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27-year-old activist/farmer Severine von Tscharner Fleming is a poster child for a new generation of farmers. With her nonprofit organization, the Greenhorns, she works to recruit, support, and promote young farmers in America. Look for the group's documentary film to be released next year; in the meantime, von Tscharner Fleming spilled a few of her lovingly grown beans, so to speak.
What has been your smallest lifestyle change?
My carpal tunnel syndrome (from too much activist frenzy typing) was cured by milking 20 goats twice a day last summer. I am thankful for this .
What has been your biggest lifestyle change?
I moved to a place where I can bike to the office, bike to the farm, and bike to the train station, fold up my bike and get into the city along a lovely river. The life-stylishness of that strategic foresight makes me grin everyday.
What’s your little green secret?
Glass! I store leftovers, soup stock, bulk foods, everything in glass … I've found that using glass bottles makes for a satisfying materiality in my life. The feel of the glass in my hand and against my lips is very distinctive and very real. [It] also reminds me daily about fragility … And taking care of that glass bottle feels like good practice — for taking care of our brains, bodies, relationships, natural resources.
"We joke that the farm has become ... Fight Club."
If you had five minutes in the Oval Office, what would you say?
Bike lanes! Fast trains! Healthy food in hospitals, prisons, and schools! Funding for start-up organic farms!
What are your favorite sustainable element(s) of your home?
Sharing my home with as many others as possible … Sometimes we joke that the farm has become a Greenhorns Fight Club (so many dirty shoes at the door, so much bustle). Except that we don't get involved in explosives.
Severine von Tscharner Fleming
Director, The Greenhorns
Who is your green superhero?
I'm in awe of the tremendous sacrifice and vision of the young farmers featured in my film … Farmers have chosen a path and stuck with it. They show tremendous professional bravery in doing so because they are competing directly with machines and immigrant labor, so the prices of their produce are artificially low. Doing it anyway is superhero behavior; it’s extraordinary.
What keeps you up at night?
Deforestation, Monsantofication, Company-store politics, erosion of the basic understory of our civilization: the living soil. Also I'm afraid of Lyme disease.
"I'd love to wake up in a world like that."
What’s on your wish list?
I'm looking for donations of software, hardware, disk-space and video equipment to continue my media work. If you have extra equipment in the New York area, please email us.
If you could snap your fingers and create a green product or service that doesn’t exist yet, what would it be?
Young farmers serve their country food — that is green service. It would be world-changing to have more green service people, more people dedicated to expending their life's energy in service to the planet and its inhabitants. I'd love to wake up in a world like that.
