SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) – In smaller, less urban areas, finding a farmer to tend to an old orchard would be as simple as sticking a note on the bulletin board at the local cafe. But in Southwest Florida, the bulletin board is going high-tech.

Farmlink, a new Web site described by creators as part Craigslist, part Facebook, is aimed at increasing the number of small farms locally by connecting farmers and would-be farmers with the people who can help them find land, bees for pollination, business-planning assistance, customers and other resources.

“This is going to be something so cool that it is really going to change the game in the local food movement,” said Laura Morton, who spearheaded the site as coordinator for the Florida West Coast Resource Conservation and Development program in Ellenton.

Since its debut early this month, the site already has attracted growers seeking part-time labor, farmers searching for manure and hundreds of consumers with lists of foods they would like to buy.

Morton got the idea for the site about a year ago when her phone was ringing off the hook with farmers seeking land and landowners seeking farmers.

“Everybody was calling my office asking for help,” Morton said. “I figured, ‘It doesn’t all have to go through me.'”

The Resource Conservation and Development Program is offered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help communities enhance their local economies, often by promoting agriculture.

The Florida West Coast program oversees the Geraldson Community Farm in Bradenton, which was started in 2005, through a partnership with Manatee County. The farm is a place for the community to learn agricultural techniques and to buy fresh food.

The Ellenton-based program also tries to connect farmers with resources, a complicated goal Morton hopes will be efficiently accomplished through Farmlink.

The site is available statewide and farmers across the state have already joined. Morton secured the domain name to also offer the site nationally in the future, but it maintains a community feel by automatically filtering each member into a group of “friends” determined by distance within a 100 mile radius.

Anyone can join, free of charge.

The motto: “If you eat, you qualify.”

To kick-start the site last week, Morton posted the Geraldson farm apprenticeships and offered the giant cluster of prickly pear cactus in her Sarasota yard to anyone interested in harvesting them for propagation.

Within 24 hours a Lakewood Ranch restaurant owner contacted her.

Had Farmlink been around earlier, John Satino might have found someone to tend his orange grove.

Satino, a St. Petersburg hair transplant specialist, called Morton a couple years ago, but was unable to connect with the right person. So he gave up the search.

Now, he said, he “might take a stab at” posting on Farmlink.

“I’ve been looking for someone for several years to do something like this,” Satino said.

Adam Lichtenberger, crop manager for Geraldson Community Farm, said be plans to use the site for direct marketing fall crops. Meanwhile, he hopes it will connect him with truckloads of manure.

“It does fill a niche that’s important for us to have in this part of Florida,” Lichtenberger said.