“Where would you go to learn how to be a farmer?” local author, Patrick Rothfuss asks. “This is where you would go!”
He is standing in the middle of an abandoned greenhouse in downtown Stevens Point, Wisconsin. With a plethora of fully-functioning, picturesque red-barn farms within miles of the city, it’s hard to see his logic at first. Yet Rothfuss and a group of forward-thinking community members have been seeing something much more promising than a dilapidated greenhouse the last few years. They see a vibrant community food center focused on sustainability, education, and business development.
Organizations like Northland Renewable Energy and Farmshed see it too. They see a gathering place where people can make use of a greenhouse, kitchen, classroom, and a courtyard to learn about the food system from start to finish. They see a center for local business incubation, renewable energy examples, and the opportunity to create something spectacular in Central Wisconsin. With the new food hub, not everybody would have to wait to go to Grandpa’s farm to learn how we make food, they could just walk down Main Street to the local “food library” and get all the experience they need.
Community members are using local fundraising events like concerts and raffle tickets as well as online tools, such as the crowd-funding platform, IndieGoGo, to raise the estimated $60,000 they will need to get their project off the ground. To aid with the general site clean-up, $40,000 will be used in Glass Removal and Polycarbonate Installation and $20,000 is allotted for New Roofs and Ceiling Rebuild to make it through those long, hard winters. With 40 days into their fundraising campaign, Farmshed has raised $3,598 via crowd-funding.
As a Wisconsin native, I encourage everyone to support this beautiful, simple cause. So many of us were raised in farm country without ever understanding the full beauty of that privilege. We were too worried about the “smelly farm kid” stigma to stick our hands in the dirt. The Stevens Point Greenhouse Project makes everything about food look so cool and community-oriented that it almost makes me want to move back home.
Yet if their cause doesn’t quite charm you, watch this video, and I guarantee that afterwards, that endearing Midwest accent will definitely seal the deal. Amazing work, you guys!
