Grindr, the dating app for gay men, is not known for fostering enduring love stories and successful business partnerships.
But Casey Baird and Kytt McLaughlin, flower farmers tucked into the hills above Vallecito, are an exception on both fronts.
The couple married this fall, nine years after their initial online introduction and more than a year in business as co-owners of Cinder and Pine Weddings, a wedding focused floral company.
With many flowers grown on their farm, they reduce reliance on wholesalers and can offer couples something more personal and local.
On their few acres of land they raise pigs, goats, ducks and chickens. Their cut-flower operation runs on a closed-loop system: Scraps feed the animals, manure becomes soil, compost becomes blooms and even cardboard ash becomes dust baths for their chickens.
“People are always surprised that we’re able to run a cut flower farm in Vallecito,” Baird said.
Growing anything delicate in an area several degrees colder than Durango took years of trial and error. Both men worked at April’s Flowers before branching out on their own; that experience shaped how they approached the land.
“Growing in this area for so many years and working at the nursery, I gained a lot of perspective,” McLaughlin said. Through testing and experimentation, they found a patch of soil enriched by years of animal bedding.
“Then we just figured out how to do it and do it right,” he said. “Water is everything up there – and this summer was so dry, it was brutal.”
Baird and McLaughlin said the business thus far has been a great success. Cinder and Pine has already been featured in multiple major wedding magazines.
Tucked away in a rural corner of La Plata County, where the residents lean more conservative – at a time when national politics have left many LGBTQ+ people feeling anxious – Baird and McLaughlin want to take that success and carve out something new: a niche for gay weddings in a rural corner of Southwest Colorado.
They want their small farm, and their platform as Colorado’s only gay married couple running a farm-based floral business to challenge misconceptions, boost the local wedding industry and highlight queer joy.
The pair sees an opportunity for the region: make the Durango-Vallecito area a destination for gay weddings.
“Gay couples have money. Money helps our local economy. They have fabulous weddings,” Baird said with a laugh. Telluride, he noted, is one of the few Western Slope towns that’s actively tapped into that market – “but not really this part of Western Colorado.”
They emphasized they’re not asking local venues to overhaul their branding or politics.
“We’re not asking the venues to do anything – let us do the work,” Baird said. “Let us be the voice that this is a good place to come and have a gay destination wedding.”
They believe the region’s natural beauty, combined with a quieter, more welcoming culture than outsiders might expect, could draw couples seeking authenticity rather than the high-price, high-profile venues of Telluride or Aspen.
Living in a conservative area, Baird and McLaughlin know that outsiders might expect tensions between them and their neighbors. Instead, they said they have found acceptance.
“We’ve never experienced any intolerance,” Baird said. “Some of the people we enjoy the most are very, very conservative – but they love us. And it opens their eyes too. They’ve never been around gay men.”
While they say it would be naive to pretend national politics haven’t raised anxiety in LGBTQ+ communities, particularly in rural ones, what they seemed to be more concerned about wasn’t hostility but isolation.
People drifting into separate political identities without ever meeting the neighbors behind their assumptions is a real threat, and one that looms over people on both sides of the political aisle.
“I think what’s important in this political climate is, instead of creating two separate tables, if somebody doesn’t want you at theirs, build your own but invite them to sit,” Baird said. “We have way more in common than what’s being focused on.”
Their own upbringings – both raised Southern Baptist in deeply conservative environments – shape how they navigate those divides.
“I was born and raised in oil fields and farming – hard work, get dirty, be proud of what you did,” McLaughlin said. “I still have those values. A lot of the far left misunderstands that mentality. And on the other side, people here misunderstand what a progressive person is. When you meet us, it breaks those assumptions both ways.”
Their approach isn’t about converting anyone politically. It’s about proximity, familiarity and normalizing what has long been stigmatized.
“If we can help change the mind of one person that thinks extremely backward, that’s all that matters,” Baird said. “And if not, we’re still not going to stop. There need to be more safe spaces right now.”
They also want young LGBTQ+ people in rural communities to see possibilities they never saw growing up.
“If one gay kid sees us and thinks, ‘OK, you can be successful, you can be different in this demographic … you can be weird, you can be whatever you want,’” McLaughlin said. “It doesn’t have to be a ‘gay thing.’ You can just be yourself.”
Baird added to that, saying “If one gay kid sees that you can be successful and different … that’s all that matters.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
