Is gardening an art form? Well, it's a form of creation, so it should be. The difference between growing food and, say, playing in a symphony, is that a gardener's collaborator is nature itself. In this episode of Young Farmers, we meet Aileen, a high school cellist who likens gardening to music. You work hard at both, and in both cases, something eventually clicks, and the next thing you know......read more
Lockerz and SHFT present Young Farmers, an original web series exploring the growth of 'farm-to-table' values among young people today. In the videos, we visit with 10 budding gardeners, taking a personal look at their lives and the things they grow....read more
According to Dwight, a graduating college student and ex-baseball star, composting is just the same as making cookies. Follow the recipe, adding just the right amount of worms, food scraps and hay, then let the bacteria go to work, and the ingredients form themselves into a delicious compost. In this episode of Young Farmers, we follow Dwight to the campus garden, where he informs us how to make......read more
The front yard garden at Zoe's place, while not exactly as fussy and meticulous as a French formal garden, is nevertheless an orderly place, one that provides a welcome respite from the hectic city outside. Zoe contrasts her steady, reliable botanical friends with her erratic, hormonal classmates at high school, who never seem to do what the teachers want. With plants, she says, all she has to do......read more
You know something is embedded in your brain once you start dreaming about it. For Willa, another of our Young Farmers, that would include her garden, the subject of a recent dream (nightmare?) involving some missing lettuce. Now in high school, the enthusiastic planter has been at the gardening game for many years, thanks to her mom and grandma, who got her into plants early on. Here, we......read more
In this episode of Young Farmers, we visit with young gardening enthusiast and erstwhile SHFT contributor Mitchell Flexo, whose experience in college ignited his eco ideals, not to mention his curiosity about growing food. With no childhood planting experience, Mitch was left to his own devices in transforming his yard into a garden. Now, he has his own little gardening business, helping......read more
For our final episode of Young Farmers, allow us to introduce you to Edgar, a young Angeleno who extended his passion for plants into a job that's as rewarding as any we've ever heard of: converting empty lots into community gardens. Edgar, we learn, is a man who was born to plant; when his mom was pregnant with him, she craved eating dirt. Yes, dirt. And so Edgar's fate was sealed. Now,......read more
Montreal filmmaker Carine Khalifé was enlisted to direct a video for Young Galaxy's "Blown Minded" single off of Shapeshifting, and she took it to whole other level. The animation employed some truly unique techniques. We'll let her explain: “Basically, my technique was to paint on a piece of glass fixed to a light box. I would paint on the glass with oil so that it......read more
Just in time for Halloween, Montreal band Young Galaxy release this new vid for "Phantoms" off their latest LP, Shapeshifting. The clip fregoes the animated approach in favor of a live action tale involving two ghosts (of the bedsheet variety) haunting a forest and generally acting goth'y. Hazy lighting and spectral cinematography give this one a strange and spooky vibe. ...read more
Moody Montreal indie pop act Young Galaxy have shared a new video for "Hard To Tell," the latest single off of their 2013 LP, Ultramarine. The band enlisted friend and artist Carine Khalifé (who worked with the band previously on their "Blown Minded" video) to create a storybook animation using painted brushstrokes. The animation feautures a parade of animals marching through the forest in......read more