Liz and Kat will be presenting “Faces from the New Farm” Thursday, October 22nd at the Common Good Cafe in Southwest Harbor, MDI, Maine at noon, with farm fresh food and a discussion to follow.

Hello!

We are excited to announce that Microcosm Publishing is now distributing our film! So if you’re hankering for a copy, or know someone who is, please click the appropriate buttons on their website and make that purchase happen! Each DVD is a handmade work of original art!

Thanks!

- garden cycles crew -

Howdy Garden Cycles Fans,

Please excuse us for the inactivity on the website — we’ve been on the move and on the farm for the last few months. Lara is apprenticing at the Glynwood Center in Cold Spring, New York and Liz and I are all the way up in Durham, Maine at New Leaf Farm. We’ve been settling into long days in the fields and in the washroom, up to our ears in salad mix — golden arrowroot, deertongue, claytonia (boy do we know a lot about greens!) — and just picked our first greenhouse tomatoes.

We’re participating in the Maine Organic Farmers’ and Gardeners’ Association’s Apprenticeship Program — a first class organization that matches newbies with seasoned farmers plus classes and workshops galore. Excitingly I’ve begun to put together a series of podcasts for MOFGA, free downloadable versions of their farm training workshops that should be available on their website in the near future.

Also for anyone in Maine, Liz and I are doing several presentations of the film, “Garden Cycles Presents: Faces from the New Farm”. Check it if you’re around here.

Tuesday, July 14th at 7:00pm at local art and theater house Frontier at historic Fort Andross in Brunswick, Maine

We’ll be presenting along with the Maine Farmland Trust. “MFT’s executive director John Piotti will give a presentation highlighting the ongoing efforts of Maine Farmland Turst to keep Maine farming alive and thriving. Brunswick poet Gary Lawless will enhance the evening by throwing in a handful of poems related to farming; and finally, you will have a chance to see a unique film, “Faces From The New Farm”, shot by two local farm apprentices working at New Leaf Farm in Durham, who cycled from DC to Canada and back and made a film about food producing farms.”

Also enjoy a photo show by Bridget Besaw, showcasing Maine farms and farmers.

Also, catch up at a very exciting conference coming up the Portland, Maine area:

Rooted in Community will be screening our film on Friday evening, July 31st from 9-10 at Maine Community College in South Portland!

“The Rooted In Community National Network (RIC) is a national grassroots network that empowers young people to take leadership in their own communities. We are a diverse movement of youth and adults working together and committed to fostering healthy communities and food justice through urban and rural agriculture, community gardening, food security, and related environmental justice work.”

… and we’re honored to take part! — Kat

Hey All!

Hope you all are eagerly awaiting for spring to arrive. Attached you’ll
find a description of our film showing, ¨Garden Cycles Bike Tour: Faces
from the New Farm¨, at Dumbarton Oaks as a part of the DC Environmental
Film Festival this Thursday, March 19th, 2009. If you haven’t seen our film yet, now is the chance to view and with free admission. Thank you all for your support!

RSVP by March 17th to: landscape@doaks.org or 202-339-6460

Event Info:

Dumbarton Oaks, music room – March 19th @ 5:30pm

(registration begins @ 5pm)

- the garden cyclers

Apologies for our silence but it came for a time to recover from the festival, organize distribution, and to get our film out to those that took time to share with us their part in the current food movement.  Unbeknownst to many of you, Kat and Liz have been working on a farm in Chile, and now have been traveling.  They have an undecided return date in April, or so many of us hope:)  I am now also making a transition of my own.  I felt inspired by the bike tour itself  to either become an academic or a farmer and through deep thought, I’ve concluded to move in the direction of farming.  I’ll be joining folks at the Glynwood Center where I hope to learn as much as possible with farming and CRAFT workshops as well as understanding their role in the region as active guides for sustainable agriculture.  Please check them out if you haven’t heard about their promising initiatives.  

We still plan to be in touch with our email, gardencycles@gmail.com, as well as updating this site as more folks invite us to speak about our documentary, “Faces from the new Farm”.  Speaking of which, we will show our film at the second annual “Rooting DC” workshop series that will bring garden enthusiasts of all types together to share and discuss.  Another great piece of news is that our film will show at the Dumbarton Oaks on March 17th as a part of the DC Environmental Film Festival.  More details will be provided soon.

In the meantime, here are some links to stay informed:

http://www.alternet.org/environment/122822/is_america_on_the_brink_of_a_food_crisis/ an interview with Wes Jackson

Below is a link to a wide-ranging interview with Michael Pollan, who shares some ideas and approaches to healthier foods that may be new to many of us, click here to listen to the podcast.

We just found out that our film is the “Official Selection” of the 2009 Princeton Environmental Film Festival.  Our film will be featured on January 2nd in Princeton, NJ.  For more information please check out the link which is www.princetonlibrary.org/peff.

We will also show a screening at George Washington University:

Tuesday, November 18, 5:30 p.m.
George Washington University
Visitor Center
22nd & H Sts. NW.

The film chronicles a 2,000 mile bicycle trip made by Sheets, Liz Tylander, and Kat Shiffler to explore the budding environmental agriculture and local food movement.  From the mid-Atlantic up into New England and Canada, they discover people and communities finding solutions to the environmental excesses of industrialized agriculture.

Free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Prof. Abby Wilkerson, University Writing Program, George Washington University, alw@gwu.edu.

We are currently trying to figure out the most appropriate and locally beneficial option for distribution.  It would be easier to choose an online distribution site but we would like proceeds to benefit a community oriented initiative.  Please bear with us on this endeavor, but in the meantime, if you have an event you would like to show it at soon then you could do it through us until we find a replacement.  We are asking $10 from individuals and $50 from organizations and sliding scales can certainly be negotiated.  

If you are in the NYC area, then please join us for a screening of our film this Thursday-7pm, the 16th, at Bluestockings which is located at 172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington :: 212.777.6028

A HUGE thank you goes out to the many wonderful people who came great distances from DC, Virgina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Florida on September 20th to see the premiere of our film, Garden Cycles Bike Tour presents: Faces from the New Farm. It was AMAZING!

Thanks to all the musicians who fueled the festivities with tasty beats!

Thanks to the stilters and puppetiers for the fanciful and enchanting performances! 

A huge thanks to all the farmers who helped to feed over 120 people! 

Thanks to Atila and Shawna of Mountain View Farm and the Blue Ridge Environmental Center for giving us that beautiful space, great food and wonderful support!

Thanks to all the wonderful volunteers – friends and family alike - who helped make this event happen and for supporting us during this journey!

AND a special thank you to all the amazing people we met with along our journey that inspired us to make this film so we can share their stories with others!

We will be updating our website with information to give tips on how people can grow their own food and support the local farms and food justice organizations in our area. We will also be posting how people can get a hold of our film in the very near future – so stay tuned!

If you have photos from the event PLEASE send them to us! We would love to add them to our website.

Everyone who attended made this a very special event that we will never forget!

Thank you!

Liz, Lara, and Kat

the garden cyclers