Farm Beet

Supporting local farms also upholds traditional use of our most precious resource — water. AVOG’s focus is on providing area communities with fresh products grown by farmers in the Arkansas River watershed, and a limited number of other carefully selected Colorado growers.

In the West,  a local “foodshed” is often defined as being grown within one’s watershed. A watershed is the geographic area that contributes water to a given waterway. For much of Southeastern Colorado, this is the Arkansas River, which starts as a small stream in the Central Rockies. This important waterway provides and contains the water that is the lifeline of the communities along its banks.

Buying food grown in the Arkansas River watershed helps keep this water in agricultural production and helps ensure this historic water use is protected for future generations.

Growing up close to the land has positive impact on youngsters

By Beki Javernick-Guion

Little shovels, hoes and trowels are the tools for creation and learning at Family Roots Farm.

With these implements my two girls make dirt cakes decorated elaborately with clover flowers, tomatoes and brilliant red chard stems. These tools also play a vital role in the many tasks associated with running a family farm. Our children are so important in the daily activities, and their excitement for helping and participating in most farm duties is apparent and also inspiring to those of us who see the operation from an adult point of view. Each stage in a child’s life leads to different roles and responsibilities. In the long run we hope this will have a tremendous positive impact on their lives.

At Family Roots Farm a small army of volunteers helps us each season. Zia, 5, is always so eager to join the effort. She will grab a hoe and head out to the field with everybody and start hoeing. If we are harvesting she will help carry bunches of greens out of the field, and while, yes, she does get sidetracked often, she is pretty willing to jump right in and lend a hand. When I asked what her favorite farm tasks are she said, “Pulling plants, and I like planting plants, and I like growing plants.”

Kiana, 3, on the other hand, when asked said all in one breath, “my favorite thing to do at the farm is to feed the pigs, give them water, then I like hoeing, and watching movies.”

They are quite different, but helpful each in her own way. It is so much fun to see the evolution of love for the farm in my girls. Their interests go from 0 to 60 and back to 0 so fast.

The livestock animals play an amazing part in this evolution. We raised turkeys this season for the first time. It was tough. Several of the chicks died, and as sad and hard as it is for the kids to see and understand death, this gave them a great perspective for life in general. They still enjoyed eating the one we harvested. We have kept two hens and one Tom to see if they can do a better job raising their own than we did. The Tom, “The Dude,” is hilarious. They reside in a mobile coop called a “turkey tractor” that we cover and uncover to fit the weather. Any time we walk up The Dude ruffles his feathers, puffs his chest out, puts his head down and charges the side of the pen. Every time we are coming close to them, Zia always exclaims, “Don’t get pretty, please don’t get pretty!”

I am looking forward to seeing how they become more and more a part of the farm and where their interests lie.

Marcy Nameth and her four boys raise vegetables, poultry and pigs at Greenhorn Acres near Fowler. Marcy is also the project coordinator for Arkansas Valley Organic Growers, which means she and her boys practically manage the entire business of the co-op. I have loved seeing these boys grow along with the farm operation. When I was first getting to know this wonderful family they came to my farm to pick up some pigs. We took a tour through the farm and as we were walking through the winter squash Richard exclaimed, “Thats a Dills Atlantic Giant pumpkin.” He must have only been 4 years old at the time. It warmed my heart to see this little boy demonstrate so much knowledge about farming.

I love pulling into their farm. The driveway is lined with fence posts topped by old, worn out upside-down cowboy boots. It is a nice timeline of those four boys. In addition to homeschooling her boys, Marcy’s children play an intricate part on their farm and have important roles that make the farm work. Richard, now 13, takes care of the laying hen flock. His jobs include feeding the hens, gathering eggs, washing and candling the eggs before packing. Richard’s other responsibility is helping write labels for produce boxes delivered by AVOG. He uses the order list to decipher what information needs to go on the labels.

David and Stephen take turns milking the cow when she has milk. David recently told his mom that he was retiring from milking. “We’ll have to see how that goes when she calves again,” said Marcy.

Of course the older kids get more responsibility and are expected to do more work.

Joshua, 17, has many responsibilities. He takes care of the pigs. They have several sows and a couple of boars and usually plenty of little piglets (my favorite baby animal — they’re so cute). He’s also in charge of mechanical problems. “He likes to figure out why things don’t work and fix them,” said Marcy.

Last time I saw Marcy she got out of the van after driving from Pueblo to Cañon City she looked a little stressed when out of the driver’s seat came Stephen, 16. He’s just learning to drive on the open roads. I don’t know how Marcy feels about that.

Joshua is Marcy’s righthand man when it comes to AVOG deliveries and just started helping with AVOG paperwork this year, inputting invoices on the computer. He has also been her primary help with picking up, consolidating, sorting, and delivering boxes upon boxes of AVOG produce.

At Hobbs Family Farm there are typical farm tasks that Avery, 7, tends to but she also is the resident artist. Farm Direct Seed (www.farmdirectseed.com) is just one of the great projects that is going on at HFF, and Avery’s wonderful Kokopelli series of these seed men has provided an image to help market the seeds. Kokopelli is a Native American figure who resides over a variety of things including agriculture.

As farm kids grow and move on from home, we always wonder how much of the farm goes with them. For some children it does. Susan Gordon and Patrick Hamilton from Venetucci Farm have discovered just how much of an impact their farm lifestyle has had on their children. The accompanying essay that Sarah, 20, wrote for her Boettcher Scholarship application also helped land her an internship on the Colorado College student farm.

What an impact our chosen farm lifestyle has had on Sarah and all the other farm-raised children. I am so curious if my daughters will be impacted in such a way that maybe they will want to continue our fourth generation farm and make it five.

By Sarah Hamilton

My old winter coat hangs on its hook against a background of yellowed paint in the mud room of my house. The cuffs are frayed and torn, and the red quilted lining bleeds out along the seams. The pockets are deep caverns of warmth littered with stray particles of hay, an assortment of bent nails, and knots of baling twine. The canvas exterior of the coat has a spot of tractor oil on one elbow and a speck of blood on the left front pocket. This coat, with its holes, stains, and worn lining, tells a story. Woven amongst its threads is my story, the story of a child and a farm.
When I was 8 years old, my family moved from Colorado Springs to a small farm in Cañon City.

We moved only 50 miles, but found ourselves living a completely different lifestyle. During our first summer of farming, we seemed to live outside as we picked up hay with a team of horses, weeded the huge market garden, and tended an ever-growing collection of livestock. Evenings brought satisfied exhaustion and the knowledge that our achievements were products of our own bodies and minds. Experiencing life on a farm seemed to sharpen all my senses. Walking out the back door after waking early, I could smell freshly cut hay drying in the neighboring fields, hear the growl of a tractor down the road, and taste the watery sweetness of melons growing in the garden.

Living on a farm is not always easy, and I sometimes begrudge my early morning chores, curse under my breath at animals that need tending, and long for a summer vacation. However, these sentiments pass quickly when I recall the small moments that make me grateful for my life on a farm. I love eating a cracked watermelon while sitting in the very field where it was grown. I love growing my own food and sharing it with others. I love using my own hands, tools, and ingenuity to solve problems. I love the true appreciation I have for the smell of rain. I love being acutely aware of the changing seasons. I love the scent of home-grown chile peppers roasting on a frigid fall day. I love sinking onto the couch and pulling off my boots after the last evening chores. I love pulling on my old weathered barn coat on gray winter nights.

Wherever life leads me, I will always remember my old coat. I will remember sliding my arms into the too-long sleeves and inhaling its slightly musty scent. As the remembered scent of dirt, sweat, and cold winter days fills my nostrils, I will recall the feel of soil at my fingertips and the exhaustion of a long day spent in the fields. I will recall the fundamental values I learned on the farm, where success is measured by the harvest’s bounty and fulfillment found in the care of the land.

Sarah Hamilton, who now calls Venetucci Farm home, wrote this essay as part of her successful application for a Boettcher Scholarship, which she used to attend Colorado College beginning in 2011. She has been chosen to work in the CC garden and this summer will further pursue her passion for working the land and growing good food as she travels as an intern for CC’s Global Med Club sister organization in Mumias, Kenya, where she will work in a health clinic and help create a community garden.

At Larga Vista Ranch ‘sustainability’ also applies to family

By Kim Wiley

As Larga Vista Ranch approaches its 100th year of operation in 2016, it becomes increasingly clear how crucially important our sons, Kilian and Doran, are to the Wiley legacy on this farm. If they choose to take the helm of Larga Vista when the time comes, they will be the only fifth-generation farmers on our stretch of Olson road.

At one time there had been the promise of many fifth-generation farmers, in addition to the Wileys. However, as our community “dried up” and farms were lost, all those promises vanished. The word “sustainability” in farming mostly refers to soils, energy use, and the like. But the aspect we feel to be paramount would be that of familial sustainability. To that end, we have heeded some advice from farmer and author Joel Salatin: “To carry an enterprise multi-generationally, the business must literally gush with outreach, big picture, missionary worldview.”

So as we do this work together as a family, we try to explain to the boys why our type of agriculture is so crucial to the world — from the animals in our care in a free-range grazing system, to the environment, and ultimately to the families who need and drink our raw milk, eat our organic vegetables, and meat. So many of our dairy shareholders and customers can’t consume other dairy or meats due to health conditions. These realities elevate the work that can seem toilsome to labor for a greater cause.  Kilian, 6, can certainly grasp this and we hope Doran, 2, also will understand our mission in the years to come. For now, we try to keep them as engaged as possible highlighting the amazing aspects of everyday life on a farm and how it is world-changing. Our choice to homeschool Kilian has largely been so that he can be engaged every day with the farm.

While Kilian and Doran certainly love to play like other kids, they enjoy so many facets of the farm. The small-scale, non-toxic nature of our operation is such that our boys can already be active in the daily tasks. Kilian has become quite good at bringing the milk cows up to the barn for milking, urging each cow, by name, to “come on.”  He has been helping bring cows up since I herded cows with him in the jogging stroller when he was a baby. With some supervision he can feed cows hay at the bunk, and the laying hens at their troughs. Kilian loves to gather eggs and packing them in the cartons developed his rudimentary math skills. Getting every last weed in the greenhouse becomes his mission when we work there. Last year as we began our first season of spraying Biodynamic preparations, Kilian loved helping Doug mix the preps and walk the tomato and pepper rows making certain his “Dada” sprayed every plant. Doran at his young age also shows strong signs of loving the farm. He especially likes to help with milking, washing lids for dairy jars, and gathering eggs. They both help on transplanting day in May, when we transplant several hundred heirloom tomato and pepper plants. At the end of most days, we have the gratification of completing our day’s work together and knowing we will come face-to-face at the farmer’s market with most of the people that will eat our food.

Salatin further advises: “And when we create an agricultural paradigm with this nobility of purpose, with this life-changing outreach, we impassion our children to a daily dedicated ministry. And that gives them energy, direction, and goals.  It converts a rock-along, ho-hum life into something with eternal value and meaning.”

We do all we can to foster in our boys the passion that burns so strong in us for this noble and healing work, and if we are lucky, there may even be another 100 years on Larga Vista and a sixth or seventh generation of Wiley land stewards.