Inheritance is tricky business.
Everything we receive – whether physically or spiritually – is marked by the hands that passed it down and the experiences that shaped them. So much of what we inherit serves us daily, and still other gifts are harder to track and use to our benefit.
Annette Hollowell holds many roles in her family – loving mother, dutiful daughter, partner in the family business. For the last decade, Annette has been collaborating with her parents, Bill and Annie, to turn their homey family event venue, Foxfire Ranch, into a destination for artists and organizers throughout the South and beyond.
Keeping with the local traditions of Sunday night juke joints, the Hollowells have hosted Blues shows for almost 20 years. Now, as her parents age and her children grow, and the world grows ever more complicated, Annette sifts through a hundred years of her family’s labor on the land to inform the foundations she lays for her descendants in the next century.
We Are the Promised Land (WATPL) is an altar to Black land legacies in the Mississippi Hill Country that centers the Hollowell family and their land, Foxfire Ranch in Waterford, Mississippi. Producer, free feral rides shotgun with Annette as they interrogate how the larger community has incubated the elements of culture that the region is known for - music, food, and festivity.
Foxfire has been in Hollowell hands since 1919, but Marshall County has a thick and storied history of Black land, which stretches back further still.
With all the Black land loss stories in Mississippi, we wanted to explore how the Hollowell family has kept their land for over a century, as well as the sacrifices and cultural mechanisms that made it possible.
Our multimedia tribute presents a prism of perspectives on the family, the region, and connections beyond – all to frame a broader dialogue about Black agrarian legacies and futures in the South. Through a podcast, poetry, photography, video, and more, we offer a kaleidoscopic view of the region to engage a conversation about inheritance:
This altar is designed to honor the wealth of lineages that intersect in Annette, the Hollowell family, and at Foxfire. We will be adding fresh offerings to the table on new and full moons in Spring 2026.
There are a few ways you can interface with this site to find these materials:
View Altar will allow you to choose media to view as it is placed on the altar. Podcast episodes will each be connected to a specific ancestor. You can access the gallery through the photo album. Written materials will live in the journal, and in the flowers. Other media will be scattered amongst the small objects on the table.
The Podcast page, will show each episode and its corresponding materials
You can find poems written by free feral on the Poetry page.
The Gallery has a series of family and ancestor photos, and images of Foxfire. We also have commissioned portraits by some magnificent painters which you will find here.
On our Video page, you’ll find an array of video pieces which enrich the tapestry of our Hill Country portrait.
In Journals, you’ll find written reflections by Annette Hollowell.
The Audio Extras include shorter pieces that were made earlier in our process that are no longer contained within podcast episodes, but that we still wanted to share. There is also a little music there for your listening pleasure.
Finally, we have some Coloring pages available for folks who’d like something to do with their hands while they listen.
Please visit our Collaborators page to meet our remarkable team.
Additionally, you can find information about our funding sources and other partnerships on the Acknowledgements page.