Woke-up on a friend’s couch in Austin this morning. Tomorrow I am presenting a 10-minute version of THE LAST CROP to food co-ops from around the country who are in Austin for a national conference.

Happily, Paul Cultrera, the General Manager of the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op, who is also a key member of One Farm at a Time and a big supporter of our film

GM Sacramento Natural Food Co-op

It is a great opportunity to: raise other co-ops’ awareness about the film; promote the work of the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op and the Davis Food Co-op to save local farmland to their peers; begin a national partnership with food co-ops; and to seek individual store’s financial pledge for our upcoming Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to complete the film by year’s end. Indiegogo is an international crowdfunding platform that is a competitor of Kickstarter.

That’s all for now from Austin.

My wife and acting coach Sharon Washington & DP Nick Anderson

During this May trip to Good Humus Produce, Jeff Main and I made a pact that both their easement and our film will be finished in 2013.

Jeff informed me that One Farm at a Time was very close to raising the funds needed for Yolo Land Trust to purchase their easement. What was left is for him to complete the final revisions to their easement to be submitted to Yolo Land Trust for approval in between the summer’s harvests and irrigation. No easy task…

As for me, I was in CA for four good reasons.

First to dust-off and archive some 200 images of the Mains, their farm and newspapers articles from Annie’s family albums and two large boxes to help construct a historical sequence that I want to add to our finished film.

Secondly, I was invited to screen a 10-minute cut of our film at Sacramento’s Crest Theater as part of the Wild and Scenic Film Festival’s tour to help raise awareness and support for our film.

Thirdly, I came to shoot my pitch for THE LAST CROP’s upcoming Kickstarter campaign to raise funds needed to complete the film in 2013. It was difficult to be on the other side of the camera but I am pleased say “it is in the can” thanks to the help of my wife actress Sharon Washington (and now acting coach), Nick Anderson, who is one of our film’s key directors of photography, and the support of my good friend Randy Byrne, who let us shoot it on his property. Randy’s 20 acres is where I made my first video 30 something years ago on migratory beekeepers and their relationship to farmers and food production.

And lastly I drove my wife Sharon (the film’s unofficial associate producer and acting coach) down to Mountain View, CA and spent two days with her before she went into rehearsals for TheatreWorks’ production of Wild With Happy that will run at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Art from June 5th thru June 30th.

Best

Chuck Schultz

There are times when production gets quiet and funders don’t respond to your requests for support and you doubt your choice of subject. Is your film timely? Are you speaking to an important issue?

The New York Times answered those questions in last Sunday’s edition. I turned to the National News section and there it was — a half page article “Insurance Firm is Set Up for Land Trusts, Which See Legal Costs Soaring”. You see, land trusts have the responsibility to uphold conservation easements “in perpetuity” and the more restrictive the easement the more the legal risk that it could be challenged in the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/science/earth/insurance-company-approved-for-land-trusts.html/

Our film’s central characters Annie and Jeff Main have been waiting 7 months for a local land trust to respond and hopefully approve their highly restrictive affirmative agricultural conservation easement. It has little legal precedent to fall back on in California but a whole lotta risk.

So I’m feeling, yeah I made the right choice.

Then I read through the Sunday Week in Review and in the Op-Ed section I was stuck by powerful black and white photographs of farmland and development:

A large sign reading LAND and in the background farmland.

The weathered HANDS of a farm worker.

A large HOUSING DEVELOPMENT directly across the road from farmland that supplies half our nation’s fruit and vegetables.

The text reads THE VANISHING VALLEY.

The piece is about the same valley that Annie & Jeff farm in – California’s Central Valley.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/opinion/sunday/the-vanishing-valley.html/

Two major pieces in the Sunday NYT?
Yeah I made a great choice.
Now, like the Main’s, I just need to continue to believe and persevere.
Now IS the time!

Check back soon for updates…I’ll keep you posted on our progress…

Congrats Alison!

It’s been a long time between blogs. I have to fess up to the fact that I have been neglectful. Happily it is not due to inactivity but rather a very productive winter.

Like many documentary filmmakers these days, I am trying to find a balance between the actual act of creating a film, social media networking, outreach and audience engagement.

Some Winter highlights –
• seven screenings of our new work-in-progress this past January/February in CA helping to raise $10K for One Farm at a Time
• worked in animation for the 1st time
• added 10 new minutes of new footage (includes animation) to our WIP
following feedback from our recent WIP screenings
• developed a transmedia project with producer Michelle Halsell applying for Tribeca Film Institute New Media Fund
• under pressure started tweeting

Our handle? What else… @thelastcropfilm

We’re giving thanks for many things: family, friends and good food. But we’re especially grateful for our film’s supporters. Not just on Thanksgiving but year-round.
Thanks to your donations we’ve begun cutting a new 50 minute work-in-progress that we will complete by end of the year! Look for new scenes to be posted the first week in December. We’re also cutting a shorter version in order to meet The MacArthur Foundation Media Fund guidelines.

We’ll be heading back out to California in late January to screen this new cut and so far we have commitments in Sacramento and Davis and we’re in the process of firming-up venues in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz and Auburn. The Auburn connection came out of a contact made after the film was screened at Slow Money’s National Gathering in October.

Check the website for specific dates and times and we’ll be posting about what happens at the events here.

It seems that with so much going on around us it’s hard to know where to focus one’s energy: presidential politics, Occupy Wall Street protests, continuing clashes in the Middle East, the stalled economy and the failed “super committee’, and on and on. At times it can all seem too large to grasp. That’s why dealing with big issues through personal stories is so effective. You can better understand the macro through the micro. It’s what we’re attempting to do with THE LAST CROP. By telling Annie and Jeff Main’s story we hope to address the bigger issues that impact all of us on a national level. There IS a lot vying for our attention, but change is up to us. It’s up to us to make whatever positive difference we can and leave that for future generations to build on.

Returned home from the last shoot/work trip out in the Capay Valley to the wake of Hurricane Irene here at home. Managed to get on one of the first flights back to a re-opened JFK. Thankfully home and family here in NYC were fine but parts of upstate NY and the Northeast suffered major devastation. Small farms and farmers are struggling to get back on their feet. I thought of Annie & Jeff as they celebrated the 35^th anniversary of Good Humus Farm.

There was good news on the film front: THE LAST CROP was accepted to Working Films’ REEL CHANGE workshop: “Managing Social Issue Film Campaigns”. Should be a great place to exchange ideas with other filmmakers and professionals about using film as an engine for change – that’s what it’s all about. I’m happy to say a rep from American Farmland Trust will be joining me to help brainstorm. Stay tuned for updates about our future collaboration to bring farm issues to a national audience – it’s exciting!

We hopefully lock picture and music on a promo piece we shot for One Farm At A Time. Feedback from One Farm was positive and the cut looks good. Should be a useful tool for them (and for us.) Happy to have been able to get a chance to interview and talk with young farmers and the people passionate about saving farms and preserving farmland.

As a filmmaker you want to make stories that matter. It’s a gift when they are also currently topical. The October 3rd issue of “The Nation” is devoted to the Food Movement; the Farm Bill is up for reauthorization next year and more and more people are demanding to know where there food comes from. THE LAST CROP is positioned to be in a great place to help spread the message.

Stay tuned as we gear up to participate in the Slow Money National Gathering in October…

There are also links to important news and articles regarding sustainable agriculture, farm preservation and succession. You can also keep with Annie and Jeff along with Annie’s favorite seasonal recipes by visiting the Good Humus’ Newsletter.

I want to give a special shout out to our web producer Fern Friedman http://www.linkedin.com/in/ffriedman2009 for her guidance, patience and generosity in developing our website. Special thanks as well to our graphic designer Mike Kahn http://www.greenstockmedia.com and our web designer Nancy Roger http://nancy-rodger-web-design.com

Comeback and see what we are cultivating.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.