In 2023, my grandmother gave me her blessing to steward the land, with one caveat: the land in Dossou is not for sale. It is to be passed on from generation to generation.
In that moment, I knew I would need to summon the guts of a generation.
Yéyé’s Second Harvest is the answer to that moment. A community-led agricultural social enterprise rooted in southern Haiti, continuing the work my grandmother began, and planting the harvest that will outlast all of us.
The ‘arpentage’ (land assessment) begins next month. The first season starts this summer. We are $10,000 away from making it real.
Yéyé - The Origin
Yéyé is to me what the sun is to the crop.
She spent her life tending the land in Dossou and Bouchin Lezin, where coffee and cacao were part of the daily rhythm. She is my grandmother, my mother, and a mother to many. Her name resonates in Anse d’Haïnault.
She is the community vigilante who watches over others and feeds whoever arrives at her door, no questions asked. She lived her life as an insurance plan for her children and her community, steady, dependable, and rooted in care.
Sadly and beautifully, I will never know the full depth of her brilliance. But I know it exists because I have lived inside it, in her stories, in her unshakeable self-knowing, in the smell of her coffee, in the gentle yet firm way she holds her grèp during an early morning brew.
She understood something that farmers and elders often know best: the land, like the people who work it, moves in seasons.
She is 99 years old. The land she tended is still fertile. And we are going back.
Who I Am
I am Marjorie, born and raised in Haiti, daughter of a town called Anse d’Haïnault at the very tail end of the island. I migrated to the United States at 17. Before that, I spent 16 summers being a witness to my grandmother’s holding of the community.
I am a licensed therapist, a social entrepreneur, a mother, a dog lover, and a Haiti optimist through and through.
Throughout every return trip to the land, I have held one belief: that purpose was right here in Dossou. As a social worker, I learned to imagine beyond the structural barriers that exist — to see what could be, not just what is. And what I kept seeing was this: agriculture as an entry point to mental health. Land as a container for healing. Community as the infrastructure we keep overlooking.
Yéyé’s Second Harvest is what happens when you stop waiting for the change and start building it. It is the culmination of what it has meant to take hope and operationalize it —
to create the spaces I want to see in our community rather than waiting for them to miraculously appear.
This is not a dream deferred. This is the season.
What I Am Building
The land in Anse d’Haïnault grows coffee and cacao. For generations, it fed families, sustained communities, and carried the knowledge of people who understood that what you plant today will feed someone tomorrow.
Yéyé’s Second Harvest is the continuation of that knowledge.
We are beginning with small batches — cacao and coffee experiments sourced directly from the land in Anse d’Haïnault, processed with care, and brought to people who want to know where their goods come from and whose hands grew them.
In time, we will add cacao-based skincare, seasonal goods from the land, and community infrastructure investments — water restoration, environmental sanitation, and fair wages for every farmer and artisan whose labor makes this possible.
This is not an extraction. This is cultivation.
A portion of every purchase supports community infrastructure projects in Anse d’Haïnault. Healthy communities and healthy land are inseparable. When a product is born from a place, that place should share in the benefits of its success.
What you hold in your hands will be more than a product. It will be a commitment — to ethical sourcing, fair labor, environmental stewardship, and the belief that ancestral knowledge deserves to be honored, sustained, and reinvested in the communities that carry it forward.
Where We Are - The Season
We are in the first season.
Next month, the arpentage begins — the official land assessment that maps what we have, what needs restoration, and what is ready to grow. This summer, I return to Haiti to begin the first cacao and coffee experiments directly on the land — roasting, grinding, studying cacao butter, and developing the first prototypes of what YSH Co will one day produce.
We are learning directly from the land. We are paying local workers fairly. We are building something that does not exist yet but is becoming real with every step.
This is the moment to get in early. Every harvest begins from what came before — and right now, you can be part of what comes before.
Harvest Tiers
Your contribution funds the land, the farmers, and the first harvest.
Ways to Invest
All tiers fulfilled through GoFundMe now. Physical products and almanac delivered by July 2027.
$25 - Seed
You plant something real.
Your name joins the founding harvest list — the record of everyone who believed before the first crop. You’ll receive seasonal updates directly from the land as the first harvest
unfolds.
$50 - Root
You go a little deeper.
Everything above, plus a digital postcard from Haiti during the first season and a story from Yéyé herself — her words, her memory, her relationship to the land that started all of this.
$100 - Branch
You become part of the story.
Everything above, plus a handwritten note from Marjorie — because some things still deserve to arrive by hand.
$300 - First Harvest
You get there first.
Everything above, plus the first small bag of coffee or cacao grown directly from the land in Anse d’Haïnault — harvested, processed, and delivered to you by July 2027. This is the harvest you helped plant.
$500 - Steward
You invest in the long arc.
Everything above, plus the inaugural Yéyé’s Second Harvest Almanac — a Haiti-made collection of stories about the land, the seasons, and the people who have tended it across generations. This is not a calendar. It is a record of what the land remembers. Delivered by July 2027. Your name lives permanently on the YSH Co founding supporters page.
$1,000+ - Partner of the Land
You help shape what this becomes.
Everything above, plus a signed photo of Yéyé and a direct conversation with Marjorie about the vision, the land, and your role in what comes next. For the people who don’t just want to support this — they want to be part of building it.
The land moves in seasons. So do we.
Follow the harvest as it unfolds — from the first experiments to the seasons that follow.
None of us ever truly starts from scratch. Every harvest begins from what came before.
Yéyé’s Second Harvest
Coffee • Cacao • Goods from the land