Name: Organic Farm at 7,000ft + Alpacas, Caramel Candy, and a Onewheel!
Uploaded: 2021-12-25T12:55:38.000Z
Duration: 8 min 39 s
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Bee Grateful Farm is a two-acre bio-intensive  farm. We're in Steamboat Springs, Colorado,  

we have a 309-member CSA, and we service a  handful of restaurants in Steamboat as well.  

Growing for nutrient density, that's one of  our biggest passions. It's all about helping to  

create life and keep the life in the soil,  

and we're able to produce the tastiest  and most nutritious vegetables.

Hethir and I have both always been really  passionate about really high quality food.  

We opened up a health food store in the early  2000s and then we were both into organic foods  

and Hethir has been an herbalist for about 20  years now. I went to culinary school, restaurant  

management school, and I cooked for nine years.  I actually stopped working in restaurants because  

the quality of the food is really poor that was  coming into the restaurant and we were basically  

just like sprucing it up in a kind of fine dining  way, and I was just like, "Wow these ingredients  

just aren't really incredible." We moved here  and started growing some food on the land. We  

were just blown away by the quality of the food,  you know the arugula that was coming out was  

really spicy and the tomatoes are just so sweet  and just like food that you never really taste.

After that we were like, okay we're going to start  getting into growing some vegetables. We started  

with a third of an acre of the bio-intensive  farming. The first year the weeds were  

insane! Like we almost gave up halfway through.  Our hands were sore and we couldn't move our hands  

because of pulling weeds! We had silage tarps on  the back half of the land and that was really a  

breakthrough for us. We took those silage tarps  off and all the weeds were gone! It was nothing  

but worms, like there was no weeds, it was  beautiful! Ever since we started using the  

silage tarps, it's been like completely different,  completely different farm. And then this year  

was when we went really crazy and  we were like, let's just go for it!  

We built five new 16-foot tunnels and we got  raspberries going into those tunnels now,  

cucumbers and tomatoes another one, and  basil and eggplant in the other tunnel,  

and then we broke ground in another acre, so now  we're a full two acres, and this is where we're  

staying! We don't need to get any bigger than  this! [Our family's complete!] Yeah, this is good!

We're farming high in the rockies at 7,200 feet.  If you look up our frost free dates they say we  

don't have any. But we say we get around 60 to  70 days that's kind of our window. This year  

we got our last frost in July. It's actually  snowed at the beginning of July this year.  

The winds are really intense here so we have  to keep the crops covered all summer long,  

which is kind of challenging because you can't  really see what's growing. And then the sun,  

you know, is just beating down so harsh. One  of the hardest things actually about growing  

food in Colorado is it's really hard to get water  rights. Miraculously we applied for water rights  

on the Oak Creek and we have about a mile of Oak  Creek that runs through our property, and storage  

rights, and we got water! We have enough water to  do five acres. As a two acre farm we definitely  

have help. We started with three full-time  employees, once harvest season started we now  

have four full-time employees. That will be until  the end of our CSA. We also do have volunteers  

that come each week. We have a very strong  volunteer program which has been really fun.  

If we get one person interested in agriculture  out of these visits with them then I'm happy.

This year our farm is completely dedicated  to growing for our CSA members. We have a  

309 member CSA. We have some great businesses  that are supporting us and letting us use their  

parking lot which has shade. We just have our  produce boxes and they just grab one of each item  

they bring their own bag. We do like to say we're  beyond organic, so we don't spray any chemicals,  

we focus a lot on the soil health and  soil life, that's why we don't spray.  

That's also another reason we use the agribon so  much. That helps with the bug pressure, the pest  

pressure... it's definitely there especially  being a farm in the middle of a prairie.  

Everything's like "Oh my gosh, here's some food!  Let's go eat it!" Running this farm as a couple,  

as a married couple, we've had to find the places  where we really excel at, and kind of divide  

things so that we can do a good job and also get  along really well! I do a lot of the planning,  

I do all the crop planning for the year, what the  CSA boxes will look like each week, seed ordering,  

kind of all the behind the scenes of that, when  things go in... I also do marketing, I do the  

Instagram, I do the photos. Jason does more the  field management. He goes out and he gets the crew  

going on something. He'll kind of direct the day  based on the list of what what needs to be done.

Being a snowboarder and surfer my  whole life my favorite farm tool  

is my Onewheel. I ride the Onewheel about  15 to 20 miles a day on the farm. If I'm  

on the other end of the farm and I forget a  wrench, it'll either take me about 10 minutes  

to walk to the garage and back, or i can be  literally back to the other side of the farm  

in less than a minute on my Onewheel. That has  been a game changer for me, like I live like  

the best life ever! I'm just like snowboarding  around the farm, growing delicious vegetables,  

like it just doesn't get any better than that!  So I'm pretty happy, pretty happy with that!

So we moved on to this property, I believe  it was about four and a half years ago,  

and we first started with the alpacas. We were  supposed to get like 5 or 10 alpacas, and we got  

there and I had this great idea to make hats out  of them, and we actually bought the whole herd.  

So we came back with about 87 alpacas. We  decided to use their fleece to make hats.  

We have a company called Yampaca, that's how  we sell the hats. And they're amazing beanies,  

they're very very warm, but  that's like our winter crop.

We wanted to start making some  products with local honey,  

so we started working with local beekeepers here  in Steamboat, and we started making these 100%  

local honey-sweetened caramels, with just  honey to sweeten them. And we started selling  

at the farmers markets, and caramel sales  started outpacing all the vegetable sales.  

And people were coming in and buying like  five, six bags at a time, so when the fall  

rolled around and we started closing up shop  on the farm for the winter, we're like, okay,  

let's dive into the caramels, and they're  just the most delicious candy on the planet.

One of the biggest blessings of having the farm  with our family is that we're raising our son  

here. He will go into the raspberry bushes and  he'll pick his raspberries. He'll go and check  

on the strawberries, let me know if they're  ready or not, he'll love to go and pick them.  

The other day I put some cucumbers in his  lunch and asked him how he liked them,  

he said, "You did a good job, Mama!" So to me  that was the greatest compliment of them all.

On my days off from the farm, fly fishing  is absolutely my favorite thing to do,  

and it's a time to relax and unwind.  It's just hard to explain, you know,  

being a surfer my whole life, they say only  a surfer knows a feeling when you're on that  

wave and when you're fly fishing it's the  same thing. Like, you know, once you're out  

there you fully get it how it just calms you and  connects you back with nature and mother earth.

If you're thinking about starting a farm make  sure you're doing it for the right reasons.  

If you feel like drawn to doing it you should  do it. It's it's a passion project, you know,  

it's not something where you're going to get rich  doing, it's just something where you just love  

what you do, and you're willing to put in those  60 hours plus a week because you just love it.

I think people need to be connected  to where their food's coming from.

The food that comes off your local farm that  you're supporting, you know if you've bought,  

it it just tastes better. The nutrient content  is so much higher, it's the quality in the food,  

and i think that's the most important to grow  and support local farms. I just want to grow  

beautiful food that makes people happy  and that's kind of what it's all about.

Hi guys I'm Jonathan with Farmers  Friend. If you enjoyed this video,  

hit the like button and subscribe to see  more inspiring stories like this. To learn  

more about our innovative small farm tools and  supplies like easy to assemble greenhouse kits,  

flame weeders, and a lot more, check  out our website at farmersfriend.com