Kickstarter

*Update* - we made our funding goal!  Hooray!  Don't let that stop you from getting your reward - you have until noon (CDT) Wednesday to claim your T-shirt, pizza party tickets, calendar, etc.  Plus, every dollar you pledge will help us build an even better training farm.

Sunset Community Farm is bursting at the seams.

What is Sunset Community Farm? It's a laboratory for agricultural micro-enterprise. It's a cutting-edge demonstration farm. It's an incubator for learning, for growing, for entrepreneurship, for networking, and for helping dreams sprout into reality.  We support beginning growers as they develop small farm businesses focused on vegetable production.  We want to build a bigger, better, training farm to help more beginning growers in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sunset Community Farm is operated by Community CROPS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people work together to grow healthy food and live sustainably.  That means that your pledge is tax deductible (once we take out the value of your reward). Lots of people have said nice things about us - check out these links!

• Channel 8 in Lincoln
• Nebraska Entrepreneur
• NET Radio
• Philanthropy Collaborative Case Study

What if the beginning growers don't have the capital or resources to start their own farm? In a report by the National Young Farmers Coalition, 78% of beginning farmers cited lack of capital as the biggest barrier to beginning a farm. We solve this problem by renting land and equipment at Sunset Community Farm to beginning farmers at affordable rates. Not only that, but we also offer workshops, one-on-one mentoring, and direct access to markets like our 125-member Community Supported Agriculture program. We are a micro-kickstarter for the next generation of farmers.

However, Sunset Community Farm is full to capacity. We simply don't have enough land to rent to all the farmers who want to grow. So, we are moving our farm.

In 2013, we will begin leasing land from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln at a site called Prairie Pines. The 145-acre site, protected from development by a conservation easement, includes a variety of forest habitats, native prairie, and a wetland.  Over the next five years, we will convert three hay fields into a sustainable vegetable training farm and will eventually triple our current production capacity.

This fall and winter, our goal is to install the infrastructure we need on the first field.  However, we can't do this on our own. We need to put in a well pump. We need to install irrigation lines and water hydrants in the new fields. We need to build washstands and tool sheds at each farmer's plot.  We need to retrofit the barn into a pack shed and cold storage.  It will be a lot of work, but with your support, we will have this first field ready to go in spring 2013.

Will you help kickstart our move as we help small farmers kickstart their dreams?

P.S. The rewards are a little complicated.  Jeff made this helpful graphic to make them easier to understand.  Thanks, Jeff!  :)

P.P.S. Kickstarter doesn't integrate with Facebook pages, just with profiles, so we couldn't connect this project to our page.  If you want to Like us, click through to our page here.