Kickstarter

Greenhorn : a novice or beginner; a new entrant into agriculture
Our mission : To recruit, support, and promote America's young farmers.

A little backstory.

Three years ago, Greenhorns began as a film project by and about young farmers. The idea was to show young farmers succeeding, despite rigorous institutional, economic and physical challenges - not to mention a thorny social stigma attached to the job. But cultural attitudes were improving. The time was just right for a recruitment film like "The Greenhorns" to show bright and bold young farmers as the new American Protagonists.

It seemed to work! People and press took notice, we threw up a website, started a popular blog, a radio show, assembled a nationwide posse, orchestrated all sorts of agrarian pageants and mixers, wrote a guidebook, mapped our cohorts online, and even organized ourselves into a 501c3 nonprofit. Indeed, the film project has grown into a full on campaign and platform for growth in the young farmer sector!

The Pitch.

So what do we want to do now?

1. Take our film all over the country and get many more young people psyched about entering agriculture, and connect them with the resources to get started (like our very own Guidebook). *This begins in October 2010 on the west coast*

2. Put 5,000 more young farmers up on our online map and database, Serve Your Country Food - all the better to SHOW people what is happening and boost nationwide young farmer networking capacity.

3. Stage many more unique and delightful events for young farmers, i.e., ringing bells in communities all over America, sharing skills, making art, planting gardens, serving fresh food, providing spaces for connection and cultural bloom, mixing it UP.

There is more to tell, and we'd be happy to talk if you will get in touch. But now is the part where we appeal to your purse, portfolio, or pocketbook - because we simply do all this on a shoestring and we are not good enough grant writers yet (and who has the time?)

Please contribute to the Greenhorns campaign and find your generosity reciprocated with a fine gift! This is a chance for us to raise our voices on behalf of American agriculture.

Reciprocity.

You can check out the handy list of gifts on the right. First off, we're able to offer t-shirts, posters, guidebooks, stickers, buttons and related paraphernalia that you will find nowhere else except our etsy shop. Greenhorns style is in the domain of Brooke Budner, an artist and urban gardener in San Francisco. If you love her drawings it behooves you to pony up!

Second, we can sneak you into one of our events for young farmers. The value of this gift is hard to quantify because each event costs a different amount and happens in a new place. Cities and country. Rest assured we will try to send you home breathless, tipsy, and with a new farming trick or two up your sleeve. We don't yet make money off these friendly events because they just aren't profit driven. Nevertheless, they typically incorporate things like live music, speeches and performances, archival film screenings, chances to speak up/listen, steamy bonfires, sudsy local beers, hay bales, savory victuals from down the way, workshops, seed shares, dancing, kissing in the dark, and unknown elements. Volunteers come for free, of course. So do you if you contribute 40 dollars to our mission.

Please contact us if you want to be involved in planning an event in your neighborhood.

Wrap up.

We believed and still believe that supporting a surge of new recruits into sustainable agriculture is crucial to reviving our country's food system. Did you know that the average farmer in America is 57 and will retire in the next five years? Did you know there are more prisoners in our country than farmers?

But did you also know that in the last five years the number of farmers under the age of 35 DOUBLED? (according to conservative USDA statistics). That's what you call a movement.

We are some of them. You may also be some of them. Together we can do it, because it's the only way and the only good way. Join up!

Thank you for helping to make this vision possible.

To read more about the greenhorns founder and director and people in the posse, go here

www.thegreenhorns.net
www.serveyourcountryfood.net
www.thegreenhorns.wordpress.com
www.youngfarmers.org