“Queers on the farm not only challenge the stereotype of who is a farmer, and what does a farmer look like,” muses Sandor Katz, a fermentation expert as he sits cross-legged and picks at the grass in a lush green Tennessee field. “But it also challenges the stereotype of what do queers look like, and where do you find queers, and what are queers doing?” Farmer-filmmaker Jonah Mossberg explores these questions in Out Here, a full-length documentary film and official selection of the Frameline San Francisco LGBT International Film Festival this June. After conducting more than 30 interviews during four years of touring farms the United States in a borrowed car, Out Here shows snapshots from life on seven farms run by LGBT people.

All of the interviewees, largely led by their own beliefs in “queering” agriculture, farm in a way that supports sustainable and community-based food systems. In the film, Courtney Skeeba, of Homestead Ranch in Kansas, says, “If you need a village to raise a child, you definitely need a community to have a sustainable food source.” Kay Grimm and Sue Spicer, of Fruit Loop Farms, grow 30 types of fruits on their land. They call their farm a “closed-loop” system: they forage from neighbors’ unused fruit trees and put almost everything on their farm to good use. At Fruit Loop, old doll heads decorate outdoor walls and seasonal weeds indicate the types of fruit trees that would thrive in that particular soil. Their model, and those of all the other small, sustainable farmers across the country, has exciting implications for an eco-feminist re-definition of our food system as a whole.

When not touring the country to film this documentary, Mossberg works on a farm in Northeast Connecticut. I stole a few minutes of Mossberg’s valuable time on film tour to talk about the film, the eco-queer movement, and what’s next for the Queer Farmer Film Project....

JONAH MOSSBERG: When I discovered that I was interested in farming when I was 18, it was around the same time that I was coming out as queer, and genderqueer, and just sorta struggling in the world, not having a lot of spaces in the world where I felt good in my body. Farming really changed my life in that way. It gave me meaningful work, it gave me nourishment, it gave me activities to do where I felt strong and valued. 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.