Agriculture

By Kim Black. Photo: Matt Lit. Nestled along the Rio Grande in Alamosa, CO, is a special opportunity to meet the farmers who grow your food, participate in the local food movement, and build community. The event is the Mercadillo en el Rio Farmer’s Market, hosted by the Rio Grande Farm Park (RGFP). The Mercadillo brings people together from a variety of backgrounds and is an inclusive venue for celebrating the rich diversity and heritage of the Valley.   Visitors to the Mercadillo can enjoy storytelling and crafts from local vendors and access to the river and a playground. Food...

By Daniel Hart. Not far from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, a small group of highly motivated people are working quickly and efficiently, wrapping up food aggregation as the setting sun casts its sangria hue on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  This small group isn’t who you might think. It’s not a Paleolithic hunting party butchering a mammoth and gathering what plants they can carry for the uncertain road ahead like in times past. It’s a new generation of hunter-gatherers, known as the Valley Roots Food Hub and the Dune Valley Distillery.  While the Food Hub has been working to build...

By Anya Kaats Photo by Matt Lit Michael Jones, his wife Sarah, and their daughters Opal and Juliette arrived in the San Luis Valley (SLV) at the golden hour after a rainstorm. It was August 7, 2017. They were greeted by a double rainbow. “My favorite number is seven,” explained Sarah, “so it was perfect. We knew we were doing the right thing.”  Michael had grown up in Hooper on his family’s potato farm, moving to Seattle for college to pursue a career in biotech. Sarah, a San Diego native with a degree in communications, always knew they’d move back to...

By Anya Kaats As I sat down to interview George Whitten, founder of Blue Range Ranch on County Road U in Saguache, he told me that we were only 100 feet away from where his grandfather first built a homestead in 1893. George’s grandfather was a pastoralist who ran a herd of sheep above Creede into the Baldies and around Lake City every summer, circling back down into the San Luis Valley (SLV) in the fall. They initially acquired both the herding operation and the sheep from a Hispanic family who lived there before. George’s father inherited the operation but lost...