Imagine a local
food producing network right here in the Roaring Fork Valley.
Right now, we have a superb food delivery network, but it is all
dependent on agri-business and cheap fuel, shipping all our groceries from
hundreds, even thousands of miles away.
We all know where cheap fuel is going, so we’re thinking it might
be a good idea to start “growing our own” in a small way, so when fuel
prices soar and we need local food sources, we’re ready to produce them.
This valley once exported
potatoes. They quit because
the single variety everyone planted, a “monoculture”, was taken out by
a root fungus. We can bring
potatoes back to this fertile land, and avoid disease by planting multiple
varieties.
The farmers became
ranchers after the potato blight, and raised cattle.
Every year now, another cattle ranch sells to a developer, and
though these developers are compelled to create Conservation Easements to
preserve some of the land for open space or agriculture, for the most part
the cattle are leaving. Perhaps
now there are opportunities to grow many different kinds of food on parts
of these old ranches.
We have a growing example
of community agriculture here now, with the Heritage Fruit Tree Project.
We’ve discovered many apple, pear, apricot and plum trees that
were planted over a hundred years ago, by the homesteaders who came here
not for silver, but for farm land. Many
of these fruit trees are still productive, but in most cases, they are
badly in need of pruning. A
few families with children have begun volunteering to adopt an old fruit
tree, to learn the art of pruning, to take care of a specific tree in
exchange for a good share in the harvest.
They get to teach their children a useful art, without waiting for
a young tree to become productive, and they get a chance to literally
“save a tree”. We are grafting new trees from the best of these old ones, so
we can send these heritage fruits into the future.
Our fruit trees are all
spread out around the valley, so perhaps our gardens can be, also.
We are searching for irrigated farmland in good sun and good soil.
We already have a couple of locations we will plant in the Spring
of 2006, in Emma, near Basalt. We
intend to teach classes and grow food this summer.
Next winter, we plan to have a temporary greenhouse in place, so we
can continue learning about growing food year-round, in our mountain
climate.
Someplace, in a few
years, we will have a permanent greenhouse and community ag-center, from
which we can process foods we harvest, organize a local food co-op with
local and outside food sources, and run a local subscription farm, like
some of the ones listed in our links on the home page.
There are many ways
people can help with this project:
1.
Plant a garden close to where you live.
If you don’t know how to do this well, take a class from Jerome
at the Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute in Basalt: www.crmpi.org
- Jerome is our “greenhouse
guru” and he’s great fun to learn from;
2.
Volunteer to help on one of our committees.
See the Committee Article for a list.
Tell us what you’re best at, and we’ll point you in the right
direction;
3.
Get involved by committing yourself to a piece of available land to
build a garden, or caretake an old apple tree.
Build fencing, set up irrigation, plant crops, weed them and
harvest them. Some will go to
subscription shares, some will go to landowners, and you will take home
plenty to share with your friends. You
will also receive shares of other crops, so everyone gets a variety of
food on their table.
4.
Help us to plan a permanent facility, including a large greenhouse,
food prep kitchen, cold storage room, classroom, library, solar food
dryer, and other facilities for creating food.
5.
Help our partners “Slow Food Roaring Fork” with their education
program (see separate article on their Spring Classes).
Volunteer to help them, and learn a lot yourself;
6.
Talk to other community members about this project, to help us
build support for it. We’d
love to involve as many people as possible from all walks of life, so the
more the merrier.
7.
Help us to start up an adult-education program for farming and
food. Would you like to learn
or teach some of these food arts?
a.
Bread baking
b.
Home brewing (beer, wine, cider)
c.
Solar food drying
d.
Canning: veggies, tomato sauce, fruit jams, etc.
There’s
more to this than meets the eye. Come
on out and help us grow this idea into a reality of community food
production – organic, local, sustainable.
Everything we do builds a foundation for the future, a gift for our
descendants. We’re having
fun doing it, too.
See
you in the garden.
Michael
“MT” Thompson