Byline: Mae Cornes

A small nonprofit based in Bishopville, South Carolina, is preparing to ship thousands of envelopes of seeds across the United States. Each packet is part of what Here We Grow calls a “turnkey garden”: seeds paired with a planting calendar, layout suggestions and clear, beginner-focused instructions.

The program, scheduled to scale up in 2026, is pitched less as charity and more as basic infrastructure for households living close to the line. In 2023, 13.5 percent of U.S. households,  about 18 million, were food insecure at some point during the year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That figure represents 47.4 million people, roughly one in seven Americans. 

Here We Grow’s founder and executive director, homesteading content creator Matthew Gauger, sees seed kits as a modest but concrete countermeasure. “We’re not just feeding people,” he said in a recent interview. “We’re helping them take control of something in their lives.”

Free Greenhorn Guides as a Public Library of Skills

The seed kits are designed to work hand-in-hand with The Greenhorn Guides, an online catalog of free e-books and videos that Gauger calls the group’s “educational arm.” Hosted at thegreenhornguides.com, the site currently lists more than 70 e-books and dozens of articles on topics such as small-space gardening, food preservation, livestock care and basic infrastructure. 

The Guides are produced by a loose collective of homestead content creators. The site is explicit that most of them are first-generation practitioners, “not fourth or fifth generation homesteaders.” The promise is not expert mystique, but peer-to-peer learning: people who started with little experience documenting what they wish they had known at the outset.

Each written guide is paired with a video hosted on YouTube, allowing readers to see the process they have just read about, from direct seeding to canning roasted tomatoes, carried out step by step. New material, posted throughout 2024, has moved beyond gardening into finance, basic farm planning and small-scale income ideas, reflecting a broader view of self-sufficiency that includes both food and household budgeting. 

Self-Sufficiency as a Response to Rising Food Insecurity

The project sits against a backdrop of worsening food insecurity. USDA figures show that the share of food-insecure households rose in 2023 compared with 2022, and anti-hunger groups report sustained demand at food banks even as pandemic-era relief has wound down.

Here We Grow’s model is to supplement, not replace, traditional assistance. In western North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene destroyed homes and cropland in 2024, the group partnered with a local initiative known as Operation Shelter to raise roughly $500,000 for temporary housing, equipment and supplies. That work now runs alongside the longer-term seed and education programs, tying emergency relief to future household resilience. 

Gauger argues that teaching people to grow at least some of their own food reduces a sense of volatility. The seed kits are tailored for beginners, with instructions calibrated to avoid the discouragement that often follows a failed first garden. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” he has said of his own early efforts. “I just wanted to see if something would grow.”

From Viral Clips to Volunteer Networks

Here We Grow’s reach is shaped by Gauger’s presence on social media, where he posts as Greenhorn Grove to an audience he and partner outlets describe as more than 1.6 million followers across platforms. Short videos about compost bins, raised beds and seed starting often double as recruitment tools for the nonprofit’s projects and as entry points into the deeper Greenhorn Guides library. 

Whether seed kits and open-access guides can make a measurable dent in national food insecurity remains an open question. Their impact is likely to be localized and incremental. Yet as the federal government prepares to stop publishing its long-running annual food insecurity survey after the 2024 report, projects like Here We Grow’s are emerging in a data fog, trying to track need from the ground up while they mail out small packets marked “beans” and “tomatoes.”