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The Grange Future Tour

The Grange Future is on the road, and it’s making a stop at SHED. Starting in Mendocino and making its way to Southern California, the Greenhorn’s Grange Future tour celebrates the long history of the grange movement through an incredible mix of music, puppets, paintings, reading material, and oral history recordings.

The Grange Future Traveling Exhibit is a partnership with the Grange Farm School, and features the work of the Beehive Collective, Hudson Valley Seed Bank, Rural Academy Theater, and other rural cultural workers expressing the grange idea. Come meet the grangers and learn about the movement – from its founding in 1867 to its current role as a community-scale venue for political organizing, potluck-ing, moral education, leadership and cultural life.

We hope you join us to hear the oral histories, sing the grange songs, see the painted panels, read the historic agricultural pamphlets, and touch the seed bank artifacts from historic granges. At 6pm we’ll have a panel discussion with these local and visiting Grange Masters:

Severine von Tscharner Fleming (Greenhorns) Severine is a farmer, activist, and organizer based in the Champlain Valley of New York. She is director of Greenhorns, a grassroots organization with the mission to recruit, promote and support the rising generation of new farmers in America. Severine has spent the last seven years gathering, bundling and broadcasting the voices and vision of young agrarians. Greenhorns runs a weekly radio show on Heritage Radio Network and a popular blog. They produce many kinds of media, from documentary films to almanacs, anthologies, mix-tapes, posters, guidebooks and digital maps. They are best known the documentary film, “The Greenhorns” and the raucous young farmer mixers they’ve thrown in 37 states and 14 grange halls. Severine is co-founder and board secretary of  Farm Hack, an online, open-source platform for appropriate and affordable farm tools and technologies , as well as National Young Farmers Coalition which now boasts 23 state and regional coalitions.  She serves on the board of the Schumacher Center for New Economics, which hosts Agrarian Trust, her latest startup, focused on land access for beginning farmers, and permanent protection of affordable organic farmland. Severine attended Pomona College and University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated with a B.S. in Conservation/ Agroecology.

Lulu McClellan (Handley Vineyard) Lulu McClellan lives in Midcoast Maine with her woodworker partner where she is learning animal husbandry, grazing, and New England homesteading. While a Californian by birth and nature, Maine’s hard work ethic, tight-knit community, and many opportunities for bundling up in wool suit her well, for now. She is driven by the confidence that agriculture can be ecologically and culturally regenerative and is looking for land to raise sheep, family and community on. When not farming, she can be found cooking, reading, taking care of herself, playing with wool, or outside.

Doug Mosel (Mendocino Grain Project) Doug founded the Mendocino Grain Project five years ago, and is the principal farmer, grain cleaner, and miller. He supports dozens of new grain growers. Previously he worked with Joanna Macey and is now on the board of Mendocino Organic Network, which is a fiscal sponsor of Mendocino Renegade Certification.

Steve Schwartz (The Interfaith Sustainable Food Collaborative) Steve is an experienced local food systems advocate with more than 25 years of professional leadership working with farmers and farm policy to advance sustainable agriculture. He is the founder of California Farmlink which he directed for 13 years working to provide access to land and financing for beginning and immigrant farmers. He was the first staff person for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers’ Rural Policy Council. Steve is an innovator in farmland access and preservation, as well as affordable financing alternatives for family farmers.

We look forward to a spirited discussion with the audience, including a discussion about the prospects about our local grange future. Following the presentation we’ll have a social hour of mixing and mingling with hot cider and cookies.