HESPERUS
A program that guides aspiring farmers through agricultural production from soil preparation to seed selection to selling their harvest is living up to its name.
It’s the Market Garden Incubator Program on the grounds of Old Fort Lewis here, where a controlled environment is helping a half-dozen first-timers get their feet on the ground.
Among their ranks are a surgery nurse, an upholsterer, a library employee and a pair of college students. An experienced grower, who served as a guinea pig for two trial seasons before the program launched this year, is a seventh participant.
“Small farmers have a hard time of it,” said Beth LaShell, a Fort Lewis College professor and the supervisor of the incubator project. “Too often they start, work themselves to death and are done in two years.”
The incubator program is designed to relieve them of uncertainties and reduce risks. It starts with a winter classroom curriculum that concentrates on basics in order to have students ready with a business plan for hands-on field work in the spring.
Land, water, tools and practical training under the guidance of a mentor are provided. Participants must show commitment by developing a business plan and not neglecting their plot, which can range from one-eighth of an acre to a full acre.
“They can stay for four years,” LaShell said. “But the idea is to have them out on their own in two years.”
The incubator program is the first and only one in Colorado and one of 111 in the country, LaShell said. Incubator programs are found in 38 states and cover almost 1,200 cultivated acres.
The seed for the incubator project was planted in 2009 when Brad Bartels, then president of FLC, charged a community task force with finding uses for the old campus south of Hesperus. Since then, the task force has developed a growing site and the supporting infrastructure.
A grant from the state Department of Agriculture and $18,000 from the dissolution of the La Boca Center for Sustainability jump-started the incubator plan, LaShell said.
FLC, the State Land Board and the state Department of Agriculture’s specialty-crop program are the sponsors.
The participants
Lee-Ann Hill, who lives in Mancos, has a master’s degree in environmental studies with emphasis on cultural ecology from Prescott (Ariz.) College.
Hill grows traditional farm vegetables to supply 12 customers each week with a basket of whatever is in season through a Community Supported Agriculture program.
But her abiding interest is farming with an emphasis on the judicious use of water – a practice she learned from the Native American and Hispanic farmers she worked with for a year in northern New Mexico while doing graduate research.
The indigenous cultivators have crops compatible with the water cycle and the overall amount of water available, Hill said. They told her that their ancestors didn’t try to ride out a drought, but moved their farms during dry periods.
“I’d like to develop this traditional style,” Hill said. “It’s my passion.”
James Plate and Max Fields, pals since childhood in Denver, now study at FLC, with Plate majoring in agricultural business and Fields in environmental studies.
They cultivate a half-acre, split equally between carrots and beets, which they sell to three natural-food outlets, two in Durango, the other in Mancos, and a dozen restaurants.
“We prefer to sustain a high volume of a few products over a longer time instead of many products for a shorter time,” Plate said.
They harvested 500 pounds of beets and 300 pounds of carrots in the past month.
Plate was first exposed to natural agriculture on visits to an uncle who worked in Bolivia. He noted the respect the farmers held for Mother Earth,
“There was local, organic food,” Plate said. “I took that vision home with me.”
Fields was familiar with only home gardens until he became involved in the incubator program.
“It’s the most such rewarding work I’ve done,” Fields said. “There’s no bad day on the farm.”
Emily Lloyd was surrounded by flowers as a child because her mother was a master gardener, but she didn’t get involved on her own until she and Audrey Preston, her cousin, learned about the incubator program.
Now they sell self-pick flowers for weddings, offer their blooms at the Durango Farmers Market and supply flower wholesalers.
“We spread happiness,” said Lloyd, an upholsterer by trade. “You don’t see grumpy people buying flowers.”
Preston is a surgery nurse and works in the emergency room at Mercy Regional Medical Center.
“Emily and I both wanted something challenging,” Preston said. “We read about the incubator program in San Juan Mountains Edible, so it was sort of ‘Why not?’”
Chris Brussat’s long-held idea to start a market garden, in contrast to a backyard garden, has become reality.
Brussat, who works at the Bayfield public library and operates an online business that sells prints and maps, has a one-eighth-acre plot at home and a plot of equal size here.
“I had taken a beginning-farmer class through the (Colorado State University) Extension,” Brussat said. “I jumped at the opportunity when I heard about the incubator.”
He grows storage crops – beets, potatoes, onions and squash – here, and fresh vegetables at home.
The mentor
Mike Nolan, who is the group mentor and go-to adviser, has been around agriculture in Colorado and New Mexico for going on a decade. He spent six months in 2006 at the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The goals of the center are research and education.
Nolan recently bought 13 acres in Mancos, where he plans to cultivate high-value storage crops.
Nolan worked with incubator task force members to design the program and work out costs and participant fees. He also cultivated a plot during the 2011 and 2012 growing seasons to work out kinks in the system.
“A lot of people get into agriculture because it sounds romantic, but without the proper business experience,” Nolan said. “If they don’t know anything about marketing or sales, it’s the difference between flipping burgers and running the restaurant.”
daler@durangoherald.com
