Here
is some excellent information I gleaned while attending the first annual
Western Colorado Food and Farm Forum:
The first workshop I attended after the opening meeting and
networking breakout was titled Feeding
your Soil to Feed Your Crops: Cover Crops and Soil Fertility. Isaac Munoz,
a representative from the CSU extension office, presented a slideshow about
soil fertility management and utilizing green manures, such as legumes and
annuals, as cover crops. Dependent on a farmer’s needs both for livestock feed
and soil fertility, a balance between needed inputs and potential gains is
important to achieve in order to realize both primary and secondary benefits of
green manures as cover crops. As with all cultivation of crops, growing and
fallow periods should be put into rotation. Another example of rotations that
Isaac included in his presentation was the rotation of planting green manures
and cash crops during the growing periods. A major point that I learned was how
all these rotations exercise the soil in order to strengthen fertility by
additions of biomass and fallow rest periods.
The second session I attended was titled Creative Labor Options. Sue Towne from the Colorado Workforce Center
identified regulations and gave thorough details involving famers who bring in
foreign workers on H2A visas. Most items like housing, travel, work visas, and
food must be funded by the employer. Although for larger farms and extensive
orchards, the benefits of having skilled herders/laborers were made clear.
Cassandra Shenk, the director of Teens on Farms discussed her organization of
local teens interested in farming. Farmers interested in having a group of
teens on their farm must have liability insurance or be working with an
organizer who already does. Cassandra stated that one of the major goals of
Teens on Farms is to use education as a platform for building a strong work
ethic from the energy of youth. Russell Evans presented his original idea of
Transition Lab and how the idea is now a reality. Transition Lab is an
experiential internship/workshop with many topics all packed into a 6 month
period. Providing young farmers with housing and a location(s) to practice
newly learned skills, Transition Lab seeks to be part of a new food revolution
as well as being an alternative to endeavors offered at expensive, fruitless
institutions of higher-education. Wrapping up the second session, Melanie Kline
presented the efforts of Welcome Home Montrose to establish veterans into
therapeutic endeavors of their choice. Josh Heck, a veteran with Welcome Home
Montrose, frequently volunteers with us at Buckhorn Gardens. During our time
working with Josh, we have been impacted by the positive changes and rapid
improvements in well-being that we have observed in him. Welcome Home Montrose
is doing an excellent job in providing veterans with a sense of
community/family—an important first step in assisting with their individual
recoveries.
The third session I attended was titled Expanding into New Markets: Retail, Wholesale, and Farm to School.
Jeff Schwartz with Big B’s Juices started off the session by presenting some
new products in the works and ideas for business expansion. He stressed the
importance of good labeling and branding on every product a marketer has to
offer. Also critical was to learn all about how to speak to your market in the
language that that market can clearly understand. Rhea Flora, my general
manager at Natural Grocers in Montrose, presented her slideshow on expanding
into new markets by finding new niches for your product. Rhea posed one of the
most important questions a business can ask, “How does my product compete with
what’s already on the store’s shelf”? Identify vacant niches, do research to
anticipate what demand(s) might already exist, and then creatively expand to
fill those niches.
The fourth session I attended was titled Managing a Win/Win Internship/Apprenticeship Program. Lorraine
Shide, with the Montrose County school district, encouraged our interests in
initiating new school gardens and agriculture programs at schools. She informed
us that high-schoolers can earn credits for their time working or interning at
local farms. Following Lorraine, Julie Sullivan expertly advised us about the
blessings and challenges that having an internship/apprenticeship program can
bring. Both the apprentice and the mentor learn in conjunction in the full immersion
learning style. Apprentices desire the lifestyle they’ll be learning at the
ranch/farm, but they just need an opportunity to practice it. This presents the
mentor a perfect chance to practice his or her interpersonal skills by
investing in the development of a friendship with the apprentice/intern. All of
this and more information Julie had to share with us, then finally pointed us
in the direction of in Quivera Coalition’s New Agrarian handbook—which I made
sure to purchase.
The fifth session I attended was titled Launching & Managing a CSA. Betsy Austin and Barclay Duranyi
explained the purpose and many of the common challenges of launching a CSA.
Ideally, a CSA farm is what an imagined neighborhood farm might be. The CSA
acronym (Community Supported Agriculture) is exactly that: a farm supported by
a community through the good and bad years. Betsy mentioned the important gains
from first selling at farmer’s market for a year or so to identify the local
market. Also for new farmers, selling at farmer’s markets allows the farmer to
gain a loyal customer base. This loyal customer base will do much of the
marketing for the farmer for the following market seasons and can even bring in
potential CSA customers. During the first one or two CSA seasons, the farmer
would do well to exercise a substantial buffer between production and the
market/CSA demand. A point may eventually be reached when a CSA farm’s
production anticipates and matches the market/CSA demands, allowing the farmer
to operate on a tighter budget or even gain a larger profit. Success may be
qualified when a CSA farm becomes sustainable to operate yearly; and,
furthermore, can be quantified when it turns a profit.
The sixth session I attended was titled Magnetizing Customers: Booth Design, Online Options, Social Media, and
Loyalty. Abbie Brewer started the session off by speaking on the topic of
magnetizing customers through online forms of social media. Abbie has recently
built up the website for the Montrose Farmer’s Market. She has designed it to
be utilized by the local community through which to place orders to be picked
up at market. This is called “media linking”. By keeping your website simple,
engaging, and consistently up-to-date more people will visit and spend time on
your website. This is a big part of staying visible to your market and new
prospects. By staying updated with new media forms, Abbie informed us on how a
farm can stay on the minds of its customer base. Following Abbie’s
presentation, Carol Zadrozny with Z’s Orchard spoke on how agro-tourism can be
a large part of staying visible to your loyal and potential customer base. In
the past, Z’s Orchard has brought in local professional artists to showcase the
orchard through works of art. It is very important to exercise any creative
idea that positively increases the visibility of your operation.
Overall, the sessions were incredibly informative and useful. A bounty of speakers and information was somehow squeezed into this day-long conference. We attendees are so thankful to have had the opportunity to be a part of a local, progressive conference such as the Western Colorado Food and Farm Forum. Furthermore, as a young farmer and intern of sustainability, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the sessions including all the chances to network with local community members. Thank you, Valley Food Partnership, for supporting us young agrarians and all our wild ideas.
Get Buck!
~Jak
@Buckhorn Gardens
