NH Queer Farm

Help Us Celebrate June Pride Month

This June we’re honored to shine a spotlight on the NH Queer Farmer Network! Part of UNH Extension’s Farm Strong program, the Network aims to provide social and emotional support to all members of the LGBTQ+ community who farm or want to farm in New Hampshire.

To celebrate Pride Month, we invite you to support this wonderful community with us. Throughout the month, look for slips at the registers to make a $1, $5, or $10 donation, or let your cashier know if you would like to donate more. On June 28 (National Pride Day!), we’ll also donate a percentage of sales from our Produce, Dairy, Cheese, and Meat departments to the Network.

Learn more below, and thanks to all our friends with the NH Queer Farmer Network for all the work you do!

The NH Queer Farmer Network—Cultivating Inclusive Spaces

by Ariel Aaronson-Eves

In a political climate of increasing queer marginalization, the NH Queer Farmer Network embraces queer joy, possibility, and thriving in direct relationship with land and place. The NH Queer Farmer Network is growing and sustaining a community of queer-identified farmers by cultivating spaces wherein queer farmers can share resources, connect as a community, and provide a farming-centered, queer-inclusive space in the state. From dance parties to solstice rituals, from farm tours to workshops, our events center queer belonging and connection while also addressing concrete realities from compost to workplace communication.

We want to encourage the wholeness, authenticity, and safety of the people who grow food and tend land in our state, of all genders and sexualities. We believe centering the perspectives of LGBTQ+ farmers not only works to counteract the marginalization and discrimination that queer folks have experienced in agriculture. It shines a light through a prism that illuminates entrenched challenges in a system that, frankly, doesn’t work well for anyone, while also revealing new possibilities to address them.

In addition to our events, we maintain an active social media presence on Instagram, which we use to promote our programming and to share reflections on queerness and land, and have a listserv of 90 members.

The NH Queer Farmer Network is fiscally sponsored by the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire, allowing the network to receive the grants and donations that make our ongoing work possible.

Ariel Aaronson-Eves is a Unitarian Universalist minister, cultural organizer, and Coordinator for the NH Queer Farmer Network. Learn more here.

*Stock photo image from FreePik

The following two tabs change content below.

Ken Davis

Ken Davis is the Co-op's senior copywriter. Email him at kdavis@coopfoodstore.com.