Odd as it may be, many people still think of farmers as grizzly old men who have been working the land for what seems like 100 years. But in reality, farmers come in all shapes, sizes, and genders, and those farmers may even have a different sexual orientation than what you’d expect.
Yeah, we know it seems strange to forward this article with those specific words, but to us, it was worth saying because according to Bitch Magazine, the queer farmers of America have to deal with farming stereotypes of all sorts. Who is considered a typical farmer? And what does he or she look like? Also to ponder: What do “queers” look like, and what are queers doing for work?
All of these incredibly deep questions are broached in the documentary that was created by the Queer Farmer Film Project, “Out Here.” Jonah Mossberg, farmer-filmmaker, made the movie to examine what farming means to LGBT people. This is the basic gist of the film, according to Bitch: “After conducting more than 30 interviews during four years of touring farms [in] the United States in a borrowed car, ‘Out Here’ shows snapshots from life on seven farms run by LGBT people.”
While the film examines what farming means to LGBT farmers, it also explores the types of farms they have, too. (Many of the farmers in the doc support sustainable agriculture and “community-based food systems.”)
Bitch reports that Mossberg got the idea for the film when the filmmaker was 18 years old, and just getting into the idea of farming — it also was the same time Mossberg was coming out. “[Farming] gave me meaningful work, it gave me nourishment, it gave me activities to do where I felt strong and valued,” the filmmaker states.
“I didn’t know too man other queer people who were farming, but I sure wanted to. In the Bay Area there’s quite a few urban gardeners and farmers, and we started the Rainbow Chard Alliance—we’d get together and have potlucks and seed swaps, and I love that kind of camaraderie and kinship with other queer farmers and gardeners. I love hanging out and chatting with most people who are interested in plants—I love to nerd out on that stuff—but there was something super special about hanging out with a bunch of other queer people.”
To find out more about Mossberg and the film, read the entire Q&A over at Bitch.
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Image from Queer Farmer Film Project