JAR Farms

Hi! We are Jack, Athena, and Rex, and we are kids of technology. 

We grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where the latest and greatest apps are created.

We grew up with Uber and DoorDash accounts.

We evolved into a generation that didn’t need humans.

One problem: All the technology that was supposed to be making our lives easier was actually making us isolated and miserable. The global pandemic didn’t help. 

In 2021, things got so bad for our generation that the US Surgeon General declared that we were in a mental health crisis, with suicide attempts increasing 41% for young girls compared to 2019, and twice as many young people feeling depressed or anxious. 

It’s not just cyber bullying, isolation, and social media’s hyping of unrealistic expectations causing this. It’s also that the instant gratification society has robbed us of self-sufficiency. Of learning how to make scrambled eggs. Of learning how to do our own laundry. Of learning how to drive even.

These weren’t just headlines for us. This mental health crisis hit our family hard. And we realized that the tech world we lived in was growing richer, but we weren’t growing up.

We were growing down. 

As teens, we can’t change the world, or even the industry that we’ve grown up in, but we could change our lives and help others in our community. 

That’s why we started JAR Farms. We wanted to create something by teens and for teens to teach ourselves and one another how to do stuff, make stuff, do better for the Earth, and better for the world by being better neighbors right here in Marin. 

It started small as our family healed from our wounds and the world healed from the isolation of the pandemic. With our own fruit trees and bee hives on our family’s farm. 

We picked the fruit, jarred the honey, bought some bottled water and turned the old trash shed at the end of our driveway into a honor-bar pitstop for cyclists and hikers. 

Athena takes care of the bees and the orchard, Jack takes care of the vegetable garden and chicken coop, and Rex stocks and cleans the farm store for the community everyday. And everyday we get dozens of notes from people stopping by who can’t quite believe it’s real. 

Just as pushing a button to get what you want is contagious, so is this. 

Starting in spring of 2024, we are welcoming handfuls of other teens and their families onto our farm to join our journey to undo what we did to

ourselves, each other and the planet. 

You can join our retreats, community dinners,

or we’ll create a private retreat just for you.

We are rolling out new workshops slowly,

and intentionally.

We would love for you to get involved and join us.

We are trying to un-do.

Un-learn.

Un-harm.

By doing, learning and creating. Together.