Live Chat
06.07.2012
10
answers
GASTROGNOME Severine von Tscharner Fleming
Founder
Greenhorns
Location Hudson Valley, NY
Website www.thegreenhorns.net
About Severine von Tscharner Fleming farms in the Hudson Valley of New York. She is founder and director of Greenhorns, an organization that works nationally to promote, support, and recruit young farmers. Severine cofounded the National Young Farmers’ Coalition and directed the documentary film The Greenhorns. She is one of the editors of the book Greenhorns: 50 Dispatches from the New Farmers' Movement.
chat ended at 13:00 pm EDT
...but check out a recap below!
  • Q:
  • Parting Words?
  • A:
  • Good food Jobs is such a super resource for finding employment in farming and food production. That's the key. Fixing the foodsystem is going to take a SURGE of brains, bodies and businesses focused on sustainable and local production. Jobs! And as you'll see the entrepreneurship is blowing up. It's hot. It's happening. I'ts a dynamic community of innovators, and the un-making of monoculture, monopoly and corn pap. If we keep this up for a few decades or so, we might just succeed.
  • Q:
  • What is your biggest hope for improving our food system?
  • A:
  • Our goal with Greenhorns is to support young farmers in their first 6 years of farming-- supporting them culturally, and socially. We do this by organizing both in-person events and mixers, and then backing that up with online +new media production. Check out our brand new website! www.thegreenhorns.net for educational resources the blog, the radio shows, the upcoming Young Farmers Almanac, Ourland films, the publications library, the guidebook, the mapping project, and hot off the press! Our new book of stories by young farmers.

    Our goal is to help interpret the options, the career paths, the training programs, the gossip, and to help young farmers make resasonable choices and set their expectations clearly. Communication and Celebration are core strategies for us, and the ones most possible with a small budget, tiny staff, and using the internet to our best advantage.

    Farmers Mixers help rural-dwelling rookie farmers meet and socialize, outside the venue of the farmers market, with other farmers ( dating!). Farmhack is a program of the National Young Farmers Coalition, of which I'm a founder, I love Farmhack events http://www.youngfarmers.org/practical/farm-hack/. Basically it's an in-person venue for collaboration between engineers and farmers, working together on tool design and modification. The conversations start in person, are based on commerce, but then continue in the online forums--following the format of open-source. Since we benefit from selling the produce, and we benefit from each other's design modifications-- by sharing we all win.

    Seed Circus is another project area, a way for us to bring artists into the mix, building infrastructure for farm celebrations, tents for workshops and dancing, videos for childrens, awnings+ table cloths, cauldrons for frying donuts, large-capacity dishwashing equipment, banners, garlands, spits for roasting etc. Gear for celebrating, made by artists and farmers working together. The next Seed circus event is a seltzer felting event, we'll be making felt for nap-time tent for children-- while drinking flavored seltzer water.

    Always the goal is to involve children and families in purposeful projects that involve textures and needs for feeding and celebrating. As a way of contributing to farming, and participating in farm culture that can last only 5 minutes or an afternoon at a museum, street fair, festival or other place where kids might come. Then we keep building the inventory of celebration equipment and can keep throwing more and better Seed circuses.
  • Q:
  • What's the rough breakdown of your day (i.e. farming vs. 'office' work)?
  • A:
  • It varies. Funnily, this quesiton of a 'typical day' comes up so much on all the young farmer panels. The only typical and consistent thing is animal chores -- most everything else shifts and sways with the season and the weather, which is why farming is so stimulating and diverse. Some days it's fixing broken fences, loading hay, loading feed, researching equipment online, making graphics for invoices, doing insurance work, web work, walking pastures, moving fences, propagation, loads to dump, washing, bunching, harvesting, planting, weeding, bed prep, picking strawberries, making jam, labeling the jam...all those are farm activities. My friend Mark Kimball of Essex Farm makes a point of this in a funny way: if he's typing away, or on the phone in his office, and you ask him 'What are you doing?' he says 'Farming!' You can read more about Mark and his wife, Kristin, in her super wonderful book: www.kristinkimball.com
  • Q:
  • I'm curious, what books and publications line your book shelf? What are some of your favorites?
  • A:
  • Well the list is pretty darn long. But if you're up for it, try reading our new book. Its 50 essays by young farmers and just hit the shelves of bookstores everywhere. http://www.workman.com/products/9781603427722/
  • Q:
  • I'm a person who know absolutely nothing about farming, but am interested in learning. What are your favorite books / resources to check out to start my education / build my foundation?
  • A:
  • Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry is a wonderful overview. We've got a resource library at our office in Hudson, so if you are nearby and have specific interest, we can work up a reading list for you (either in person or via email) but frankly I recommend in-person learning as a start -- you'll arrive at a series of questions that can drive your own learning trajectory. If you like animals, find an animal farm nearby and offer yourself as a volunteer. If you like that, consider a stint as a WWOOFer, and if that goes well then it's time for a full-season apprenticeship.
  • Q:
  • Congratulations on the documentary! That seems like such a separate skill from farming. How did you find out what you needed to know to make the film happen?
  • A:
  • What a great learning opportunity! I had never made a film before, so beyond fundraising, planning, story telling, interviewing, schedule management, and finding farmers . . . there was a lot of technical learning to do. Luckily I partnered with wonderful cinematographers, producers, and collaborators, each of whom brought skills and experience to the project.

    If you are asking because you'd like to pursue and indie documentary production as an amateur, here is my best advice: START SMALL. If you can put together a short (10 - 15 minute) film on the topic for little or no money it would be a lot easier to either 1) raise money for a longer project, and/or 2) raise awareness around the issue that you choose.

    It took us 3 years to raise the money (total budget $185,000) for our documentary, and we had quite some press to help us (we were also farming and pursuing an aggresive yong farmer mixer schedule) -- so don't expect it to be quick!) Having cast the gloomy warning, I should also mention that we've managed to screen the film more than 500 times so far, totally through grassroots distribution via our website -- we just finally signed a deal with Collective Eye and Whole Foods to distribute educationally and web-based streaming. More on that on our brand new website!
  • Q:
  • Do you think a college education is valuable and /or necessary if my ultimate goal is to run a farm?
  • A:
  • It's a hard call. Actually, I get a lot of correspondence about this question, particularly when education debt is so hard to pay down on a farmer's salary, or worse, a farm apprentice salary. If you are certain that you want to farm, I assume you've farmed for at least a full season, and perhaps more like 3 seasons. You are ahead of the game as far as your farming career goes to have decided so early. The key now is to learn skills that complement farming, and can help you with off-season income. Such things might include: carpentry, nursing skills, veterinary skills, cheesemaking, service/food serve. A common first choice is waitressing, which is especially lucrative in places like ski towns and fancy restaurants. In terms of higher education, consider vocational training. Community colleges offer classes in business planning that will help a lot with getting loans. Obviously, state schools are much, much cheaper than out-of-state, and there are quite a few with good sustainable ag programs. There is a great list of them hosted by the Sustainable Ag Education Association
  • Q:
  • What can people do politically to support young farmers?
  • A:
  • Join the National Young Farmer Coalition List Serv and become a member for $20. We'll send you action alerts when it's time to call your Congress person. Another great one is National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. If you want to know more look into New England Farmers Union policy platform, and National Family Farm Coalition.
  • Q:
  • How have your experiences on Smithereen Farm changed the way that you communicate with young farmers?
  • A:
  • Smithereen Farm is the name of my little farm business, which I've been slowly growing while working for others -- last season as Farm Manager for the Locust on Hudson and this year as farm worker at Monkshood Nursery. The season before that, I was field worker and animal manager at the Hickories CSA in Ridgefield, CT, and prior to that I ran Smithereen on rented land. I was raising rabbits while I was a student at UC Berkeley (I kept them in the garage of my house). It's been hard balancing life as an activist and farmer, but worth the challenge. The Greenhorns project grew out of my own frustrations and enthusiasm of being a greenhorn farmer, as an apprentice, as a co-founder of the farm on my college campus, and as a WWOOFer. Frankly, if I couldn't farm, I wouldn't want to be an activist! I grow and harvest culinary herbs, wild craft teas, seaweeds, make cordials from elderflowers, jams, and syrups -- rose hips, raspberry leaves, marjoram, wild mint, wild oregano -- under the name Smithereen. Much of the production is super small scale. The teas are for sale at our office in Hudson, and we sell to Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge, MA. This season we are expanding our operations using the barns at Monkshood. Baby geese and ducklings arrived yesterday. We are raising them for both feathers and meat, just 80 of them, but a good start on production, and manageable. I've got my same rabbit lines going for meat rabbits -- this is my 7th year of rabbits. I've got 13 mommas and my buck, Stallion. They live in hutches and eat non-GMO alfalfa pellets, locally grown barley, cracked corn form Lightning Tree Farm in Millbrook, hay, and fresh grass. The ultimate goal is to pasture the rabbits during the last 3 months of fattening. Also pork in the woods, and cordial-making is big this year in preparation for Clearwater Festival's Seltzer Felting Tent. So far we've made lemon verbena syrup, basil flower syrup, tarragon, and mint. These will mix with the seltzer water to become old-school sodas.
  • Q:
  • What are the best defenses we can give to folks that think farming isn't a viable career option?
  • A:
  • Sometimes the reactions of others stand in the way of a young person, or any age person, deciding to farm. One big hump is the work load, which is heavy. Farming is hard work. NO joke. And there is more of it, especially during startup time, than is really humanly possible. But farm work is also amazing, an education about the body. Coping with the jobs, the bending, the long hours, the heavy lifting - technology is sometimes the answer: a water wheel for planting transplants instead of trays and bedding, or a loading dock with pallets and forklifts. But the technology isn't only about stuff, it can also be about designing the equipment to match the person (sizing on a wheel hoe, the angles of the handles). It can mean stretches in the morning and core building. I'm doing this live chat from Sylvester Manor Farm on Shelter Island right now, where the technology most employed is WORK SONGS. A big crew, with a repertoire of songs to sing, makes the work go so fast it's exhilirating as heck. After farming and recording podcasts here for 3 days, I'm convinced that farming with a large posse may be the best technology there is.
Post a Job

Jobs

Resources

Connect

Company

Get Mail

make your tuesdays brighter with our weekly dose of inspiration
You are currently signed in, but you won't be able to view how to apply
to the job or post jobs until you follow the link in your confirmation email.
Please check your email to confirm.
Please check your email to confirm your registration.
(You will not be able to view how to apply to the jobs until you follow this step)

Never received a confirmation email?
Click here and we'll send you another!
(If you're tired of us already, click here
to unsubscribe)
Your session is about to timeout.
Save your hard work as a draft from the
Preview page, or Proceed to Checkout
(and cross 'find an awesome new employee' off your to-do-list).
0.0773 | 2.38MB | 5 DB