We believe in the three pillars of sustainability: people, planet, and profit. All are equally as important to the long term vision of the farm and we are dedicated to making decisions that will maximize our sustainability within each of these categories.
Our Growing Practices
We are a non-certified organic vegetable farm which means that we follow or go above and beyond all standards set by the USDA for organic production. This means no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides and a robust soil stewardship program that includes crop rotation, cover crops, and green manures.
Solar
Not only do we use the power of the sun to grow vegetables, but we also use it to generate electricity for the farm! We have two different solar arrays on the farm including an experimental agrivoltaic project which combined power everything electric from our packhouse, refrigeration, and farm stand. Over 30 kW of solar generation capacity.
We also harness the power of the sun for our winter growing practices. We grow cold stable greens in unheated hoop-houses that get heated by the sun during the day and hold that heat in the soil by night. Being committed to sustainability, we can’t grow winter tomatoes in this way, but we grow a wide variety of greens including spinach, salad greens, kale, collards, chard, mustard greens, arugula and others.
Native Pollinator Habit and Nature in the City
As a farm that is run organically, we must always be looking for ways to beat the pests in a more natural way and building native pollinator habitat as a place to harbor predatory insects is a great way to mimic nature. We are always looking for new ways to get more good bugs in our fields and this year we have partnered with the City of Fort Collins on a native seed growing project at our Kestral Fields site.
This project is beneficial to both farmers and the city as we will be installing native plants from which we will then start to collect natively adapted seeds from for city restoration projects. Native Hill gets the good bugs and the City of Fort Collins gets native seed for more sustainability projects.
Soil Stewardship
As the workhorse of our farm, lowly soil often doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves when it comes to sustainability of the farm; however, it is front and center at our farm as we know that you can’t be an organic farmer without taking care of your soil.
We use many different techniques when it comes to taking care of our soil. We set aside almost half of our growing space each year to just grow cover crops and try to build organic matter that is the foundation of good soil. We are always looking for windows to use cover crops during the season to keep something green and growing and feeding the soil at all times of the year. We work-in legumes (green manure) into our cover crop rotations that when tilled into the soil release an abundance of nitrogen that will help plants grow naturally without synthetic fertilizers. We have four hoop houses on our Taft location called Rolling Thunders. These structures allow us to plant cover crops in half of the growing space while the other half is working hard to grow vegetables.
We are also working on growing an experimental perennial grain called Kernza that has six-foot deep roots and stays in the soil for 3-6 annual harvests. This means, instead of tilling up the soil every year to plant wheat, we can minimize soil tillage and still get a Kernza crop every year. We are looking to partner with a local malter and brewers to make a special collaborative brew for the community to enjoy.
Water Conservation
Water in the west has always been a scarce resource and is becoming even more precious as the years go by. On the farm we take our stewardship of this resource seriously in terms of conservation. We irrigate a majority of our crops with drip irrigation which is nearly 90% efficient in delivering water to the crops. We closely monitor the weather, soil moisture, and local evapotranspiration rates to inform our irrigation schedules. We are proud that the farms which we manage have been switched over from flood irrigation to efficient drip irrigation and we are able to leave more than 60 percent of the allocated water rights in the river ecosystem.
