Queer Farmers in California Plant Seeds, Fight Climate Change, and Make It Look Sexy
Spencer Scott and Nick Schwanz’s queer-run regenerative farm creates community around climate activism.
The queer community has long been at the forefront of revolutions, and nowhere is this sentiment more tactile than a queer-run regenerative farm in the redwoods of Sonoma County. Artists-in-residence wax poetic on climate change, natural wine flows like the Russian River, and two husbands—inspired by the solarpunk movement where art, nature, and technology live in harmony—are planting seeds of change. And literal seeds, too. Located in the historically queer town of Guerneville, a place with its own regenerative story as a logging community that was almost entirely milled out of existence in the 20th century, Solar Punk Farms is a place that approaches pivotal topics—like climate change—through the lens of optimism, fun, and sexy sustainability.
The farm, just a stone’s throw from Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve, was founded in 2020. Husbands Spencer Scott and Nick Schwanz worked in climate from behind desks but were inspired to get more hands-on with their passions, they scouted places where they could make a change, initially looking in Oregon, before whittling their search closer to their home in San Francisco. “We created this impossible checklist of things we wanted, and we found this incredible spot in Guerneville that checked all the boxes,” explains Schwanz. The spot, a degraded piece of land once (over)used as a horse property and conveniently located in a queer town, presented a ripe opportunity to imprint their climate activism and share it with others.
“Spencer and I would always talk about how we could engage more people in the regenerative revolution,” adds Schwanz. “We were trying to understand what motivates people to want to do more in the first place. We talked about knowing about the problem and caring about the problem, and that’s why we wanted to create a space dedicated to making people care about climate change.” That mindset is what led them to solarpunk, a pre-existing social philosophy that, instead of pitting technology and nature against each other, harmonizes the two. “If you want to motivate people to make a big change, you have to tell them what the future looks like and what they’re running towards, rather than warn them and have them run away,” Schwanz describes. “This isn’t about coming here and doing work, it’s about creating fun experiences where being involved in the sustainability mindset feels like an aspirational thing that we want to do, not this chore that we have to do.”
With solarpunk as a guiding light, Schwanz and Scott began their regenerative journey of bringing the soil back to life. The first two years of the farm’s existence, which spans 10 acres of redwoods and mixed native forest, Schwanz says it was largely a dirt lot that required a ton of soil regeneration and new infrastructure. This past year was the first time the land was ready enough to welcome visitors and host demonstrations, workshops, fundraisers, and events like the Big West Wine Fest, which draws natural winemakers from across northern California—and upwards of 1,000 attendees. They also offer an artist-in-residency series, kids’ programming, and hands-on workdays, wherein 10-15 people come to work on the farm for a day, complete with happy hour spotlighting local natural wine (“sort of like volunteer days, but a more fun party spin on it,” Schwanz notes).
At the heart of it all is the Venn diagram of queerness and regeneration. As their website explains, “Solar Punk Farms is by and for the queer community,” while Schwanz adds that, although the farm is not just for the queer community, it’s very much informed by it. “There are a bunch of shared principles between the queer movement that came out of the AIDS crisis and the regenerative movement that’s happening now,” he adds. “How to challenge the status quo, how to face existential crises with a sense of joy and celebration and frivolity, to keep people doing the work energized.”
“If you want to motivate people to make a big change, you have to tell them what the future looks like and what they’re running towards, rather than warn them and have them run away.”
They’re also trying to rewrite the narrative that all queer people want to do is party. “Generally, when you think of young queer people and what they do on the weekends, it’s a lot of traveling and partying and being inside and having this urban lifestyle, and we’re trying to reshape that,” Schwanz says. “It’s actually way more fun and interesting and radical to go to a rural place close to your hometown, and spend the weekend building community and planting food.”
Today, Solar Punk Farms is a far cry from the dirt lot that preceded it. Much like the preservationists who stepped in to stop logging in Guerneville, Schwanz and Scott helped turn degraded land into an oasis of diverse crops and diverse people. What once was decrepit and devoid is now green, lush, and fruitful. Schwanz and Scott are building out a “food forest,” a densely planted conglomeration of crops filled with fruit and nut trees, along with a garden market area, a greenhouse, community garden boxes for folks who don’t have access to their own, and a redwood glen with a stage for events and weddings. The couple also live on-site, and they want to build tiny homes to act as a community living space.
“What we want to do is turn this place into a community hub that’s just constantly buzzing with different types of regenerative projects,” Schwanz adds. “We want this to be a place where all these different philosophies of regeneration overlap. We’re way too small to have a massive impact on our own, but we can have a bigger impact with our project by creating as many connections as possible.”
At the root of it all, as with much of Guerneville itself, is the spirit of innovation, Pride, and revolution inherent to the queer community. It’s why a quick scan of their social media shows spry farmers sans sleeves, and why chickens and tomatoes and wildflowers coexist with artists, winemakers, tree-huggers, and the same type of queer travelers who come to Guerneville for Lazy Bear or Russian River Pride—where queerness overlaps with nature.
“Queer people have been revolutionaries for our entire existence, it’s part of our DNA,” says Schwanz. “And so much of what needs to happen in the regenerative movement is that revolutionary spirit.”