Crowd funding for farming

Nicholas Carter is a documentary filmmaker working with Morgan Schmidt-Feng and Filmsight Productions. In the past 20 years, Morgan has made numerous documentaries, the most recent of which won the 2011 regional Emmy for Best Documentary.

There latest feature film is called Gleason Ranch: Risking Everything and it tells the story of two sisters in Bodega, California struggling to keep their 150 year-old, 5th-generation family ranch alive after the sudden death of their parents. They have been documenting this story for over 4 years and are now working on securing funding for post-production via the crowd funding Indiegogo platform: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gleason-ranch-risking-everything/

They’ve already received outreach support from organizations like the Women, Food, and Agriculture Network and the Farmer Veteran Coalition, as well as numerous small local businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Just recently, author Michael Pollan said, “This doc goes beyond the romance of farming… [it’s] a hard look at the struggles.” 

They just launched on Sunday, so they have 32 days left to reach their $35,000 goal. Gradually they are gaining support.

If you'd like to support this venture or find out more about it please click here.

Wilmoth Farms, Kentucky, USA (RECOMMENDED)

It was so long ago and I have been so useless I can't remember who recommended Wilmoth Farms but someone must have.

Anyway, here is a little info on them kindly supplied to Liz at Madbush Farm in NZ, I don't know how long ago.

As it happens the main farmer character in my book (currently selling so well in the USA it is ranked 1,791, 514 at www.amazon.com) is called Norman. Why this should be remotely relevant I don't know but I mention it in passing as Mr. Wilmoth is called Norman.

(BTW did you know that if say 2 people in the United States bought my book on Amazon when they read this post, my ranking would probably go to about 200,000. If 10 people did, it would go to about 20,000 and if 20 did, to about 2,000. That's about all you need to know about Amazon rankings - they tell you whether you are alive or dead and in the USA I am def. dead. If every user of this blog bought a copy, reviewed it on Amazon and then emailed ten friends recommending it, it would be on the NYT best seller list out of nowhere and my no hoper publishers - actually one of the biggest publishers in the world - would look incredibly silly. Simple really.)

Onwards and over to Mrs. Wilmoth:

Wilmoth Farms is a beef cattle and cropping farm located in central Kentucky. In total are approximate 1000 acres of pasture for 200 head of cattle, corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and wheat. We currently have a mix of mostly Angus and Marchigiana (a hardy Italian breed of cattle). We live in a small farming community about 25 miles from town.

We grow a big garden that we enjoy year round and we are slowly working at becoming self sufficient. We are a Christian family of 4.

My farmer Norm, he runs the whole place and the kids and I help when we can. I paint and try my hand at photography. And I make handmade goat milk soaps and such that I sell around town and online. I began to blog a year ago or more to document life on a Kentucky farm. I try to tell what's going on with the farming that we do, information about anything cattle, and our farm life.

We also have 5 horses, a chicken (yes more are coming soon), a rabbit, our chocolate lab Levi, 2 Maine Coon cats, and 2 wonderful barn kitties!

My blog is http://kyfarmlife.blogspot.com

I have links to my other blogs there are well: my photography blog is http://kentuckycaptured.blogspot.com and my handmade soap blog is http://wilmothfarmshandmadesoaps.blogspot.com

Sugar on Snow (VT, USA; General resource blog)

The blog Sugar on Snow was recommended by Mary Barrosse Schwartz from Bosky Dell Farm in Vermont.

Meredith was kind enough to drop me a brief line about it along with her own farm blog recommendations which I will post on shortly.

"It's dedicated to celebrating the state of Vermont's local and wild foods. I do not work on or operate a farm, but I do write about farms, farmers and farming on my blog."

A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country
Ian Walthew

Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France

Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Altria close to buying tobacco maker UST (IHT)

Michael Szymanczyk, chief executive of Altria, was in talks to buy UST for more than $10 million. (Altria Group, via The Associated Press)

Altria Group is in advanced talks to buy UST, the maker of the popular Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco brands, for more than $10 billion, people with close knowledge of the negotiations said late Thursday. The terms could not be learned.
The acquisition, which could still fall apart, would be Altria's first major purchase since the company split in March, spinning off Philip Morris International to become an independent company focused on the overseas tobacco business and giving the Altria name to Philip Morris USA.
"We don't comment on any speculation that's out there," said David Sylvia, Altria's director of media affairs. Officials at UST, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut, did not return messages.
Speculation about the deal swirled on Thursday after UST's chief executive, Murray Kessler, abruptly pulled out of an analysts' conference, prompting a rise in the share price and heavy options trading. By the end of the day, after UST explained that there was a scheduling conflict, company shares fell back.
Stock in UST, formerly the United States Tobacco Company, closed down 4 cents, at $54 a share, while Altria fell 60 cents, to $20.66 a share.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/05/business/05deal.php





A Place in the Auvergne
A Place in My Country

Ian Walthew


Farm Blogs
Ranch Blogs
Rural Blogs
Countryside Blogs
Smallholding Blogs
Urban Homesteading Blogs
Homesteading Blogs
Homestead Blogs
Allotment Blogs
Apiculture Blogs
Bee-keeping Blogs

Auvergne
Auvergnate
Auvergnat
Auvergnats
France
Rural France
Blogs about France


Paris / Montmartre/ Abbesses holiday / vacation furnished apartment rental

Lettuce on the White House lawn

By Ellen Goodman
Published: July 4, 2008

SCARBOROUGH, Maine: It has been decades since that famous forager Euell Gibbons reached through the White House fence and picked four edible weeds out of the president's garden. This is not something that the Secret Service would recommend you try today.
But Roger Doiron has a better plan for eating the view of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He's started a campaign to get a kitchen garden growing on the White House lawn.
Doiron works out of his small Cape house in Maine, where I find him one summer day. A wasp-thin 41-year-old, he's part of the fastest-growing (I used the words literally) movement in the country. His organization, Kitchen Gardeners International, is one link in a loose chain of partisans who are neither conservatives nor liberals but locavores. They want to think global, eat local. Very local. As in their front and backyard.
He shows me the lawn sign that expresses his politics: "1,500 Miles, 400 Gallons, Say What?" It's a reference to the average miles food travels to your plate and the gallons of fuel used in its migration. It's not the sexiest slogan, but kitchen gardeners are probably as passionate about vegetables as Republicans are about tax cuts.
Doiron spent a decade with a grass-roots environmental group in Europe. After returning to his hometown in 2001, he became a lettuce-roots environmentalist. As head of Kitchen Gardeners International, he also walks the walk, showing me 50 varieties of vegetables he grows for his family of five on about a sixth of an acre. Memo to other amateurs: You will be pleased to know that Doiron's garden also has weeds.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/04/opinion/edgoodman.php