed from their land. The community will be centered on nearby land that Cook’s stepfather’s grandfather bought in the 1900s. The first visible signs of his community building plan are the structures made from industrial hemp that he’s building on his present land.

Theolonius Cook was born in Pittsburgh to musical parents. They named their son after the jazz pianist Theolonius Monk but spelled it without the second “o.”  Thelonius says that they saw Monk in a TV commercial. He was referring to a commercial for the Japanese automaker Nissan. The commercial featured Monk playing piano while seated in the driver's seat of a Nissan Maxima sedan.

The musician’s initial entry into mainstream American culture occurred with the February 28, 1964 Time magazine cover story on Monk.

Peering intently beneath a stingy brim hat, Monk was 43 years old at the time, the same age as his namesake when we visited Thunder Cloud farm in November 2022.

Theolonius moved with his parents and three siblings from Pittsburgh to Detroit.  When his father became abusive, his mother,  Vernadine, put the kids and a few belongings in the car and drove to stay with her sister in Hampton.

In Hampton, Vernadine met a good man named Hampton – James Hampton. They married and James became the one who Thelonius calls “my father,” not “my stepdad.”

Vernadine and James had a kitchen garden in their backyard in Hampton.  Thelonius and his sister had to work in the plot or sit clipping the string beans and shelling the bountiful peas that Vernadine froze.  Growing up during the dawn of computer games, Thelonius disliked garden chores. His future return to the land was portended when he was in college and was irked by having to buy greens in cans.

Think about all of the connections

After graduating in computer science from James Madison University, Thelonius Cook worked in ICT in this country, and earned a masters in the international, social, economic and environmental impacts of ICT at Royal Holloway, University of London.  In this graduate study, he says he learned to “think about all of the connections.”  That interdisciplinary thinking relates to spiritual ecology as much as it does to his academic study. A key to the reenchantment of the world is understanding that everything is interconnected on the physical level and unified within the nonphysical ground of being.

Cook applied his combined ICT knowledge and skills to development projects in five East African nations.  This experience included working for a MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) project in rural Tanzania where he established and managed a telecenter for an HIV clinic, traveled to MCC offices in Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia to implement ICT programs, and organized a conference in Nairobi for MCC staff and their partners in East African countries to facilitate the sharing of tools, resources, and knowledge. He also designed and implemented various MCC tech programs in Ethiopia.

He was particularly impressed by the Ugandan experience. He first began to learn about traditional forms of agriculture when he worked with farmers there and recalls the country's plants as being the most vibrant green he’d ever seen.

Smallholder farmers in Uganda. (Photo: AgriConnect, a partnership between Ensibuuko, European Union, United Nations Capital Development Fund, and Food and Agriculture Organization to facilitate digital financing for smallholder farmers in Uganda)

In 2014, Thelonius returned to Hampton and applied for new jobs in sustainable forms of international development. His parents were concerned about territory much closer to home: their land on the Eastern Shore. James had grown up near that land on the other shore and had purchased it after moving to Hampton. He planted flowers over there and owned a florist business In Hampton. But the business had folded, a house on the property had collapsed, and the fields were overgrown with thick vines.

While he was waiting for responses to his job applications, Thelonius helped his parents by going over to mow the Eastern shore land.  As he worked, he began to imagine using the alternative farming methods he saw when he worked with farmers in Uganda to cultivate his family’s land. “They’re farming on smaller scales than successful farms in the U.S.,”  he says very approvingly.  Although industrial farming produces large yields and is monetarily “successful,” it’s done industrial-strength harm to hired workers, the land and, from its chemical run-offs, lakes, rivers and bays.

In this shot of the early Mighty Thundercloud Edible Forest (2014), bright patches of sun and dark clouds comprised the scene — the same mix, but in different proportions, that prevailed during our November 2022 visit to the farm. (Thelonius Cook photo)

When Cook received offers to his job applications, the land would not let go.  The environment had become Cook, himself, his outer self. In this conception, the bodymind is the “user interface,” between the environmental outer self, the bodymind interface, the inner self, and the source of it all. Environment as extended self is a key to the reenchantment of the world.

Cook turned down the job offers.  “Let me grow some food and bring some back to the community,” he thought.

So now when Theolonius Cook hears “social justice,” he thinks “land justice.”  And not just justice for people but what’s right for everything.

“Edible forest” in the farm’s name signifies flourishing ecosystems – balanced relationships between soil, plants, insects, humans, wildlife, woods and waters. A forest of food, birds and thunder is an enchanting conception that is charmingly suggested by the name of the place where it’s located: Birdsnest, Virginia.

The low forest of weeds in the fields is also quite practical in its use as ground cover which eliminates the need for herbicides and pesticides.

“Everything lined up when I felt compelled to farm in ways that are in line with my heritage.”

Although Theolonius sometimes uses terms like “regenerative agriculture” when speaking to the general public,  he dislikes the inference that such terminology (that also includes “permaculture,”  “agroforestry,” “biodiversity,” “sustainability,” etc.) is cutting edge. “It’s what we’ve been doing all along,” he says, referring to his ancestors.

“Everything lined up when I felt compelled to farm in ways that are in line with my heritage,” he explains.  “The longer I've been on the land, the more attuned I’ve become with the land.”

Since beginning to cultivate the land on the Eastern Shore, he has restored the vitality of soil that was exhausted from being monocropped for many years by people who had leased the land.

He built on the holistic farming methods he’d seen in Africa by entering a year-long, beginning farmer training program in Maryland in 2015.  His tuition was covered by a work share job as a farm apprentice. Then, by occasionally working as an independent IT consultant, he was able to cover the expenses of his own fledgling farm.

The revitalized land has yielded an amazing variety of plants: a broad line of green leafy vegetables, root vegetables, squashes, beans, peppers and tomatoes, culinary and medicinal herbs and teas like hibiscus, and flowers arranged in sprightly,“country” bouquets. His plant variety count is 155 and rising. He also offers preserves in Mason jars including hibiscus jam and ginger switchel, a Caribbean formulation of grated fresh ginger, apple cider vinegar, honey and water that the Islanders like to drink as a beverage that can also be used as a tonic, salad dressing ingredient and all-purpose seasoning.

Thelonius Cook on the farm, November 16, 2022. (All photos taken on this date are by the author.)

Succulent edibles among the grasses, November 16, 2022.

Thelonius pulls weeds by hand, or lets them be if they’re not taking over.

Gathering turnips and other root veggies during our visit in November, Thelonius stooped among the soft green ground cover in one plot and among the scraggly “weeds,” as some would say, in another plot. The ground cover eliminates the need for (gruesome) glyphosates to kill the weeds.

Crop rotation is another important part of good land management. Large, “successful” U.S. farms have grown the same crop on the same land for years, robbing the soil of vital micro nutrients and using chemical fertilizers to fix it.

“The soil is alive!,” Thelonius insists, noting how health and wellness practitioners are finally recognizing the importance of the microbiome and probiotics: “All of these microorganisms are taken up into the plants and become macro nutrients” which are linked to digestive health and an overall well functioning body.

Thelonius explained how white farmers have been monocropping since the 1700s.  And after the supply of free and cheap labor from slavery and sharecropping ended, science and technology was employed to fill the gap, further exhausting the soil and destroying the microorganisms.

Thelonius Cook gathering root vegetables growing among the weeds, November 16, 2022. The weed cover eliminates the need for toxic herbicides.

When I asked Thelonius about his "partner," the question drew a blank.  I explained that I'd seen a young woman working alongside him in some local media coverage of the farm.  He said she was a volunteer.  He also indicated that he preferred the solitude of cultivating the land over managing volunteers. The steadily developing Thundercloud operation is a big, hard, rugged workload for one person.  However, In some ways, ecologically sound farming is easier than machine and chemical based farming.

“I’m not having any unintended consequences,” he says. “I’m not going to be sustainable for myself if I’m creating problems for myself.”  For example, heavy farm machinery can cause ruts in the ground that result in standing water.

And he explained how crop rotation saves labor in the long run: “Pests are clever. They will make their bed right there and be waiting for you.”

One field on the farm had a plastic cover, November 16, 2022.

In an unlikely yet earnest vision, Thelonius imagines establishment powers saying, “We messed up, let's give it back to the folks who always knew what plants need.”

He explains that “Europeans brought Africans to work the plantations because they knew they were expert growers.”  And now big agriculture has “jumped off the deep end.”  Referring to a chemical weapon used in Vietnam, he said that “they could not see the perils of repurposing agent orange (as an agricultural pesticide). They just thought, “This kills. Let’s run with it.”

 Thelonius also disapproves of the vertical growing trend (most notably led by Kimbal Musk, Elon’s brother). “It replaces sun energy with artificial light,” Thelonius explains. “Plants can extract energy better from sunlight.”  Vertical growing often also is done without soil. The neon-toned magenta light in Musk’s dark vertical growing building looks like the eerie opposite of pastoral.

 The establishment agronomists “have not done enough research,” Thelonius says.  “They keep going down the rabbit hole.”

Thelonius Cook in the high tunnel on Thundercloud farm, November 16, 2022

Meanwhile black Americans have had “traumatic relations with the land,” he says.  Slavery, sharecropping, boll weevil infestations and other situations of hardship and exploitation led to  urban migration and the many detriments of black people’s severance from the land.

A sad incongruity: “The most reliant on the land and the most accomplished growers have become the furthest removed from the land,” says Thelolonius.  He wants to turn that sorrow around and is learning building construction (for eco-friendly habitats) as part of that rotation.

Cook’s land justice concept resolves the fractured aspect of “social justice” — the piecemeal targets of income inequality, health disparities, over-policing, food deserts, inadequate housing, what Theolonius called “problems with kids” that lead to crime, substance abuse, and other challenges affecting black people and people in general.

View of farm structures: high tunnels, hempcrete huts, building under construction and refrigeration unit, Nov. 16, 2022.

His holistic conception of justice is focused on 50 acres near his farm.  He plans to build a community there where people devastated by the rippling effects of removal from their ancestral lands can cultivate multigenerational, economic security and full well-being.

After learning hempcrete construction from a contractor neighbor on the Eastern Shore who had helped rebuild in Haiti after the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, Thelonius got a license to grow industrial hemp. Hempcrete, a mixture of hemp wood pieces, lime, and water is an excellent, natural building material because it is inexpensive, fast-growing, pest-and-fire resistant and functions as a good sequester of carbon because both hemp and lime absorb CO2.

Moonlight over a hempcrete hut on the farm. (Theolonius Cook)

Hempcrete blocks will fill in the frame of this building that was under construction during our November 16, 2022 visit.

The connections between natural forms of farming and housing construction are inherent. In Africa Thelonius saw houses made out of clay, bamboo and other readily available materials. He’s also learning engineering skills and converted a trailer to a walk-in refrigerator for the crops.

The construction and engineering skills will be useful in realizing his vision for extending the farm into a community.  The farm is less than a five-minute drive from a 50 acre property that James’ grandfather bought in the 1900s, now appraised at about $150,000, and collectively owned by the grandfather’s descendants and in-laws including Vernadine and Theolonius.

Theolonius wants to buy out the heirs who don’t want to join his plan for a cooperative community of individually-managed land and housing on the land.  The community would function cooperatively through work based in gardening, arts, crafts, building construction and the production of plant-based goods and services. The balance between individual, home-and-land management and cooperative work is essential for the plan not failing like the back-to-the-land communes of the late 1960s counterculture.

Theolonius also pays respect to the indigenous Machipongo inhabiants of the land.

Ancient keys to resolving the environmental crises

Pointing to one of hempcrete huts facing the fields during our November visit, Thelonius said, “This one is the library.”  We didn’t go in but on the shelves, I could imagine Jamaica Kincaid’s My Garden Book next to In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan who contends that much of what we’re consuming today is longer the product of nature but of food science.

Entering another hut, I felt the spiritual ecology of the farm’s name, “Mighty Thundercloud Edible Forest,” expressed in Norfolk VA artist Jazzmine Williams’ drawing on the back wall. “I gave her my ideas,” says Theolonius.

Serpent, lightning, and star imagery in Jazzmine Williams’ drawing in hempcrete hut on Thundercloud farm, November 16, 2022

Symbols of West African orishas seemed to be saying:  Why don’t you just let god win?  “God” in the sense of nature being a manifestation of an otherwise unmanifest source: the underlying unity of existence, the One. In the ongoing give-and-take between people and the natural world, if humans continually take more than we give, we (fools) lose because of the imbalance.

People in pre-industrial societies communed with nature sprites. In Nigeria they were loas of nature and perceived as guardians of humans. The snake, stars and lightening bolts in Jazzmine Williams’ drawing reminded me of  Damballah, the powerful serpent, and Shango, both loas (lwas) of Haitian and Nigerian traditions.

Damballah manifests in the sky with his woman partner, Ayida, as a rainbow. They are imagined as a serpentine ring representing sexual unity that encircles the world. It’s a beautiful and striking use of figurative abstraction to represent the ontology of the cosmos and the nature of the world soul.  A poetic understanding of the natural sciences.  Poetic wisdom.

Ve-ve drawing of Damballah contains serpent, star and lightning symbolism. The “Mighty Thundercloud” and “Forest” elements in the name of Theolonius Cook’s farm also suggest these elements. (Wiki Commons)

Ecological spirituality doesn’t romanticize humanity’s pre-industrial history (there was lots of hardship and suffering during those times).  It recognizes nature sprites as poetic knowing.  These spirits inhabiting forests, rivers, mountains, seas and skies are symbolic representations of invisible forces. Mathematical signs are another form of symbolic representations of unseen forces.

 Traditional peoples connected with their spiritual projections in nature for guidance and protection, and to deepen their understanding of the natural world. They were encouraged to live in harmony with the natural world and were wonderfully charmed by it.

Ve-ve drawings take various forms but the snake and star figures persist and appear in Jazzmine Williams’ drawing.

Contrary to designations of these ideas as “primitive,” our ancestors developed intricate knowledge systems about the natural world based on observation and experience. These systems incorporated beliefs in nature spirits but also had scientific aspects such as understanding the interrelationships between various species in an ecosystem and the ways in which environmental changes can affect these relationships.

Thelonius says that the glorious aspect of the Mighty Thundercloud Edible Forest name stems from the Mighty Clouds of Joy gospel quartet that rose to fame in early 1960s. The name resonates in the soloist role that his mother, Vernadine, has served in the choir of Hampton’s First Baptist church. And the echo continues with the pastor’s interest in developing a community garden and the award Thelonius received from the Black Church Food Security Network.

Thelonius also recognizes and respects the indigenous Machipongo spirit of the land,

His vision for an open-air pizzeria on the farm came to mind a few months later when I overheard a friend’s teenage daughter, preparing to order from Domino’s.  She said that her cousin picks the vegetables off pizzas. Onions and maybe green peppers?!  Ain’t much to pick off!

I envisioned Mighty Thundercloud pizzas with hefty chucks of hearty, fresh vegetables from the farm (and not just the usual ones like peppers and mushrooms) and stone-ground cornmeal for the crust.  No refined, devitalized paste flour in this pie!  Options could include cauliflower crust as well as stone ground corn crust. Mighty Thundercloud pizza so fresh, whole and vital would lightening-bolt ignite the taste buds of veggie and whole grain haters!

It’s just natural that being cultivated to germinate and retain its full spectrum of micronutrients, Thundercloud soil yields better-tasting produce!

The evening after visiting the edible forest, when I bit into a tuber-shaped, just-picked turnip, the flavor did explode in my mouth! Folks who eat off rich land can throw away their salt shakers!

“I listen to the birds.”

“Do you get lonely out here on the Eastern shore?” I asked Thelonius as we were leaving.

"No, I listen to the birds," he said.

Thelonius Cook’s recognition of the natural environment suffused with spirit is reminiscent of that of another African American naturalist, George Washington Carver. The beautiful metaphysical quote from Carver, below,  was put into poem structure.

All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of living things in the woods.

I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.

The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough.

The secrets are all here in God’s promises.

These promises are real as and more infinitely solid and substantial

than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in.

— George Washington Carver

Carver coda: the metaphysical scientist

The George Washington Carver quote above is from a chapter in The Secret Life of Plants.  A PDF of the entire book is here.  The entire book suggests ways to think about plants that contribute to the re-enchantment of contemporary life.

Highlights from the Carver chapter

Carver planted his first gardens when he was a child. Caring for plants was his favorite form of play. Farmers’ wives from all of the countryside brought him their ailing houseplants. They saw he could work miracles and asked him why. Carver only said softly, “All flowers talk to me and so do hundreds of living things in the woods. I learn what I know by watching and loving everything.”

 At Tuskegee, Carver created lots of products from plants – not just peanuts: dyes, paper from pine trees, shampoo, a petroleum substitute, etc.  Industrialists made lots of money from his ideas. Carver never took out a patent. When he was asked why, he replied ”God did not charge me or you for making (the plants). Why should I profit from their (plants’) products?”

 Visitors to his lab also would ask him to reveal his secrets. To one he said “The secrets are in the plants. To elicit them you have to love them enough.”

 When a visitor asked, “who besides you can you do these things?”

 “Everyone can if they only believe it,” Carver replied. “Tapping a large Bible on the table he said “The secrets all here in God’s promises. These promises are real as and more infinitely solid and substantial than this table which the materialist so thoroughly believes in.”

 Carver was attracted to the peanut because it could grow well in poor soil and it had very high protein content. Late one evening Carver stared at a peanut plant and asked “Why did the Lord make you?” In a flash he received the briefest of answers. “You have three things to go by: compatibility, temperature and pressure.” That answer formed the framework for his experimentation.

 The chapter also describes what could be considered the first all-vegan dinner. Carver prepared the full course dinner which included mock chicken made from peanuts and sweet potatoes, and a salad of sheep’s sorrel, peppergrass, chicory and dandelion leaves.

“It is in the invisible world. It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies.”

Not long before Carver’s death a visitor to his laboratory saw him reach out his long sensitive fingers to one little flower on his workbench. “When I touch that flower,” he said rapturously, I am touching infinity. It existed long before they were human beings on this earth and will continue to exist for millions of years to come. “To the flower I talked to the Infinite. This is not a physical contact. It is not in the earthquake, wind or fire. It is in the invisible world. It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies.”


Juliette Harris

Mighty Thunder Cloud Edible Forest is as enchanting as it sounds

Carver coda: the metaphysical scientist

The roving urban farmer

Second Summer