Filmmaker Jared Flesher perches in a deer stand in Hopewell Township, hoping to get shots of local wildlife for his documenatary, “Sourlands.” (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.)

Jared Flesher is fascinated by the Sourland Mountains. The rolling hills that cover the northern part of Hopewell Township up into Hunterdon County might be some of the worst farmland in the state - and that’s why, today, the mountains are one of the last places in the state not covered by sprawling suburbs.

“It never made the progression the rest of New Jersey did from farmland to housing development,” he said.

The pleasant, nature-filled Sourlands are a stark contrast to Raritan Township, where Flesher grew up.

“It has been paved over by strip mall and parking lots,” Flesher said.

Next door is Flemington, where much of the undeveloped land has been preserved.

Flesher thinks the Sourlands could go either way, and that’s one of the reasons he is making a documentary, titled Sourlands, due out later this year.

“You could protect the character of a place or you could destroy it,” he said.

Today, Flesher lives in Hopewell Township, where he makes a living as a freelance journalist and filmmaker, largely covering environmental topics. Flesher majored in journalism at Richmond University and has written for the New York Times online, the Wall Street Journal online, and other publications. His first documentary, The Farmer and the Horse, was released in 2010.

Flesher’s first film was about local farmers who chose to use horses instead of tractors.

The new one covers a broader range of topics, but in a narrow geographic area. Flesher filmed local residents who are involved somehow with the ecology of the Sourlands.

“There’s quite a cast of characters,” he said. “One of the real joys of being a journalist is meeting a lot of people who are working hard to do things to try to improve our community and improve our world. As a journalist and a filmmaker you can kind of shine the light their way.”

He spoke with D&R Greenway employee Jared Rosenbaum, bird researcher Hannah Suthers, county naturalist Jennifer Rogers, Princeton University plant manager Ted Borer and Singh Dhanjal, the founder of WattVision, a company that makes home energy monitors.

He also spoke with young farmers Aubrey Yaroborough.

Those are the main characters, plus many other local residents make cameos. The thing they all have in common, Flesher said, is that they are trying to figure out how to use land and energy in an efficient, sustainable way.

Flesher can understand that impulse. He tries to live his own life in a minimalist fashion, living in a small apartment in Hopewell where he eats food grown locally by his organic farmer girlfriend.

“I think I have a long way to go to become sustainable,” he said. “But the biggest thing that I have embraced is that we don’t need as many things as society tells us, and we don’t need to live in a space as big as society tells us.”

Flesher has shot most of the movie already, on a digital camera, and is raising money for distribution, editing software and film festival entrance fees on kickstarter.com, a web site popular among indie filmmakers that allows a movie to be funded by many people making individual donations. The fundraising period ends Feb. 2.

Flesher hopes Sourlands will be a success like The Farmer and the Horse, which still sells briskly on Amazon.com, and which has been aired more than 40 times on public television.

“I’m interested in telling this story about energy, agriculture and ecology and any one of those topics are incredibly complicated stories to tell. My goal in setting my story in the Sourlands was to be able to tell just a few of those stories about a few issues in a way that would be relevant globally and nationally.

On the Web: sourlands.com.