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Stony Creek Farm
Adventures in Sustainable Living
“Where farming is both a family affair and an extreme sport. “

An ever-increasing number of Americans are concerned about the food we eat – not simply how it tastes or how much it costs, but how and where it was grown. We want our meat to be raised humanely, our produce to be pesticide-free, and our carbon footprint to be as small as possible. In an age of genetically engineered “Frankenfoods,” the bucolic image of the family farm has captured the public imagination. FarmVille, launched on Facebook in June 2009, is the largest and fastest growing social game of all time, boasting 78 million active users. That means that more than 1% of the world’s population is participating in a farm simulation game, raising virtual crops and livestock, and competing to sell their goods in a cyber marketplace.

Much media attention has been lavished on the bright new chefs, winemakers, bakers, and artisanal butchers who are moving slow food into the fast lane. But what about the farmers who grow the raw material that is transformed into these elegantly presented and packaged foodstuffs? FarmVille’s popularity evidences the immense public interest in “new agriculture.” In the real world, “new” farmers are trying to create an agriculture that produces high quality food, is sustainable, ecologically sound, and economically viable for the long term. No easy task.

Stony Creek Farm will capture a year in the life of Kate and Dan Marsiglio, a couple in their early 30s, and their extended families, as three generations strive to turn their 200 year old farm back into a working, workable, economically and ecologically sustainable enterprise. We will join them on this very personal journey as they combine cutting-edge innovations with age-old farming traditions. This is a story that flows with the rhythms of the seasons, from the bone-chilling cold and deep snows of January to the shimmering heat of August. Kate and Dan labor according to the biblical rhythms of reaping and sowing, of birth, death and renewal, but never far from a broadband connection. It is a story that is by turns dramatic, epic, intimate, scary and comic. It is, in short, life – unvarnished, unrehearsed, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore.




RE
New Life for Old Stuff

               

RE, a half-hour non-fiction television series, will explore all the “Re’s” of the age of environmental consciousness: “REuse, REimagine, REstore, REfurbish, REpurpose, REpair, REfit, REincarnate, REfinish, REvive, REbuild, REtrofit, and REcycle.” The RE crew will visit people who are practicing all of them, on both large and small scales. They may be at work restoring a Louis XIV chair bought for five bucks at a garage sale, or rebuilding an entire industry using ideas that were thought to be “old fashioned.” There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of captivating stories that RE can explore: “old” ideas that are being revived, revised, and recycled, ideas like trolleys or people movers, windmills, and water power, or old furniture, homes, clothing and appliances that are being restored back into service.

Each half-hour of RE will be an eclectic mix of intriguing segments that include brief mini-docs about craftspersons, detailed profiles of people undertaking ambitious restoration projects, and visits with experts, aficionados and amateurs alike, who are all finding innovative ways to bring new life to discarded old stuff. It will be built from several segments—some self-contained and others part of a “mini-series” that could last for several episodes, or even an entire season. A show may be built around a single “theme,” like water power, for example, or revolve around the theme of “old sounds,” bringing together segments on people who restore radios, rebuild acoustic phonographs, collect rare old records, and young audiophiles who transfer those crackling vinyl records to digital format to listen to on their iPods. Other episodes may be organized around a particular location or region.

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